Ernst Wegner was a German physician and politician. He was born near Poznan. His father was a chemist. Wegner studied medicine in Greifswald, Halle, Innsbruck and Munich and took part in the Kapp Putsch in 1920, which brought about the fall of the Weimar Republic. He then joined the NSDAP and the SA. In 1925, he completed his studies with his doctoral thesis and became a doctor in Saxony. From 1932 to 1933, he was a member of the Reichstag. He became head of the ‘State Academy for Racial Hygiene’ and as such headed the Gau Office for Public Health and, from 1935, the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden. By 1934, he had already been promoted to Ministerial Councillor for Public Health in the Saxon Ministry of the Interior, and in 1937 he headed the Medical Association in Saxony. In 1939, he moved to a leading position in the German Labour Front. Wegner was of the opinion that ‘racial mixing’ and Jews were responsible for all of history’s problems. He died shortly after the end of the war.
