publiziert 07/04/2005 at 13:08 Uhr

Nach dem Ende des "Dritten Reiches" fürchten die Massenmörder um ihr Leben. In Argentinien können sich NS-Schergen wie Eichmann oder Mengele eine neue Existenz aufbauen. "Mein Kampf" verkauft sich dort bis heute gut.


Zwischen Romanen von Gabriel García Marquez und Sidney Sheldon wird Adolf Hitlers "Mein Kampf" an einem Kiosk in Buenos Aires feilgeboten. "Ich war schon immer ein Fan von Deutschland", sagt Kioskbesitzer Ubaldo. Und wie ein Beispiel für eine bis heute in Argentinien häufig anzutreffende Faszination für Nazi-Deutschland fügt der 76-Jährige hinzu: "Vor der taktischen Leistung der "Graf Spee" in der Schlacht vom Rio de la Plata habe ich allen Respekt." Das nach einem Gefecht mit drei britischen Kreuzern manövrierunfähige Panzerschiff wurde von seiner Besatzung am 17. Dezember 1939 vor Montevideo versenkt. Kapitän Hans Langsdorff nahm sich das Leben und wurde auf dem Deutschen Friedhof in Buenos Aires beigesetzt.

Vage Vorstellung von Deutschland

"Mein Kampf verkauft sich gut", sagt Ubaldo. Der Raubdruck aus einem chilenischen Verlag werde von ganz unterschiedlichen Leuten verlangt, sogar ein Pfarrer habe es vor kurzem erworben. "Nazis sind das in der Regel keine", glaubt die Historikerin Alicia Benmergui, die Vorträge über den Nationalsozialismus in Erwachsenen- Bildungseinrichtungen hält: "Viele Argentinier sind einfach begeistert von der Disziplin und dem Patriotismus, die sie dem Deutschland des Dritten Reichs zuschreiben." Abgesehen davon hätten viele Argentinier aber nur eine vage Vorstellung meist aus Kinofilmen von den Zuständen in Deutschland zwischen 1933 und 1945. Die Schrecken des Holocausts würden von vielen verdrängt.

In den Schulen werde bisher kaum systematisch die Geschichte des Nationalsozialismus gelehrt, beklagt Marisa Braylan vom Zentrum für Sozialforschung (CES), einer Einrichtung der Jüdischen Gemeinde in Argentinien. Dabei sei das Interesse durchaus vorhanden. So hätten sich zu einem CES-Seminar zum Thema "Der Nationalsozialismus und sein Einfluss auf Argentinien" mehr als 200 Geschichts- und Politikstudenten eingeschrieben. In anderen Vorlesungen gehört für sie auch "Mein Kampf" zur Pflichtlektüre. "Um eine Idee von der Rassenideologie zu bekommen, die hinter der Judenverfolgung und dem Antisemitismus steht, sollte jeder Geschichtsstudent das Buch lesen", sagt Benmergui.

Patriotismus ist in dem Einwandererland Argentinien immer noch ein heikles Thema. In der Gesellschaft der "Entwurzelten" ist die Sehnsucht nach nationaler Identität groß. In einem Land, in dem knapp 85 Prozent der Bevölkerung in zweiter oder dritter Generation von Italienern oder Spaniern abstammen, fühlen sich viele Menschen noch nicht als "Südamerikaner", können sich aber auch nicht mehr mit Europa identifizieren.

Perons Sympathie für die Achsenmächte

Beim Blick auf Nazi-Deutschland scheinen sich bei vielen Argentiniern die Grenzen zwischen Patriotismus und Nationalsozialismus zu verwischen, zumal Staatspräsident General Juan Domingo Peron offen mit den Achsenmächten Italien und Deutschland sympathisierte. Erst auf Druck der USA hin erklärte Argentinien 1945 Deutschland den Krieg - als letztes Land der Welt, ohne je eine einzige Kugel abzufeuern. Nach dem Krieg aber fanden dort viele Nazi-Verbrecher Unterschlupf und konnten sich der Justiz entziehen.

Die argentinische Präsidentengattin Eva Perón reiste 1947 nach Spanien, Italien und in die Schweiz und verschaffte der NS-Fluchthilfeorganisation politische Rückendeckung. Der wichtigste Fluchtweg aus Europa nach Argentinien lief über Italien, wo die katholische Kirche aktive Fluchthilfe anbot. Eine "Nordroute" brachte über Norwegen und Dänemark vor allem Flugzeug- und Raketenbauer nach Argentinien. Zwischen 1945 und 1955 sind 30.000 bis 40.000 Deutschstämmige dauerhaft in Argentinien eingewandert. Die meisten waren Wohlstandsflüchtlinge, denn Argentinien war damals ein reiches Land. Unter ihnen aber auch zahlreiche NS-Funktionäre aus Staat und Partei sowie Soldaten aus Wehrmacht und SS, die den Verfolgungen in der Nachkriegszeit entkommen wollten.

Der hoch dekorierte Kampfpilot Hans-Ulrich Rudel etwa baute zusammen mit geflohenen oder angeworbenen deutschen Technikern die argentinische Luftwaffe auf. Oder Kurt Tank: Um einer Internierung zu entgehen, ging der deutsche Flugzeugbauer 1947 mit sämtlichen Konstruktionsplänen der Focke-Wulf-Werke von 1923-45 nach Argentinien und baute dort die Flugzeugindustrie auf. Auch KZ-Kommandant Joseph Schwammberger war nach 1945 "legal" nach Argentinien ausgewandert. Und bis zu seiner Auslieferung im Sommer 1995 hatte SS-Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke unbehelligt in dem argentinischen Andenort Bariloche gelebt. Priebke hatte im Zweiten Weltkrieg die Erschießung von über 300 Zivilisten bei Rom geleitet. Ende der 90er Jahre war er von einem römischen Gericht zu lebenslanger Haft verurteilt worden.

Asyl für Altnazis

Die bekanntesten Nazi-Verbrecher, die sich unter dem Schutz von Perón eine neue Existenz aufbauen konnten, waren SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann und KZ-Arzt Josef Mengele. Eichmann wirkte unscheinbar und trat so zurückhaltend auf, dass er nach dem Zusammenbruch des Hitler-Regimes noch fünf Jahre lang unerkannt in Deutschland leben konnte. Vermutlich 1950 flüchtete er nach Argentinien, wo der israelische Geheimdienst Mossad ihn nach zehn Jahren aufspürte und entführte. In Israel wurde er vor Gericht gestellt, nach einem international Aufsehen erregenden Prozess wegen Verbrechen gegen das jüdische Volk zum Tode verurteilt und 1962 hingerichtet.

Als der Dampfer "North King" aus Genua am 20. Juni 1949 im Hafen von Buenos Aires mit rund 3000 europäischen Einwanderern vor Anker ging, war einer der schlimmsten Verbrecher des 20. Jahrhunderts an Bord. Josef Mengele, der berüchtigte Arzt von Auschwitz, reiste dank eines falschen Passes unerkannt ein. Er ließ sich unter dem Namen "Helmut Gregor", 38 Jahre alt, katholisch, von Beruf Mechaniker, registrieren. Mengele führte grausame medizinische Experimente an KZ-Gefangenen durch und schickte mehrere hunderttausend Menschen in den Tod. Seine Karteikarte verschwand in den Archiven der argentinischen Einwanderungsbehörde und wurde erst vor zwei Jahren zusammen mit Dokumenten über andere führende Kriegsverbrecher gefunden. Bis zu seinem Unfalltod im Jahr 1979 lebte der "Todesengel" unbehelligt in dem südamerikanischen Land.

