LEONARDO CONTI (1900 – 1945)

The Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti came from Switzerland. His father was a civil servant at the post office. His German mother divorced in 1903. Conti received German citizenship in 1915. In 1918, he completed his high school diploma. From 1919 to 1923, he studied medicine in Berlin and Erlangen. He was active in the nationalist student movement and later belonged to various right-wing extremist, nationalist organizations. He was also an early member of various predecessor parties of the NSDAP and switched from the SA to the SS in 1930.

In 1925, he received his doctorate and was licensed to practice medicine. In the same year, he married Elfriede Freiin von Meerscheidt-Hüllessem. They had one son and three daughters. Their youngest child, born in 1935, died in infancy.

Until 1933, Conti worked as a family doctor and pediatrician. From 1937 to 1939, he was president of the World Federation of Sports Medicine. From 1939 to 1944, he was Reich Health Leader in the Reich Ministry of the Interior, head of the Reich Medical Association, and director of the Main Office for Public Health. In 1941, he was a member of the Reichstag. During the Nazi era, his mother became head of the professional organization for midwives.

Conti was one of the main perpetrators of the murder of patients. He was present during trial gassings and was also involved in other medical experiments. At the beginning of 1945, he went into hiding as an honorary professor in Munich and fled to Flensburg after the end of the war. He was arrested there. He hanged himself in his prison cell in Nuremberg in October 1945.