Current dissertations

Institute of History, Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine

Doctoral candidate

Sabrina Ertmer

Working title of the dissertation

Gerhard Kloos - The biography of a psychiatrist between infanticide and war invalid care

Abstract

Gerhard Kloos (1906-1988) was a neurologist and psychiatrist. After completing his doctorate, he worked as an assistant physician under Oswald Bumke in Munich and habilitated under Kurt Beringer in Freiburg, where he was senior physician at the university's Department of Neurology. In the late 1930s, he became head of the Thuringian State Sanatorium in Stadtroda near Jena. At this time, he had good contacts with the children's clinic at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and Prof. Jussuf Ibrahim, among others. Kloos had mentally handicapped children and adults murdered. Despite his involvement in euthanasia, he was considered a respected scientist and physician. In the period after 1945, he worked as a neurologist and psychiatrist in Kiel, Freiburg, Bad Pyrmont and finally in Göttingen, including as director of the state hospital in Göttingen. It is noticeable that in the 1950s, Kloos was very involved in the care of brain-injured war invalids and the care hospital in Bad Pyrmont, and carried out relevant research into brain injuries. At the same time, he supported the euthanasia expert Hans Hefelmann when he was indicted in Munich after returning from exile in South America. In a psychiatric report, Kloos certified that Hefelmann was unfit to stand trial.

This work is intended to provide an overview of Gerhard Kloos' entire life and is expressly not limited to the period of National Socialism. Particular attention will be paid to the individual stages of his academic career and the university networks to which he belonged. Who trained Gerhard Kloos and thus shaped his personality as a physician? Were there supporters and patrons of his person? How did he become head of Stadtroda? What happened after the end of the war around 1945 when Kloos left Jena for Kiel? Were there networks that could be built on after 1945?

In order to answer these questions, dissertation and habilitation files in the university archives of Hamburg, Freiburg and Jena as well as Kloos' extensive publications will be researched. Personnel files, selected patient files from Stadtroda in the main state archives in Weimar, Rudolstadt and Hanover as well as files from the War Injured Pension Fund will also be examined.