Die verbrecherische Vergangenheit der eingewanderten Deutschen wurde erst nach dem Ende der Militärdiktatur zum Thema. Der damalige Präsident Carlos Menem richtete 1997 eine Kommission (Ceana) zur Aufklärung der Nazi-Aktivitäten in Argentinien ein, ein Jahr später unterzeichnete er ein Abkommen mit Deutschland, Israel und den USA über den Informationsaustausch bei der Suche nach Kriegsverbrechern. Der Ceana-Kommission gehörte drei Tage lang auch der argentinisch-amerikanische Journalist Uki Goni an, der in seinem Buch "La autentica Odessa" das Netz der Nazi-Schleusungen nahezu lückenlos dokumentiert hat, dann aber zurücktrat: "Ich hatte den Eindruck, dass die einige Dinge gar nicht so genau wissen wollten".

publiziert 24/11/2004 at 18:04 Uhr

KZ-Arzt Josef Mengele, mitverantwortlich für den Massenmord in Auschwitz, hat bis zu seinem Tod keine Reue für seine Taten empfunden. Das geht aus Briefen hervor, die in Brasilien zufällig gefunden wurden.


Ein zufälliger Fund wirft Licht auf einige der letzten Gedanken und Lebensumstände des SS-Arztes Josef Mengele, der bis zu seinem Tod bei einem Badeunfall 1979 seine Gräueltaten nicht bereut hat. Der Inhalt von 85 Dokumenten des "Todesengels von Auschwitz", darunter viele Briefe und Tagebuchnotizen, die seit 1985 in den Archivschränken der brasilianischen Bundespolizei in São Paulo vergilbten, ist jetzt in größtenteils vom Deutschen ins Portugiesische übersetzten Auszügen exklusiv von der Zeitung "Folha de São Paulo" veröffentlicht worden. Die Echtheit der Dokumente wurde der dpa am Dienstag von der Bundespolizei bestätigt.

So geht aus ihnen etwa hervor, dass er noch 1972 mit dem Gedanken gespielt hatte, nach Deutschland zurückzukehren. "Aber wie ist heute meine Heimat? Und ist sie noch meine Heimat? Wird sie mich nicht als Feind empfangen?", schrieb der gesuchte NS-Kriegsverbrecher.

In einem Brief an seinem österreichischen Freund Wolfgang Gerhard vom 3. September 1974 bedauert Mengele etwa, dass eine seiner Nichten Braut eines deutschstämmigen Brasilianers sei, dessen Familie nicht mit der "Arier-Ideologie" einverstanden sei. Im Januar 1976 schreibt er in seinem Tagebuch laut "Folha", dass er gerade die Memoiren von Hitlers Rüstungsminister Albert Speer (1905-1981) lese. Bezüglich der Reue und der Fehler, die Speer eingesteht, schreibe Mengele dem Sinn nach: "Er hat sich erniedrigt und zeigt Reue, was bedauerlich ist."

"Andersartigkeit der Rassen" verteidigt

In einem der wenigen Briefe, von denen die Zeitung auch ein Foto von einem Stück des Originals veröffentlichte, verteidigt Mengele die "Andersartigkeit der Rassen" mit Beispielen wie: "Auch haben nicht alle Rassen bzw. Völker die gleich große Kulturleistung vollbracht, was zu den Schluss zwingt, dass nicht alle rassisch-völkischen Gruppen gleich schöpferisch begabt sind."

In einem Text von 1969 kommentiert Mengele unter anderem in einer von der Zeitung übersetzten Passage die "kritiklose Hinnahme der israelischen Überfälle auf Palästinenser" und bezeichnet die damalige deutsche Jugend als "entartet". Aus anderen Briefen gehe hervor, dass Mengele seine letzten Tage Ende der 70er Jahre einsam und mit finanziellen Problemen verbracht habe.

1976 notierte er: "Was soll nur geschehen? Ich fühle mich einsam zurückgelassen. Es schmerzt mehr denn je." Von seinem letzten Geld bestach Mengele Mitwisser seiner düsteren Vergangenheit, damit sie ihn nicht verrieten. "Alles im Leben hat seinen Preis", schrieb er.

Die Papiere wurden 1985 in Wohnungen von Freunden und Bekannten Mengeles sichergestellt. Das Ziel der damaligen Aktionen der Behörden war die Identifizierung der exhumierten Gebeine von Mengele, die unter falschem Namen auf einem Friedhof von São Paulo lagen. Mengele führte während seiner Zeit im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz grausame medizinische Experimente an Gefangenen durch und schickte mehrere hunderttausend Menschen in den Tod.

publiziert 23/06/2012 at 19:15 Uhr von Amrai Coen

Kurz nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg infizierte der US-Mediziner John Cutler im Auftrag seiner Regierung fast 1.400 Menschen in Guatemala mit Syphilis. Viele starben qualvoll, noch heute leiden Opfer an ihren Verletzungen. Jetzt tauchen die Versuchsprotokolle auf.

Als der US-Präsident Barack Obama davon erfuhr, rief er eine Nummer mit der Vorwahl von Guatemala an. Er sagte, er empfinde »tiefstes Bedauern« und entschuldige sich bei den Opfern. Der guatemaltekische Präsident Álvaro Colom antwortete, was geschehen sei, nenne er ein »Verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit«.

Für den Amerikaner Obama war der Anruf der Beginn einer Aufarbeitung, für die alte Guatemaltekin Marta Orellana war er der Beginn einer Krise. Erst durch diesen Anruf erfuhr sie von ihrem Schicksal. Erfuhr, dass die Amerikaner – als sie ein kleines Kind war – ihr Leben in Leid verwandelt hatten. »Dass ich infiziert wurde, ist schlimm«, sagt sie. »Dass ich davon erfahren habe, ist schlimmer.«

Der Fund, der das Schicksal von Marta Orellana und knapp 1.500 weiteren Guatemalteken verändert hat, lag unberührt vergraben in den Archiven der Pittsburgh-Universität – mehr als fünfzig Jahre lang. Bis zum Jahr 2009. Da entdeckte eine Historikerin die Akten zufällig bei einer Recherche und brachte eine Welle ins Rollen. Nachdem sich Barack Obama bei dem guatemaltekischen Staatspräsidenten entschuldigt hatte, verklagte Guatemala die USA. Nun erreichen die Ausläufer der Affäre die Gerichte. Das, wofür Obama sich entschuldigte, waren Experimente, die zwischen 1946 und 1948 in Guatemala stattgefunden haben. Medizinische Versuche an lebenden Menschen, finanziert von den Vereinigten Staaten.

Der Fund war eine nüchterne Studie mit dem Titel Inoculation Syphilis (»Einimpfen von Syphilis«), verfasst von einem gewissen John Charles Cutler, sieben Kapitel und 314 Seiten lang. Eine Studie, die nie veröffentlicht wurde; wer sie liest, weiß, warum.

Marta Orellana versteht nicht, warum Barack Obama sich entschuldigt hat: »Er kann ja nichts dafür.« Die alte Frau presst die Lippen aufeinander, sie weint, und ihre Tochter sagt: »Du bist auch nicht schuld.« Nein, Orellana ist nicht schuld daran, dass ihre Tochter den Job als Verkäuferin in einem Schnellrestaurant verloren hat, weil sie von ihr, Orellana, »diese Sache« geerbt hat. Orellana ist nicht schuld daran, dass ihr Sohn von seiner Frau verlassen wurde, weil er »diese Sache« hat. Sie ist auch nicht schuld daran, dass ihr Enkel von seiner Geliebten sitzen gelassen wurde, wegen »dieser Sache«.

