Collective biographies of concentration-camps physicians.Careers in National Socialism and in after-war societies of the Federal Republic and the GDR

在国家社会主义集中营中活跃的党卫军医生群体的集体传记是这里提出的项目的目标。这是第一次，在执行纳粹种族灭绝政策的关键群体作为一个整体，通过系统的史学实证研究。作为第一步，建立目标群体在进入集中营之前的社会概况，确定他们的职业生涯，检查他们的动机模式和潜在心态，分析他们在集中营内决策的选择，从而进一步了解国家社会主义时期的医生和医学。作为学术精英的成员，党卫军医生从德国社会中崛起——在本研究的第二部分，我们必须问他们是否以及如何在战后的国家中回到这种特权地位。哪些决定性因素、机制和网络促使他们重新融入东德和西德？这些男人和女人的犯罪过去和事实存在所带来的挑战是如何处理的？在撰写与德国战后社会中这一定义明确的专业群体达成协议的双重历史时，该项目开创了医学史的这一重要篇章，同时为Vergangenheitsbewältigung的学术研究提供了一个范例。因此，所提出的集体传记方法论超越了仅仅对传记数据的重建，并为广泛的问题提供了有利的视角：思想的意识形态模式的决定性影响和限制，不断变化的社会框架和权力矩阵可以被仔细审查。此外，可以更好地理解德国历史上这一关键转折点的连续性和变化。拟议的集体传记有助于解决德国当代史学的结构性挑战，将其三根弦（第一次世界大战后至1945年的发展以及复兴开发银行和德意志民主共和国的历史）结合在一起，形成一个关系框架。

The collective biography of the group of SS physicians active in national socialist concentration camps is the objective of the project here proposed. For the first time, this key group in implementing nazi genocidal policies is tackled as a whole by systematic historiographical-empirical study. As a first step, a social profile of the target group before their involvement in concentration camps is established, their occupational careers ascertained, their motivational patterns and underlying mentalities examined and their options for decision making inside concentration camps analysed, thus furthering the still sketchy understanding of physicians and medicine in the national socialist years. Members of the academic elite, SS physicians rose from the midst of German society - it has to be asked in the second part of this study if and how they returned to this priviledged position in the post-war states. Which determining factors, mechanisms and networks advanced their reintegration into East and West Germany? How were the challenges handled posed by both criminal past and factual presence of these men and women? In writing the two-fold history of coming to terms with this well defined professional group in both German post-war societies this project pioneers this important chapter of medical history and, at the same time, provides the academic study of Vergangenheitsbewältigung with an paradigmatic example.Thus, the proposed methodology of collective biography exceeds mere reconstruction of biographical data and serves as vantage point for a wide-ranging scope of questions: the determinative influences and limits of ideological patterns of thought, changing social frameworks and power matrices can be scrutinized. Furthermore, continuities as well as changes at this crucial turning point of German history can be better understood. The proposed collective biography can contribute to the constitutive challenge of German contemporary historiography to bind together its three strings - the developments after World War I to 1945 and the histories of both the BRD and GDR - into one relational framework.