Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 26, 2025

Bridging the Technology Divide in the COVID-19 Era: Using Virtual Outreach to Expose Middle and High School Students to Imaging Technology
Published on: September 28, 2022
[The exclusion of "non-Aryan" scientists: universities, clinics and professional organizations]
Michael Martin1,2, Heiner Fangerau1, Axel Karenberg3
1Institut für Geschichte, Theorie und Ethik der Medizin, Medizinische Fakultät und Universitätsklinikum, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf, Deutschland.
Abstract:
With the implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (1933), including the Third Implementation Decree (1934), the Regulation for Obtaining a Teaching License (1934) and the Law for the Dismissal and Transfer of University Teachers (1935), the National Socialist (NS) government created legislative instruments to ban university staff (from lecturers to full professors) labelled as Jewish or considered politically unwanted from teaching and research. Whereas around 20% of the staff at the universities were affected by these measures after 1933, at various medical faculties the figures reached 30-40% and at neurological departments and institutes sometimes up to 90%. Student Nazi activists played a significant role in expelling faculty members from office. As beneficiaries of the expulsions, young doctors often improved their career prospects and established professors remained silent out of political conviction, opportunism or fear. A (self) coordination (Gleichschaltung) with immediate or gradual exclusion of "non-Aryan" members and boards is documented for numerous medical organizations and associations (e.g. Deutscher Ärztevereinsbund, Hartmannbund, German Medical Women's Association, Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians) as well as for scientific academies (e.g. Leopoldina) and research societies (Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, German Research Foundation). The NS-loyal Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists, which had been founded in 1935, tolerated "Jewish" members until 1938. As a whole, the picture that emerged from everyday medical (and neurological) practice is one of drastic changes that massively affected not only the lives of many doctors but also the moral standards in terms of patient care, teaching, research and collegiality.
More Related Videos
09:06Removal of Exogenous Materials from the Outer Portion of Frozen Cores to Investigate the Ancient Biological Communities Harbored Inside
Published on: July 3, 2016
04:39Caenorhabditis Sieve: A Low-tech Instrument and Methodology for Sorting Small Multicellular Organisms
Published on: July 4, 2018
Related Concept Videos
The Pauli Exclusion Principle
Stereotypes, Prejudice, and Discrimination
Ethics in Research
Surveys
Diversity of Archaea I
Diversity of Archaea II