»Diese Sache«, so nennt Marta Orellana ihre Geschlechtskrankheit, die bedeutet, dass sie oft müde und ihr oft übel ist, dass ihre Augen eitrige Tränen weinen, dass ihr die Haare ausfallen. Sie sitzt in einer morschen Holzhütte in Guatemala-Stadt, La Ilusión heißt das Viertel, Kletterpflanzen dringen durch die Hauswände, das Dach ist eine löchrige Plastikplane, es riecht wie in einem feuchten Keller. Orellana, eine kleine, runde Frau, 74 Jahre, 5 Kinder, 21 Enkel, 8 Urenkel, sagt: »Ich hätte niemals Kinder gekriegt, wenn ich das gewusst hätte.«

Vor vier Wochen hat sie einen Syphilisschnelltest gemacht: positiv. Einen zweiten Test: positiv. Ihre Kinder wurden untersucht. Sohn: positiv, Tochter: positiv, Enkelsohn: positiv. »Es ist wie ein böser Samen, den sie in mich gepflanzt haben«, sagt sie. Und jetzt überwuchert die Krankheit die ganze Familie.

Es ist das Jahr 1946. Der Zweite Weltkrieg ist gerade vorbei, die Welt sortiert sich neu. Die Menschen suchen nach Jobs und Wohnungen, auf dem Schwarzmarkt zahlt man mit amerikanischen Zigaretten. Harry S. Truman ist Präsident der Vereinigten Staaten, Frank Sinatra singt die Nummer-eins-Hits im Radio, der Bikini ist die schockierendste Erfindung des Jahres, die Mikrowelle die praktischste.

Die US-Regierung hofft auf Erfindungen aus der Medizin. Sie kämpft mit Geschlechtskrankheiten. Auf Plakaten steht: »Sie sehen vielleicht sauber aus – aber Prostituierte verbreiten Syphilis und Gonorrhö«. Viele der Kriegsheimkehrer sterben an der Syphilis. Damals schätzt man, dass sich jedes Jahr eine Million Amerikaner neu infizieren.

Seite 2/6 : Cutler hat der Syphilis den Krieg erklärt

Die Syphilis ist eine schleichende Krankheit, sie schwelt lange, bevor sie ausbricht. Normalerweise infiziert man sich beim Geschlechtsverkehr, es gibt aber auch andere Ansteckungswege. Der Erreger wird von Wunde zu Wunde übertragen, eine minimale Verletzung genügt. Neun Tage nach der Infektion entsteht an der befallenen Stelle ein knotiges Geschwür. Wird der Kranke nicht behandelt, kann es drei Wochen später zu Fieber und Schmerzen im ganzen Körper kommen, weitere drei Monate später zu Ausschlag in Mund und Rachen, Augenentzündung, Haarausfall. Nach zwei Jahren greift die Krankheit die inneren Organe an, zerstört die Knochen, die Lunge, die Blutgefäße. Sie kann Menschen lähmen und das Gehirn aufweichen. Sie kann töten.

Sie kann aber auch jahrelang im Körper brodeln, ohne sich zu zeigen. Für unbehandelte Syphilitiker liegt die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dahinzusiechen oder zu sterben, bei 15 Prozent. Viele berühmte Männer sind dem Leiden erlegen. Zum Beispiel der Wiener Komponist Franz Schubert: Sechs Jahre litt er an der Syphilis, bis er 1828 starb. Auch hinter Friedrich Nietzsches geistiger Umnachtung und frühem Tod vermuten Historiker heute eine unbehandelte Syphilis. Heinrich Heine starb wohl an der Krankheit und auch schon Christoph Kolumbus.

Im Jahr 1946 erscheint die Syphilis den Menschen so bedrohlich wie uns heute Aids oder Krebs. »Syphilophobie« heißt die ständige Angst, sich anzustecken. Entdeckte jetzt ein Arzt eine Impfung gegen die Syphilis, er dürfte wohl auf den Nobelpreis hoffen.

Auf der anderen Seite des Atlantiks wird Deutschland entnazifiziert. In Nürnberg stehen zwanzig Ärzte und drei Helfer vor Gericht. Sieben von ihnen werden zum Tode verurteilt, weil sie an Menschen experimentiert haben.

Der amerikanische Mediziner John Charles Cutler ist gerade 31 Jahre alt. Er ist seit einem Jahr mit Eliese verheiratet, die er während des Krieges in New York kennengelernt hat. Cutler trägt einen Doktortitel. Er ist groß und schlank, ein Gentleman, er liebt Eliese und seine Forschung. Sein Spezialgebiet sind Geschlechtskrankheiten.

Frederico Ramos pinkelt seit sechzig Jahren Blut und Schleim

Zuletzt war er Arzt in einem Gefängnis im US-Bundesstaat Indiana. Er und sein Team wollten den Verlauf von Syphilis erforschen und ein Mittel gegen die Krankheit finden. Sie beschlossen daher, Gefangene künstlich zu infizieren, und benutzten dafür Syphilisbakterien von erkrankten Prostituierten, die sie den Inhaftierten auf die Geschlechtsorgane schmierten. Aber die Gefangenen steckten sich ohne Verkehr mit Infizierten nicht an, Cutlers Methode war ineffektiv, seine Forschung sinnlos. Zehn Monate später wurde sie eingestellt.

Doch Cutler ist vom Ehrgeiz getrieben. Er will die Menschheit vor dieser Seuche retten. Er hat der Geißel Syphilis, die Männer in Armeestärke dahinsiechen lässt, den Krieg erklärt. Er ist bereit, Kollateralschäden in Kauf zu nehmen. »Das Ziel rechtfertigt alle Mittel« ist seine Kampfansage, so erzählt es ein Kollege.

Im Februar 1946 bekommt Cutler von seinem Chef ein Angebot, das für den ehrgeizigen Mediziner wie ein Hauptgewinn klingen muss: Im Auftrag der US-Regierung soll er eine Syphilisstudie in Guatemala leiten. Dort ist es erlaubt, Prostituierte in Gefängnisse zu schicken und sie mit den Gefangenen verkehren zu lassen. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit, dass die Inhaftierten sich anstecken, ist also viel höher als bei Cutlers letzter Forschungsreihe. Cutler weiß, dass er weltberühmt werden kann, wenn er das Mittel gegen Syphilis findet. Zusammen mit Eliese zieht er im August 1946 nach Guatemala-Stadt. 65 Jahre später wird die greise Mrs. Cutler sagen, dass es ihr und ihrem Mann dort gut gefallen habe: »Well, we liked it very much.«

Im Jahre 2011 hat Marta Orellana ihre Wut auf dem Küchentisch ausgebreitet. Speckige Din-A4-Bögen, Aktenzeichen 1:11-cv-00527-RBW, I. 2.: »Diese Klage strebt an, den ungeheuerlichen Missbrauch derer aufzuklären, die ohne ihr Einverständnis für Medizinexperimente in Anspruch genommen wurden und mit den verheerenden Folgen leben müssen.« Orellana ist eines von knapp zwanzig Opfern, die eine Sammelklage gegen das amerikanische Gesundheitsministerium eingereicht haben. Sie fordern Schadensersatz.

Die noch lebenden Opfer, das sind neben Marta Orellana Menschen wie Frederico Ramos, 87, der seit mehr als sechzig Jahren Blut und Schleim pinkelt. Es sind Bauern wie Gonzalo Ramirez, der seinen infizierten Vater vor zwölf Jahren verloren hat, dessen Schwester mit Augenschäden geboren ist und dessen Tochter keine Haare hat.

Seit Orellana die Klage unterschrieben hat, ist ihr Leben kompliziert. Zwei Mal musste sie ins Krankenhaus, um zu beweisen, dass sie auch wirklich an der Syphilis leidet. Als in der Zeitung stand, dass die USA unter Umständen tatsächlich Entschädigung zahlen würden, waren plötzlich alle angesteckt – mit der Geldseuche. Hunderte Guatemalteken kamen nun mit der Behauptung an, sie hätten die Syphilis.

