Berlin – Jens Reich fills a backpack with books in his office. In case he wants to look something up during the interview. We talked to him about the Robert Rössle case in a conference room at the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC). Rössle headed the Pathological Institute at the Charité from 1929 to 1948. The street in Berlin-Buch where the MDC is located is named after Rössle. Can it stay that way? Jens Reich dealt with the allegations against Rössle in the historical commission of the Buch campus. The molecular biologist and GDR civil rights activist was a research group leader at the MDC, and he remained associated with the institute even after his retirement.
Mr. Reich, did you know Rössle while you were still alive?
I think I saw him once as a schoolboy at an event, but maybe that mixes up with the stories told by colleagues who had attended lectures by him. They were impressed by him – he was someone who brought culture back to medical school after the war. He was a well-read man, spoke four languages, had friends in France and Switzerland, a cosmopolitan personality.
What was known about him during the Nazi era?
He was considered a follower, was questioned by the Allies at the Nuremberg Trials and said he had disapproved of the system.
Why were the clinic and later the street in Buch named after him?
His name was enforced in Buch by the surgeon Hans Gummel, but also by the famous virologist Arnold Graffi. Gummel was a student of Rössle and, as a young doctor, a member of the NSDAP. He adored Rössle, in general Rössle was very much admired. After the war, he helped to rebuild the completely blasted Charité pathology department, one of the few luminaries in the East, most of them had left for the West.
But Rössle also worked in Tempelhof, in the west.
But only after his retirement, and on a voluntary basis, he continued to work at the Academy of Sciences in the East. In 1949 he was one of the very first to be awarded the GDR National First Class Prize in the middle of the Cold War. In 1952 he also received the Great Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Federal Republic of Germany. I don’t know any other medical professional who has received these two awards.
How was that possible in the middle of the Cold War?
After 1945 everyone thought that the Allied occupation zones were only for a transitional period. Nobody wanted the division of Germany and Berlin. Rössle was one of them.
Were there opponents of the street naming?
I never heard of it, not even of allegations against Rössle. Almost everything I know has only become known in the last few years, and this is mainly due to Dr. Linz.
Confidante, but not accomplices
Hasn’t anyone dealt with Robert Rössle before?
The journalist and author Ernst Klee. He says of Rössle that he has integrated himself into every system. In 1944, for example, Rössle was appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of the General Commissioner for Sanitary and Health Care, headed by Karl Brandt, Hitler’s personal physician.
What kind of commission was that?
In Klee’s book “Medicine Without Mercy” it is stated that there is no evidence that the commission ever met. I have not found anything that incriminates Rössle as an accomplice in euthanasia proceedings, patient murders or cruel experiments in concentration camps. Dr. Linz has no receipt. This is not surprising, because as a pathologist, Rössle dealt with dead people and not with living people. So he may have been an accomplice, but not an accomplice. But also the complicity must be proven with a source and should not only be assumed.
How did you get Rössle’s work on possible Nazi entanglements? examined?
I compared Rössle’s work before 1933 and after 1933, read literature and the minutes of the Board of Trustees. I wanted to find evidence of active medical crime. Cay-Rüdiger Prüll has published studies on the pathology of the Charité during the Nazi era. In it, Rössle is described as a careerist with a strong sense of power who tried to accommodate his people and wanted to prevent the establishment of an SS-led medical faculty to disempower the Charité. Rössle still belonged to the Imperial Guard, like Sauerbruch and Bonhoeffer. They defended themselves against the new guard.
For ideological reasons or because they saw their own careers in danger?
I think it was a mix.
Are there any political statements from Rössle?
I do not know any. There is a case in which he recommended a student, Robert Neumann, who was a concentration camp doctor, with a pithy slogan for the prosecution of one of the Berlin clinics in 1943.
What was the saying?
Basically: This young man, who has done great things for Germany, is highly recommended for this position. However, he does not praise him for his work as a concentration camp doctor before the war, but for building up a pathology in Shanghai at the beginning of the war. There is no evidence that Rössle knew that Neumann was a concentration camp doctor.
Is it conceivable that Rössle didn’t notice?
Medical concentration camp activity was kept secret. Details became known only after the war.
Later career in the west
Does the presumption of innocence apply to Rössle like in court proceedings?
Historians say you need reliable evidence. That is missing. And Rössle himself was very silent on these matters. Many of his students were exposed to the Nazis, often NSDAP or SS members, but were still employed after the war. Above all in the west, in small numbers also in the east. A prominent example – not a Rössle student! – is Otmar von Verschuer, the chief geneticist of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. He carried out concentration camp experiments with Josef Mengele, persuaded himself after the war that Mengele did everything on his own and became a professor at the University of Münster. Julius Hallervorden from Berlin-Buch also continued to work in the West, in Giessen. Many prominent geneticists and eugenicists of the Nazi era have returned to positions in the West.
