[Friedrich Panse: well established in all systems. Psychiatrist in the Weimar Republic, in the Third Reich, and in the Federal Republic of Germany]

Abstract

The psychiatrist Friedrich Panse (1899-1973) was a T4 assessor during the Nazi era who sent mentally disabled and mentally ill people to their deaths. In the German Armed Forces he used higher galvanic currents to cure "war neurotics" and expose "malingerers." As a National Socialist he was a committed teacher of racial hygiene. Nonetheless, after the end of the Nazi regime many supporters quickly surfaced who were prepared to exonerate Panse. Panse himself was not among those who indignantly repudiated the accusation of any contact with the Nazi Party. He did not deny that he had openly embraced the Nazi measures for preserving the genetic integrity of the populace, but he did let it be known that he had suffered incredibly under the heavy burden. The State Government of North Rhine-Westphalia refused to allow Panse to continue in his capacity as an extraordinary professor. Panse successfully contested this decision at the State Administrative Court in Düsseldorf. He became the Director of the Institution in Düsseldorf-Grafenberg, the Psychiatric Clinic in Düsseldorf, a member of the German Council of Medical Advisors for questions regarding care for war victims of the German Federal Ministry of Labor, and President of the German Society for Psychiatry and Neurology.