Seitdem Orellana unterschrieben hat, musste sie mit Anwälten, Menschenrechtlern und Regierungsvertretern über ihr Leid reden. Seitdem sie unterschrieben hat und in der Lokalzeitung abgebildet war, rufen nachts Kriminelle an und erpressen sie. Sie glauben, bei Orellana werde bald einiges zu holen sein.

Es heißt ja, der Mensch brauche Gewissheit, um sein Leben besser zu verstehen. Aber will er den Grund seines Elends wirklich wissen, wenn sich doch nichts mehr ändern lässt? Will Orellana wissen, dass sie als Neunjährige im Waisenheim Opfer eines Menschenversuchs wurde? Dass sie mit der Syphilis infiziert wurde und so, ohne es zu wissen, ihre Kinder, Enkel und Urenkel mit der Krankheit angesteckt hat? Marta Orellana sagt: »Ich wünschte, ich hätte niemals von dem Experiment erfahren. Mein Leben wäre einfacher.«

Mitte der vierziger Jahre kommt ein neues Medikament auf den Markt, es heißt Penicillin, es könnte Tausenden das Leben retten. Aber Penicillin ist teuer und knapp. Auch weiß man noch nicht viel über diesen neuen Wirkstoff, welche Nebenwirkungen er hat, ob er überhaupt hilft, wie viel man einem Patienten verabreichen darf. Forscher testen den Stoff an Kaninchen.

Seite 3/6 : Das Experiment beginnt mit Prostituierten

Im April 1947 erscheint in der New York Times eine Meldung, die von der Wunderwirkung des Medikaments berichtet. Spritzt man den Versuchstieren wenige Tage nach der Ansteckung Penicillin, bricht die Krankheit nicht einmal aus. Das Experiment weckt Hoffnungen, auch die Syphilis endlich in den Griff zu kriegen – wenn es nur erlaubt wäre, das Teufelszeug an Menschen zu testen. »Aber weil es ethisch unmöglich ist, Syphiliskeime in einen menschlichen Körper zu spritzen«, schreibt die New York Times, werde es wohl noch Jahre dauern, bis dieses Medikament nicht nur Versuchskaninchen, sondern auch Menschen helfen könne.

Jenseits der Landesgrenzen allerdings ist die Forschung grenzenlos – besonders für Dr. Cutler. Er und seine Kollegen sind kurz davor, das, was die New York Times »ethisch unmöglich« nennt, bei Gefangenen und Psychiatriepatienten in Guatemala durchzuführen. Denn Cutler will alles über die Syphilis wissen: Wie die Krankheit verläuft, wie er sie behandeln kann. Er will beweisen, dass der neue Wirkstoff Penicillin hilft, und er will die richtige Dosierung finden.

Nach seiner Ankunft in Lateinamerika sammelt er zunächst Unterschriften. Er bringt die leitenden Beamten des guatemaltekischen Gesundheitsministeriums dazu, eine Einverständniserklärung zu unterzeichnen, ebenso die Befehlshaber der Armee, den Chef eines Gefängnisses und den Leiter der staatlichen Psychiatrie. Cutler verspricht dem Land ein neues Hightech-Labor, gelobt die Förderung guatemaltekischer Ärzte und sagt dem Militär Gratisrationen von Penicillin zu. Finanziert werden seine Bemühungen vom Gesundheitsministerium der USA – also vom amerikanischen Steuerzahler. Die guatemaltekische Obrigkeit ist einverstanden: Man lässt Cutler freie Hand bei dem, was er »Forschen« nennt.

Nach dem guatemaltekischen Gesetz ist es verboten, Geschlechtskrankheiten bewusst zu verbreiten. Aber das Land ist zu jener Zeit im Umbruch, es hat gerade einen Diktator gestürzt, und keinen kümmert die Bürokratie. Sogar der neue Präsident Juan José Arévalo weiß, dass amerikanische Forscher ein Syphilisexperiment in seinem Land starten. Guatemala sieht in Cutlers Studie die Chance, das eigene Gesundheitssystem zu verbessern und von qualifizierten ausländischen Ärzten zu lernen.

Cutlers Weg, das »ethisch Unmögliche« möglich zu machen, beginnt bei den Prostituierten. Er spritzt ihnen Syphiliserreger und lässt sie auf Soldaten und Gefangene los. Dass die Probanden das minutenkurze Glück ihr Leben kosten kann, ahnen sie nicht. Eine Prostituierte lässt Cutler mit acht Soldaten hintereinander verkehren, in 71 Minuten. So steht es in seinen Notizen.

Den Sexualkontakt nennt Cutler »die natürliche Methode«. Doch es geht ihm immer noch nicht schnell genug, zu wenige Männer infizieren sich. Cutler wird ungeduldig, greift zu Zahnstocher und Tupfer und schmiert syphilisverseuchte Flüssigkeit tief in die Harnröhren seiner Patienten. In der Psychiatrie greift er zum Skalpell, kratzt münzgroße Wunden in die Penisse der Männer und tröpfelt Syphilisbakterien darauf, den Frauen spritzt er die Keime direkt ins Rückenmark. Das nennt Cutler »die künstliche Methode«.

Und seine Frau Eliese fotografiert: Hände in Latexhandschuhen, die wunde Penisse in die Kamera halten. Roter Hautausschlag auf Brüsten und Schultern. Tischtennisballgroße, matschige Wunden an Armen und Beinen. Hunderte Fotos auf Kodachrome-Filmen macht sie, farbig und scharf dokumentiert sie die Welt des Dr. Cutler im 16-Millimeter-Format.

Cutler ist verrückt nach seiner Forschung. Sie macht ihn blind. Für ihn sind die Patienten keine Menschen, er sieht sie als Teil seiner Studie. Er verfasst mehr als 10.000 Notizen, die 63 Jahre später von Wissenschaftlern als »schlampig« bezeichnet werden. Er gibt den Patienten Spitznamen wie »der Stumme aus San Marcos« und »Berta«.

Berta musste viel leiden. Sie war Patientin der Psychiatrie. Wie alt sie war, ihren Nachnamen, ihre Nervenkrankheit – all das hat Cutler nicht dokumentiert. Im Februar 1948 spritzt er Berta die Syphilisbakterien in den linken Arm. Einen Monat später juckt ihre Haut. Cutler notiert, dass ihr rote Beulen an den Stellen wachsen, an denen er sie gestochen hat. Wunden klaffen an Armen und Beinen, ihre Haut verkümmert. Erst drei Monate nach der verseuchten Spritze gibt er ihr eine kleine Dosis Penicillin.

Ein halbes Jahr nach der infektiösen Injektion, am 23. August, schreibt Cutler: »Berta scheint zu sterben.« Am selben Tag streicht er ihr Eiter mit Gonorrhö-Bakterien eines anderen Patienten auf die Augen, schmiert die Keime auf ihre Harnröhre, auf ihren After. Und er spritzt ihr noch einmal Syphiliserreger. Ein paar Tage später sind Bertas Augen matschig und eitrig, sie blutet aus der Harnröhre. Am 27. August stirbt die Probandin Berta.

Cutlers Aufzeichnungen lesen sich streckenweise wie Tagebucheinträge eines Sadisten. Sie erinnern an den KZ-Arzt Josef Mengele, den »Todesengel von Auschwitz«, berüchtigt für seine Experimente an Häftlingen, Kleinwüchsigen und Zwillingen. Mengele, mitverantwortlich für den Massenmord an Hunderttausenden Juden.

