Ernst Rüdin
Ernst Rudin ( born April 19, 1874 in St. Gallen, † October 22, 1952 in Munich) was a Swiss physician, psychiatrist and eugenicist / eugenicists.
Life
Rudin was the son of a textile merchant, his mother was a doctor. From 1893 to 1898 he studied medicine at the Universities of Geneva, Lausanne, Naples, Heidelberg, Berlin, Dublin and Zurich. In 1898 he graduated from the State Examination. From 1899 he was an assistant at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich ( Burgholzli ) with Eugen Bleuler. 1901 Rüdin was awarded his doctorate for Dr. med. He was a friend and since 1890 intermarried with Alfred Ploetz.
After assistantship at the psychiatric department of the prison in Berlin -Moabit, he was assistant from 1907, from 1909 senior physician and lecturer at Emil Kraepelin in Munich. In 1905, Rudin was one of the founding members of the German Society for Racial Hygiene and editor of the journal Archives of race and social biology. In 1915 he became Associate Professor of Psychiatry, 1925-1928 Director of healing and nursing home Friedmatt in Basel. After that he acted in Munich as Head of the Psychiatric- genealogical- demographic Institute of the German Research Institute for Psychiatry. 1931 Rüdin department head in the German Research Institute for Psychiatry (Kaiser Wilhelm Institute ) in Munich, where its population genetics eugenic work towards increasingly formed the scientific focus.
Rüdin dealt scientifically almost exclusively with the question of the inheritance of mental illness and the consequences resulting therefrom. Since 1903 he called for the sterilization of people with specific diagnoses. 1932 Rudin was elected to succeed the Director of the ERO (The Eugenics Record Office ), Charles Davenport, President of the International Federation of Eugenic Organizations; 1936 Torsten Sjögren followed him as chairman of this international merger.
After the seizure of power by the Nazis in 1933, he became commissioner of the Reich Ministry of the Interior for eugenics and racial politics. Should be turned off when drafting the " Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring " July 14, 1933, with the " biologically inferior genetic material " through forced sterilization, Rudin was involved together with Eugen Fischer prevail. He then described the sterilization law as " the most humane act of mankind." 1934 Rüdin judge at Erbobergesundheitsgericht. Robert Knight was awarded in 1935, based on a recommendation by Professor Rudin, the Reich Health Ministry the task of " conduct a thorough rassenkundliche detection and screening of all Gypsies and part-Gypsies ". 1937 Rüdin became a member of the NSDAP and also joined other Nazi organizations such as the NSA, the Reichsluftschutzbund and the NSD covenant. 1939 gave him Adolf Hitler the Goethe Medal for Art and Science. During the Second World War Rüdin undertook together with Fritz Roeder on behalf of the Air Force investigations about the chemical behavior of the brain parenchyma and the Liquorsystems lack of oxygen, which were based on human experiments.
In 1945, the Swiss citizenship was revoked due to 1947 applicable Federal Council resolutions. The decisions allowed, the Swiss civil rights by using an administrative political act in the case of " unschweizerischem behavior " or a security risk to escape.
The U.S. military government interned Rüdin 1945, and left him in 1946, released after Max Planck had stood up for him. As Rüdin died in 1952, was in the obituary of the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Rudin was "one of the most prominent founders of genetic research in psychiatry " was.
Awards and honors
Publications
- About the clinical forms of prison psychoses, Diss Zurich, 1901
- (Ed.) Studies on inheritance and development of mental disorders, 1916 to 1939
- Psychiatric indications for sterilization, 1929
- ( Introd ) Law for the Prevention of Genetically Diseased Offspring July 14, 1933, 1934
- (Ed.) Heredity and Eugenics in the People's State, 1934
- The meaning of eugenics and genetics for Mental Hygiene. Journal of Mental Health 3 (1930 ), pp. 133-147