What do you know about Hallervorden and his collaboration with Rössle?
Julius Hallervorden was a professor of pathology, a brain researcher who eagerly collected the brains of children and mentally ill patients who had been killed for research. Hallervorden was demonstrably informed about their murder; he went to the asylums himself to pick out corpses to extract “interesting” brains.
Maurice Weiss / Ostkreuz
Portrait of Robert Rössle in book
Did Rössle know about it?
For the cooperation between Hallervorden and Rössle claimed by Ms. Linz, I did not find anything relevant in the minutes of the board of trustees of the Bucher institutes. I only know of specific collaborations in one case, the microscopic examination of the brain of a girl who died of cerebral embolism in Greifswald after a severe whooping cough. No murder.
Has Rössle as Pathologist Euthanasia victim autopsied?
No proof. The victims were dissected, if at all, in the asylums.
In internal opposition
How long did you deal with Rössle?
Two years intensive. I am very fascinated by the discussion because I consider exact historical processing to be very important. And because I know about the behavior of many medical professionals under dictatorship conditions; doing its thing in the gears, although you know that the whole thing is not good. Of course, that also affects me. I was in inner opposition when I was young, but I kept quiet about it at work. Adjustment. It didn’t change for me until the 1970s.
Do you compare National Socialism with the GDR?
No equation! I know about the moral conflict in the GDR when a doctor z. B. “rejected” the political system very fundamentally, but adapted in many ways, also built up lies in life in order to be able to continue practicing the medical profession. In my impression, Robert Rössle is an extreme case of the serious moral conflict that a doctor can get into when he adapts himself to a dictatorial system for the sake of his profession, which can also be called “for the sake of his career” becomes more of a state murder machine. Rössle has asserted that he selected his students based on talent and ability and that he was indifferent to party membership and SS membership. He himself did not join the NSDAP. What I reproach him for is that after 1945 he never made any statements about his silence.
How was it at home? What did your father do during National Socialism?
He was a hospital doctor, in World War I on the Eastern Front, Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Russia. In 1945 he was ready to go. I could hardly speak to him about events of the war. After 1945 he became a hospital doctor and adapted to the situation in the GDR, “took part”.
As a doctor in the GDR, did you have difficult decisions to make?
I only worked clinically for two years, in Halberstadt and in the country. For me, the stressful decisions were not political, but medical.
Is it true that Rössle was a pioneer of the Nazis’ racial theories?
I don’t know of any quote from Rössle in which a clearly anti-Semitic or racist tone is used. The passage that Ms. Linz provides describes in one sentence the eugenic program in the jargon of the time. That is bad as a doctrine, of course, but a single sentence does not make him a thought leader or preparer of specific murders that were planned and carried out by completely different people. Incidentally, Rössle wrote in 1940 as the conclusion of his book “The Pathology of the Family” that there may be genetic causes of illness, but environmental and nutritional factors are decisive. That was very clearly directed against the racial ideologues.
You are said to have said to Ute Linz’s husband: What you are doing is revenge on the GDR.
I didn’t say that like that. Unfortunately I can do that with the late husband of Dr. No more clarifying Linz.
In the end, the Partridge Trail survives
Is there an east-west conflict behind the debate?
An east-west conflict always arises when someone comes from the west and wants to “create order” here. It just happened too often. The argument of many citizens of Buch is: Please rename your streets first, the Hindenburgdamm in Steglitz, for example. Or Manfred-von-Richthofen-Straße in Tempelhof. Then we talk about Robert Rössle.
Wouldn’t you rename the street?
I am in favor of a compromise to hang a board at the entrance and present the achievements, but also the cooperation during the Nazi era: the three lives of Robert Rössle. To use such ambivalent figures as him as food for thought and as a warning. We saw the big clean-up of street names at the beginning of the 1990s, when the socialist grandees were liquidated. In 1991 I wrote an article about it in Die Zeit: Leninallee corner Partridge Way. In the end, only the Partridge Trail survives. Naming streets after politicians is pointless, a generation later they are all gone.
Maybe you will get a road after your death.
No, for God’s sake, the prohibition is included in the will. Should the streets be named after tulips and partridges?
Berliner Zeitung / Paulus Ponizak
Anja Reich (left) and Wiebke Hollersen
Illustration: Stephanie F. Scholz
The Robert Rössle case
In the coming weeks we will explore all sides of the Robert Rössle case in a series in the Berliner Zeitung in detailed interviews and further texts.
In the fourth episode November 2nd: The dark role of the Charité in National Socialism – a conversation with the medical historian Udo Schagen about Robert Rössle and his colleagues.
We want to knowwhat you, dear readers, think of the case. Write to us at leser-blz@berlinerverlag.com. We look forward to your mail!
> Everything about the Robert Rössle case