»Er war kein Monster!«, sagt Eliese Cutler über ihren Mann. Während John Cutler in der Psychiatrie mit geschenkten Kühlschränken und Zigarettenspenden die Weiterführung seiner Studie ermöglicht, zahlen die Patienten mit ihrem Leben. Laut seinen Aufzeichnungen sterben insgesamt 83 Menschen während seiner Studie. Dokumentierte Infizierte: 558 Soldaten, 486 Psychiatriepatienten, 6 Prostituierte, 39 andere.

Seine Versuchskaninchen nennt Cutler »Volontäre«, aber es gibt kein einziges Dokument, das belegt, dass auch nur ein einziger Patient aufgeklärt worden wäre oder gar freiwillig an den Experimenten teilgenommen hätte. Solche schriftlichen Einverständniserklärungen sind Gesetz seit dem Nürnberger Ärzteprozess. Und Medizinversuche, die Menschen schaden könnten, sind streng verboten.

Seite 4/6 : Korrupte Ärzte, niedrige Arbeitskosten, jede Menge Menschenmaterial

Dem Briefwechsel mit seinem Vorgesetzten in den USA, Dr. John Mahoney, lässt sich entnehmen, dass Cutler und sein Team sehr wohl wissen, was sie da tun und wie weit jenseits der ethischen Grenze sie sich bewegen. In einem Brief erwähnt Cutler den Artikel aus der New York Times. Er schreibt: »Uns ist beiden klar, dass es nicht ratsam ist, zu viele Leute von dieser Arbeit wissen zu lassen.« Er bittet darum, nur Leute ins Programm zu lassen, »denen man vertrauen kann, dass sie nicht reden«. Insgesamt sind zwölf guatemaltekische und vierzehn amerikanische Ärzte in die Studie involviert. Ein Kollege schreibt an Cutler, dass er mit dem Gesundheitsminister gesprochen habe, der »sehr interessiert an dem Projekt« sei: »Seine Augen funkelten vor Freude, als er sagte: ›Wissen Sie, so ein Experiment könnten wir hier in den USA niemals machen.‹«

Korrupte Ärzte, niedrige Arbeitskosten, jede Menge Menschenmaterial – Guatemala ist für Cutler der ideale Ort für Experimente. Alle Kontrollen, jedes Gewissen kann er mit seinem Ehrgeiz lahmlegen. Er spannt ein Netz aus Verbündeten, es reicht vom guatemaltekischen Präsidenten bis zum amerikanischen Gesundheitsminister. Er kann sie für seine Studie begeistern und von seiner vermeintlich noblen Absicht überzeugen, die Menschheit von der Seuche Syphilis zu befreien.

Im Jahre 1948 ist Marta neun Jahre alt. Es ist die Zeit, als Cutler beschließt, auch im Waisenheim zu experimentieren. Martas Mutter starb, als sie vier war, der Vater im Jahr danach. Mit fünf kam das Mädchen ins Heim, ein ganzer Häuserblock im Zentrum von Guatemala-Stadt, großer Garten, Swimmingpool und rund 400 andere Waisenkinder. Marta mag das Leben im Heim, das Glas Milch morgens und abends, die Ausflüge in den Zoo, den Schwimmunterricht. Sie ist stolz auf ihre Uniform: weißes Hemd, blauer Rock, weiße Kniestrümpfe; und sie ist eine gute Schülerin.

Einmal im Monat müssen die Kinder zur Vorsorge ins Krankenzimmer, dann wird in Hals, Nase, Ohren geguckt und nach Läusen gesucht. Marta und die anderen Waisen spielen gerade Verstecken im Garten, als eine Krankenschwester ruft: »Marta Orellana ins Krankenzimmer! Marta Orellana!«

Als die großen, weißhäutigen Ärzte ihr mit einem Skalpell in den linken Unterarm schneiden, schreit sie vor Schmerz. Sie halten die Wunde mit Pinzetten auf und träufeln eine Flüssigkeit hinein. Sie kleben ein Pflaster über den Schnitt und schicken das Kind zurück in den Garten. Aber Marta will nicht mehr spielen, der Arm tut weh.

Die alte Marta streicht mit dem Daumen über ihre Narbe am Unterarm, als wolle sie die verseuchten Tropfen entfernen. 65 Jahre sind seit dem Schnitt vergangen, und sie erzählt ihre Geschichte nüchtern, als sei es nicht ihre, sondern die einer anderen.

Drei Monate nach dem schmerzhaften Termin wird die neunjährige Marta erneut ins Krankenzimmer gerufen. Die zwei weißen, großen Ärzte sind wieder da, und zwei guatemaltekische Krankenschwestern. »Mach deinen Oberkörper frei!«, befehlen sie, aber Marta will nicht. Die Schwestern halten sie fest, ziehen ihr die Bluse aus, sie soll sich vornüber beugen. Als ihr eine Nadel in die Wirbelsäule gestoßen wird, weint sie leise. Sie fühlt, dass jemand ihr Flüssigkeit aus dem Rücken zieht. Danach kann sie sich nicht bewegen, die Schwestern legen sie in ein Krankenbett. Sie wird gefüttert, weil sie die Arme nicht mehr heben kann. Sie bekommt Spritzen und fragt, warum. Sie darf nicht aufstehen und fragt, warum. Sie soll keine Fragen stellen und fragt, warum. Die Schwestern schweigen.

Als sie nach drei Monaten das Bett verlassen darf, wird sie wieder ins Krankenzimmer gerufen. Es ist das letzte Mal, dass sie den zwei großen weißen Ärzten begegnet. Sie soll sich auf die Liege legen und die Beine spreizen. Marta weigert sich. Die Schwester ruft den Direktor, er schlägt ihr mit der Hand ins Gesicht, »Nun mach schon, Entchen!«. Die Schwestern drücken sie auf die Liege, der weiße Arzt steckt ihr Wattebäusche zwischen die Beine, drückt sie in ihre Vagina. Jetzt schreit Marta.

»Womit habe ich das verdient? Hatten sie keine Kaninchen?« 65 Jahre später wirft Marta Orellana Fragen in den Raum: »Wieso ich? Wieso wir? Wieso hier?« Als könnten Fragen ihre Kindheit zurückholen, als könnten sie ihr Leben reparieren.

Das Experiment teilt ihr Leben in zwei Epochen: In ein Davor und ein Danach. Davor sei sie ein liebes Mädchen gewesen, gut in der Schule, freundlich. Danach war sie traurig, aggressiv, blieb sitzen. »Sie haben meinen Charakter verändert.« Marta Orellana ist jetzt krank.

In den Wochen, Monaten, Jahren danach, sind Martas Augen oft matschig, sie hat dicke, eitrige Wunden an den Beinen, die nennt sie »Vulkane«, sie hat Haarausfall. Mit 14 Jahren verlässt sie das Heim, will eine Ausbildung zur Näherin machen, kriegt aber keine Arbeitsbescheinigung. »Du hast schlechtes Blut«, sagt der Arzt und schickt sie weg. Es wird fast sechzig Jahre dauern, bis sie versteht, was er damit meint: Syphilis.

Infizierte Mütter können ihre Kinder während der Schwangerschaft anstecken. Die meisten von Cutler Infizierten haben heute, sofern sie die Experimente überlebt haben, wahrscheinlich Kinder, Enkel und Urenkel. Mit seinen Experimenten hat Cutler inzwischen vier Generationen vergiftet. Er hat nicht nur 1.308 Menschen infiziert, sondern vielleicht vier- oder fünfmal so viele.

Wird die Krankheit heute erkannt, lässt sie sich einfach beseitigen. Mit wenigen Penicillin-Spritzen sind die meisten für immer geheilt, Rückfälle sind selten. Marta Orellana hat sich nach jenem letzten Arztbesuch nie wieder untersuchen lassen, sie hatte kein Geld für einen Doktor, und so wurde ihr Leiden nie diagnostiziert.

