HUMSS - Karl-Heinz Leven

Collaboration. Protest. Memory Culture. The Freiburg Pathologist Franz Büchner (1895-1991) during the Nazi-era.

Franz Büchner (1895-1991), since 1936 (and until 1963) successor of Ludwig Aschoff as chair of pathology at the University Freiburg, was the only German physician who uttered an open protest against the so-called “euthanasia”, the murder of disabled. Büchner did this in a lecture “The Oath of Hippocrates”, held on November 18^th, 1941, in the main lecture hall of the university. His contempories noticed the protest very well. Büchner however did not engage in resistance against the Nazi-regime. He stayed a loyal German professor, working in some fields of military medicine and held a rank as a medical officer of the army. After 1945 his protest was interpreted as one sign that the Freiburg university as a whole should have been a kind of castle of resilience against Nazi-ideology. But reality looked different. Büchner himself had quite a realistic view of his role during the Nazi-era and the behavior of his collegues too.

The project at FRIAS relies on printed sources, but especially on archival material, the scientific depositum of Franz Büchner, now held in the university archive. Its aim is to analyse the room of manoeuvre of a German professor in a totalitarian system. Additionally the reception of Büchner´s protest in the memory culture up to the present days will be regarded.