Werner Heyde was the planner, expert and medical director of the »T4 Centre« He came from Lusatia and was the son of a cloth manufacturer. He was a child soldier in the First World War. He then studied medicine in Berlin, Freiburg, Marburg, Rostock and Würzburg and became a psychiatrist. He headed the Racial Policy Office at the University Hospital in Würzburg. Werner Heyde was head of the psychiatric department of the SS Death’s Head organisation and assessed concentration camp prisoners for hereditary health. From October 1939, he moved to the »T4 Centre«. There he made the final decision on the life and death of the patients. At the end of the Second World War, he was deployed in Denmark. In 1945, he was interned and heavily incriminated in the course of the Nuremberg Doctors‘ Trial. He managed to escape in 1947. He posed as Fritz Sawade, lived as a sports doctor in Flensburg and earned a lot of money as a court expert. Many in his professional circle knew who he really was and protected him. In 1959, his deception became public and he was charged with murder by Attorney General Fritz Bauer. After Werner Heyde took his own life on 13 February 1964, the case was dropped.
