Postcard, Eglfing Sanatorium and Nursing Home near Munich, after 1945.

ArEGL 99.

EGLFING-HAAR

The »paediatric ward« in Eglfing-Haar was the first »paediatric ward« in Bavaria and began operating in October 1940. It existed until May 1945. Hermann Pfannmüller was the medical director of the sanatorium and nursing home from 1938 onwards. The doctors Gustav Eidam, Fritz Kühnke and Ernst Wentzler worked in the »children’s ward«. Wentzler was already a »pioneer« and planner of »child euthanasia« as well as an expert in the »Reich Committee«.

At least 332 children and adolescents were murdered in the »paediatric ward« of the Eglfing-Haar mental hospital. Their brains were removed and sent to various research institutions.

Only Pfannmüller was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison in 1951. He died in 1961. Eidam took his own life in 1945. Kühnke, who also travelled to the »Wiesloch Children’s Ward« to murder children there, worked as a paediatrician in Hamburg after the war. Prosecutors dropped their investigation against him in 1969. Wentzler continued to run his private children’s clinic in Berlin-Frohnau after the war, and in 1949 the criminal investigation against him was dropped. He died in 1973. Only Hermann Pfannmüller received a five-year prison sentence in 1951.