»Ihr habt sein Lebenswerk zerstört!«, sagt Cutlers Witwe, so laut sie kann

Wenn sie könnte, würde sie Dr. Cutler gern treffen und ihn fragen, warum er ihr das angetan hat. War es ein Befehl von oben? Musste er gehorchen? War es sein eigener Wille? Sie kann ihn nicht mehr fragen.

Aber Eliese Cutler kann man fragen, John Charles Cutlers Witwe. Sie ist die letzte noch lebende Zeugin auf der Täterseite. Eliese ist heute 94 Jahre alt und hängt an einem Sauerstoffgerät, das lauter blubbert, als sie spricht. Vor dem Gespräch mit der ZEIT hat sie noch nie öffentlich über die Guatemala-Studie ihres Mannes geredet. Sie ist eine kräftige, alte Frau mit weißen Haaren und Knollennase, eine Frau, die aussieht, als könne sie Francis Bacon zu einem Gemälde inspirieren. Sie wohnt in einer gepflegten Straße in einem wohlhabenden Viertel Pittsburghs, in einem eindrucksvollen Haus mit zwei Stockwerken. Drinnen riecht es ungelüftet, nach Schweiß, Staub, Essen und Alter. Eliese Cutler kann nicht mehr laufen, ihre Tage verbringt sie in einem orangefarbenen Sessel, sie liest die Lokalzeitung, aber auch das wird bald nicht mehr gehen, ihre Augen werden jeden Tag schlechter. Eine Haushaltshilfe öffnet die Tür.

Seite 5/6 : 1.308 Menschen infizierte Cutler gezielt mit Syphillis

Eliese Cutler sagt, so laut sie kann: »Ich bin verbittert. Ihr alle – ihr habt sein Lebenswerk zerstört.« Sie ist überaus klar im Kopf, ihre Erinnerungen an die Vergangenheit spickt sie mit Details: Dass ihr das Pumpernickel-Brot mit dem Kochschinken gut geschmeckt hat, als sie mal in Hamburg war. Dass sie die Staatsoper mochte und den Hafen. Nur wenn sie nicht antworten will, seufzt sie: »Ich bin alt, daran erinnere ich mich nicht mehr.« Das Wort »Syphilis« nimmt sie nicht in den Mund. Auch sie sagt: diese Sache. »I don’t want to talk to you about that thing.«

Wer in ihrer Gegenwart von »Mr Cutler« spricht, dem fällt sie ins Wort, sie wird dann lauter als ihr Sauerstoffgerät und spricht sehr deutlich: »DOKTOR Cutler!«

Wie würde Dr. Cutler reagieren, könnte man ihn heute zu der Studie befragen?

»Er würde sich verteidigen«, sagt Mrs Cutler. »Waren andere Zeiten damals.« Sie hält sich fest an diesem Satz wie ein Ertrinkender am Rettungsring, »Es waren andere Zeiten«, murmelt sie noch einmal. Sie starrt in den Raum und reibt mit einem Daumen über den anderen. Es ist, als sei sie stecken geblieben in dieser »anderen Zeit«, einer Zeit, in der ihr Ehemann Cutler noch der berühmte, beliebte Forscher war. Als sei sie damals eingefroren und würde jetzt, Jahrzehnte später, wieder aufgetaut.

Eliese und John Cutler hatten keine Kinder. Die Forschung war ihr gemeinsamer Stolz, ihr Lebensinhalt. Stellte Frau Cutler diese Forschung mit 94 Jahren infrage, nähme sie ihrem Leben jeden Sinn. Also stellt sie nicht sich, sondern die Welt infrage: »Versteht ihr denn alle nichts von Geschichte? Dass Kulturen sich wandeln? Traditionen sich ändern? Medizinethik wurde erst in den Fünfzigern erfunden. Es waren andere Zeiten!«

Medizinethik gab es schon vor dem Christentum, im Eid des Hippokrates steht geschrieben, dass Ärzte den Kranken und Schwachen kein Leid zufügen dürfen. Die Rezitation dieses Eides gehört seit dem Beginn des zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts zum Promotionsritual der meisten amerikanischen Hochschulen. Auch Cutler kannte den Schwur. Und wusste man nicht auch schon Mitte der vierziger Jahre, dass Kinder, neunjährige Waisenkinder, schutzbedürftige Wesen sind?

Frau Cutler bittet die Reporterin zu gehen.

Sie haben die Fotos gemacht, Mrs Cutler!

»Ach, ich habe überall auf der Welt fotografiert«, sagt sie, und es klingt, als sei sie eine Touristin gewesen, als seien ihre Aufnahmen von blutenden Penissen, von eitrigen Wunden nichts als Bilder von Sehenswürdigkeiten. »Ich bin alt, daran erinnere ich mich nicht mehr.«

Es waren auch Mrs. Cutlers Bilder, die das Lebenswerk ihres Mannes als eine Schande entlarvten. Sie lieferten die Beweise, dass er ein Täter war. Wieder bittet sie die Reporterin zu gehen. Und noch was: »Nein, keine Fotos.« Nicht von der Hauseinrichtung, nicht vom Porträt ihres Mannes auf der Anrichte und schon gar nicht von ihr selbst.

1948, als Cutler sich schon seit zwei Jahren in Guatemala aufhält und noch immer keine Erkenntnisse nach New York geschickt hat, wird ihm das Fördergeld gestrichen. Er bittet um Verlängerung, doch sein Chef lehnt ab.

Cutler kehrt zurück in ein Amerika, das sich gerade vom Zweiten Weltkrieg erholt hat, in dem es wieder Jobs gibt und außerdem Fertighäuser zum Wohnen. Auf dem Weg zum Karrieregipfel ist Cutler ein bedeutendes Stück weitergekommen. Er wird jetzt als Forschungsleiter nach Indien geschickt. Kommt abermals zurück nach Amerika und steigt weiter auf. Wird Chefarzt, wird oberster Berater des Gesundheitsministeriums, wird Dekan.

Die Guatemala-Studie mit dem Titel Inoculation Syphilis veröffentlicht er nie. Vielleicht, weil nichts für die Forschung Wesentliches drinsteht. Wahrscheinlicher aber, weil die Erbarmungslosigkeit seiner »Forschung« schon damals für Aufregung gesorgt hätte. Cutler begräbt die Studie in den Archiven der Pittsburgh-Universität.

Medizinhistoriker haben die Studie und fast 10.000 weitere Dokumente im vergangenen Jahr für die amerikanische Regierung ausgewertet. Sie stellen fest, dass rund 5.000 Menschen Teil der Cutler-Studie waren und 1.308 von ihm gezielt infiziert wurden. Aus Cutlers Notizen lässt sich nicht ablesen, bei wie vielen Opfern die Krankheit wirklich ausbrach und wie viele davon mit Penicillin behandelt wurden.

Michael Utidjian, ein höflicher pensionierter Krebsforscher, der ein britisches Englisch spricht, arbeitete zur gleichen Zeit wie Cutler als Dozent in Pittsburgh. Wer ihn anruft und nach seinem Kollegen fragt, dem sagt er als Erstes: »Man sollte ja nichts Böses über Tote sagen. Aber Cutler war kein guter Mensch.« Die beiden wurden 1967 Kollegen, Utidjian war 16 Jahre jünger als Cutler. Er beschreibt ihn als einen Mann, der wichtig aussah, »wie ein Senator«. Manchmal aßen sie gemeinsam in der Kantine zu Mittag, Cutler erzählte dann von Guatemala.

