[Werner Heyde: psychiatrist and mass murderer : A forensic psychiatric perspective]

In 1962 the Frankfurt Attorney General Dr. Fritz Bauer, who became known worldwide through the Auschwitz Trials, charged the ex-director of the psychiatric and neurological clinic of the University of Würzburg, Prof. Dr. Werner Heyde, in his bill of indictment with murder in at least 100,000 cases. The trial planned for February 1964 was awaited with great interest by the media. However, it never took place, because Heyde, who went under the pseudonym Dr. Fritz Sawade in the postwar period, committed suicide shortly beforehand. In the years 1940/1941 Heyde was head assessor and medical director of the so-called Action T4 and, therefore, one of the main perpetrators of the mass murder of sick and disabled people known under the euphemism of euthanasia. Long before his involvement in the mass murder programme, Heyde already contributed to the disastrous development in Germany with a positive psychiatric expert opinion on Theodor Eicke, who later became the Inspector of Concentration Camps (KZ) and head of the SS Death's Head Units. Furthermore, Heyde became an instructor of KZ physicians. This article focuses on Heyde's successful career at the University of Würzburg from 1926-1945, taking sources that confirm Heyde's homosexual propensities into account, suggesting a recurrent conflictual influence on his life.