OTMAR FREIHERR VON VERSCHUER (1896 – 1969)

Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer was a physician and leading ‘racial hygienist’ who worked under Eugen Fischer at the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics’ from 1927. He was the son of a mine owner and completed his A-levels in Karlsruhe. He was a soldier in the First World War and was wounded three times. After the war, he studied medicine in Marbach, Hamburg and Munich and took part in the Kapp Putsch. He received his doctorate in 1923. In 1935 he went to the Frankfurt ‘Institute for Hereditary Biology and Race Theory’, followed by a professorship in 1936. He returned to Berlin in 1942 and became Eugen Fischer’s successor and director of the institute. His interest in ‘hereditary science’ was awakened by reading the writings of Gobineau. He was particularly interested in twins and the infertilisation of ‘community incompetents’. Alongside Eugen Fischer and Fritz Lenz, he worked on the ‘Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring’. His magazine ‘Der Erbarzt’ was published in 1934. It informed doctors about current developments and international research results from ‘hereditary and racial research’. Verschuer was also a teacher and mentor to Josef Mengele and worked for the Reichsgesundheitsführer.
After being categorised as a ‘fellow traveller’ in the denazification process, he made a career as a human geneticist in the 1950s and became Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Münster. He was the first holder of the Chair of Human Genetics in the Federal Republic of Germany. He died in Münster in 1969 as the result of a car accident. He left behind a son, the European civil servant and politician Helmut von Verschuer.