Utidjian erinnert sich an ein Gespräch, das er mit ihm führte:

Cutler: »Ihr müsstet mit Krebs und Aids heute so forschen wie wir damals! Ihr müsst rausfinden, was die Klinikchefs brauchen. In der Psychiatrie waren das zum Beispiel Kühlschränke. Wir kauften ihnen welche vom Geld des Gesundheitsministeriums, eine Art Bestechung, und sie ließen uns dafür freie Hand bei ihren Patienten.«
Utidjian: »Du hast Menschen bewusst mit Syphilis infiziert?«
Cutler: »Ja, das ist richtig.«
Utidjian: »Wenn du das wirklich gemacht hast, dann habe ich ein Problem damit.«
Cutler: »Brauchst du nicht. Das Ziel rechtfertigt alle Mittel.«

Seite 6/6 : Pharmakonzerne missachten Regeln in Schwellenländern

Cutler habe immer breit gelächelt, wenn er von Guatemala sprach, er habe es »den aufregendsten Teil seines Arbeitslebens« genannt. Er habe gern im Mittelpunkt gestanden, und mit seinen provokanten Erzählungen tat er das oft. Junge Ärzte wie Utidjian habe er damit schockieren können. Aber auch Utidjian sagt, es waren andere Zeiten damals. »Menschenexperimente waren abstoßend, aber nicht weltfremd.«

In den sechziger Jahren war John Cutler in eine weitere Studie involviert, die sogenannte »Tuskegee-Studie«, ebenfalls finanziert vom amerikanischen Gesundheitsministerium. Eine Studie, bei der 399 syphiliskranke schwarze Schafhirten aus Alabama 40 Jahre lang nicht behandelt, sondern nur beobachtet wurden. Bis in die siebziger Jahre hinein, als Penicillin schon längst ein gängiges Medikament war, erforschten die Ärzte an ihnen immer noch die Langzeitfolgen der Erkrankung. »Ihnen Penicillin zu geben, hätte die Studie behindert!«, rechtfertigte sich Cutler 1993 in einer Fernsehdokumentation, als er mit der Tuskegee-Studie konfrontiert wurde.

Mit Guatemala wurde er niemals öffentlich konfrontiert, er wurde auch nie zur Rechenschaft gezogen. John Charles Cutler starb als Koryphäe für Geschlechtskrankheiten am 8. Februar 2003 an einer Lungenentzündung. Er wurde 87 Jahre alt. Das war sechs Jahre bevor die Welt von der Studie erfuhr. Bis zuletzt galt er als wichtiger Mann, zu dessen Gedenken jede Woche eine »Cutler-Vorlesung« an der Universität von Pittsburgh gegeben wurde. In seinem Nachruf in der Pittsburgh Post Gazette steht: »Er war bescheiden, was seine persönlichen Erfolge anging, aber entschlossen in seiner Mission.«

Aber manchmal kommt eine Geschichte aus der Vergangenheit zurück und erzählt uns etwas über die Gegenwart. In Schwellenländern wie Indien, Nigeria und Argentinien testen ausländische Pharmaunternehmen Medikamente, die noch erprobt werden. Die Unternehmen heißen zum Beispiel AstraZeneca, Pfizer und GlaxoSmithKline.

AstraZeneca geriet zuletzt in die Medien, weil der Konzern ein Mittel gegen Herzinfarkt in Indien testete. Derzeit werden in dem Land knapp 1.900 Studien mit mehr als 150.000 Probanden durchgeführt. Die meisten von ihnen sind arm und Analphabeten. Laut einer Untersuchung des indischen Gesundheitsministeriums sind zwischen 2007 und 2010 insgesamt 1.722 Inder infolge ihrer Teilnahme an Medikamentenstudien gestorben, die Dunkelziffer soll noch höher liegen.

In Nigeria erkrankten 1996 Zehntausende Menschen an Hirnhautentzündung. Der amerikanische Pharmakonzern Pfizer soll die Epidemie dazu benutzt haben, um ein neues, nicht zugelassenes Antibiotikum an 200 Kindern zu testen. Elf starben, viele wurden blind, taub, hatten Hirnschäden. Von der Krankheit? Von den Spritzen? Das weiß niemand, aber Pfizer einigte sich außergerichtlich mit den Hinterbliebenen und erklärte sich bereit, 75 Millionen Dollar zu zahlen.

Im Januar dieses Jahres verurteilte ein argentinisches Gericht den britischen Konzern GlaxoSmithKline zu einer Zahlung von 180.000 Euro. Das Unternehmen hatte 2007 und 2008 Kleinkinder mit einem Impfstoff gegen Lungen- und Ohrenentzündung behandelt – teilweise ohne gültige Einverständniserklärung der Familien. Tausende Kinder waren an der Studie beteiligt, 14 Babys starben während der Testphase. Und was, wenn ein Forscher morgen das Medikament gegen Aids fände? Würde die Menschheit wirklich wissen wollen, woher es kommt? Würde man das Medikament zurückweisen, weil es bei Menschenversuchen getestet wurde?

Auch deshalb will Marta Orellana klagen. Damit solche Versuche in Zukunft unterbleiben. Aber gut sieht es nicht aus für sie: Das amerikanische Justizministerium hat im Januar 2012 den Antrag gestellt, die Klage fallen zu lassen. Das Gericht sei »nicht das richtige Forum« für eine solche Debatte. Vergangenen Herbst hat eine von Obama eingesetzte Bioethik-Kommission den Fall aufgearbeitet und gefordert, die US-Regierung solle die Opfer entschädigen. Im Januar hat sich das amerikanische Gesundheitsministerium verpflichtet, 1,8 Millionen Dollar an Guatemala zu zahlen – wahrscheinlich wird davon ein neues Krankenhaus gebaut. »Die Opfer sind nicht zufrieden und beharren auf der Strafanzeige«, sagt Henry Dahl, einer der Anwälte, der die Guatemalteken vor Gericht vertritt.

»Was bringt mir ein neues Krankenhaus?«, fragt Marta Orellana. Ein bisschen Geld, damit sie morgens ihre Milch trinken kann, wie früher im Kinderheim, dann wäre sie zufrieden. In Guatemala liegt die Lebenserwartung für Frauen bei 73 Jahren. Marta Orellana ist 74. »Ich schaue dem Tod jeden Tag ins Gesicht«, sagt sie und will, dass die Amerikaner sich beeilen mit ihrer Wiedergutmachung. Die meisten Infizierten sind tot. Letztes Jahr ist wieder einer der Kläger gestorben.

Marta Orellana sitzt noch immer in der Bruchbude, die sie ihre Küche nennt. Ihre Urenkelin Abigail, drei Jahre alt, kommt herein gelaufen und ruft: »Oma, da ist ein Schmetterling!« Abigail zieht an Orellanas Hose, sie soll mitkommen. Die alte Frau stützt sich auf dem Tisch ab und stemmt sich auf die Füße. Sie zieht das linke Bein nach und hinkt hinter Abigail in den Garten. Sie schauen auf den roten Schmetterling, der auf einem Blatt sitzt. »Lass ihn fliegen«, sagt die Uroma, »tu ihm bloß nichts.«

Nächste Woche muss Marta Orellana noch einmal ins Krankenhaus, sie wird jetzt mit Penicillin behandelt. Sie wird Abigail mitnehmen, auch ihr soll Blut abgenommen werden für einen Syphilistest. Es kann sein, dass auch die Kleine »diese Sache« hat. Dass auch sie ein Opfer ist. Ein Opfer des Forschers Dr. Cutler.

publiziert 21/10/2012 at 20:55 Uhr

Die Zahl der Überlebenden des Nazi-Terrors schrumpft rasch. Auch der einstige Lager-Fotograf und der älteste überlebende Auschwitz-Häftling sind tot.


Der "Fotograf von Auschwitz", Wilhelm Brasse, ist am Dienstag im Alter von 95 Jahren im südpolnischen Zywiec gestorben. Das berichtete die polnische Nachrichtenagentur PAP unter Berufung auf einen Vertreter der Gedenkstätte Auschwitz.

Der Ende August 1940 nach Auschwitz deportierte Brasse hatte beim so genannten Erkennungsdienst des Lagers gearbeitet und insgesamt mehr als 50.000 Aufnahmen von den im Lager registrierten Häftlingen gemacht. Auch bei den medizinischen Experimenten des berüchtigten Arztes Josef Mengele musste Brasse die Menschenversuche mit der Kamera dokumentieren.

Der ehemalige Grundschullehrer Dobrowolski hatte sich nach dem deutschen Überfall auf Polen der Geheimen Lehrerorganisation angeschlossen. Diese organisierte im Untergrund das Schulwesen. Die Organisation Tajna Organizacja Nauczycielska stand der Londoner Exilregierung nahe und war während des Stalinismus als "bürgerlich" verpönt.

Polen sollten Arbeitssklaven werden

Im Juni 1942 von der Gestapo verhaftet, kam Dobrowolski mit einem Häftlingstransport nach Auschwitz. Das sogenannte Stammlager war zunächst ein Konzentrationslager mit vor allem politischen polnischen Häftlingen, doch im nahe gelegenen Birkenau hatte bereits der Massenmord an jüdischen Häftlingen begonnen. Insgesamt wurden in Auschwitz-Birkenau mehr als 1,1 Millionen Menschen ermordet.

Dobrowolksi wurde später nach Groß-Rosen verlegt und erlebte die Befreiung durch amerikanische Truppen im Konzentrationslager Sachsenhausen. Nach dem Krieg arbeitete er in Polen wieder als Lehrer.

Das geheime Schulwesen Polens war eine in ganz Europa einzigartige Form des Widerstands. Die Nationalsozialisten hatten alle höheren Schulen und Universitäten geschlossen; in einigen der von Deutschland besetzten Gebiete war selbst der Grundschulunterricht schweren Beschränkungen ausgesetzt. Die Polen sollten nach den Plänen der Nationalsozialisten ein Volk von Arbeitssklaven werden.

In Privatwohnungen organisierten Lehrer wie Dobrowolski und Schüler insgeheim Unterricht vor allem für Gymnasialklassen und Studenten. Einer der vielen tausend jungen Polen, die im Untergrund lernten, war Karol Wojtyla, der spätere Papst Johannes Paul II.

Auch Antoni Dobrowolski, einst Auschwitz-Häftling mit der Lagernummer 38081, ist tot. Der frühere Widerstandskämpfer sei im Alter von 108 Jahren bereits am Sonntag in seinem Wohnort Debno in Westpommern gestorben, berichteten polnische Medien am Dienstag. Dobrowolski war der älteste überlebende Auschwitz-Häftling.

published 11/06/2009 at 01:18 Pm

In recent weeks, Germany has been taking a hard look at its Cold War history after it was revealed that a Stasi spy shot and killed student demonstrator Benno Ohnesorg in 1967. Now new details reveal that the same officer spied for the Soviets during the 1961 Checkpoint Charlie standoff.

Soviet tanks at Checkpoint Charlie on October 28, 1961.

It was a standoff that could easily have erupted into World War III. In late October, 1961, American tanks stood face to face with Soviet tanks at Checkpoint Charlie in the heart of Berlin, a single wrong move could have been enough to start yet another eruption of continent-wide violence -- or worse.

The Soviets, though, had an advantage. Among the West German police on hand at Friedrichstrasse that day was a man named Karl-Heinz Kurras. But in addition to being a highly respected West Berlin officer, Kurras -- as recent revelations have made clear -- was also a spy for the East German secret police, the Stasi. And he spent the standoff passing valuable information on American positions across the border.

"The headquarters of the Americans is on the first floor of a building on Friedrichstrasse," Kurras reported, according to a story in Thursday's edition of the German tabloid Bild, citing documents from the Stasi archive in Berlin. "A wall of sandbags is in front of the building." He also reported on the US troops manning the tanks and, once the crisis ended, gave information on US tank positions nearby.

The fact that East German spies were operating behind the lines in West Berlin at the height of the Cold War is hardly surprising. But Kurras wasn't just any spy. He is the same West Berlin officer who shot an unarmed student demonstrator named Benno Ohnesorg in a 1967 event that helped trigger the 1968 student protests in West Germany. Ohnesorg's death also became a powerful rallying cry for the militant group Red Army Faction which went on to terrorize West Germany for decades.

Revelations that Ohnesorg's death came at the hands of a committed communist and not, as leftist lore would have it, of an unrepentant Nazi cop, gripped Germany in late May after Kurras' Stasi file was unearthed. Since then, a steady drip of information about Kurras' Cold War activities has filled the back pages of German dailies.

In Kurras' report on the Checkpoint Charlie standoff, he also provided information on American weaponry as well as recent weapons training received by West Berlin police officers.

Kurras managed to keep his spy activities secret. Indeed, until the Ohnesorg shooting, he was a major player in West Berlin's Section 1, the unit responsible for hunting down Stasi agents in West Berlin. In his position, he was able to warn East German spies prior to raids and could also inform his communist employers of double agents working for the CIA.

One of those double agents Kurras helped expose was a man who, like himself, stayed in the West to work for the Stasi. But the spy became a double agent for the CIA -- a fact the East Germans learned about from Kurras. The man ultimately died in mysterious circumstances in a Bulgarian prison in 1987 -- after he started an affair with the wife of a Bulgarian military officer at the behest of the CIA.

His name? Bernd Ohnesorge.

published 29/01/2010 at 01:32 PM by Jörg Diehl

Heinrich Boere, a former member of the Nazi SS, is currently on trial for shooting three innocent civilians in occupied Holland. He says he was merely following orders, but new evidence suggests that he may have been involved in seven additional deaths

Heinrich Boere, now 88, stands accused of having killed three civilians in Holland during World War II. At the time, he was a member of the SS -- but says that he was merely following orders.

Former SS man Heinrich Boere has never denied the charges against him. As part of a Nazi hit squad in the Netherlands, Boere, now 88 years old, stands accused of having shot and killed three innocent civilians in 1944 in Holland. The "Germanic SS in the Netherlands," as Boere's group was known, was charged with combating anti-Nazi resistance in the country.

"We didn't know the men. The Security Service of the SS gave us the names and we got going," Boere told SPIEGEL ONLINE in 2007. "They told us they were partisans, terrorists. We thought we were doing the right thing."

Now, though, German historian Stephan Stracke has found evidence that Boere may have been involved in more SS missions in Holland than previously known. He claims to have found evidence in Dutch archives that Boere operated as a spy to expose resistance attempts to hide those who were being hunted by the Nazis. On Thursday, co-plaintiffs in the case, currently being tried in Aachen, filed a motion to present new evidence and to levy further charges against Boere.

According to Stracke's research, Boere operated as an SS spy in 1944 and managed to penetrate a Dutch group aiding those trying to escape Nazi persecution. Boere, along with two other SS men, claimed to be victims of Nazi oppression and said they needed a safe house. Two farmers were found to put them up.

Role in Deaths Claimed by Lawyers

The trio informed their SS commander of the resistance cell, providing names of the people involved, their location and information about the structure of the Dutch resistance, the complaint alleges. Boere and his two SS comrades each received 75 guilders for their efforts -- equal to roughly €400 ($559) today.

Not long after the SS trio's undercover operation, the SS staged large-scale raids and arrested 52 people -- at least seven of whom subsequently died in concentration camps "due to their inhuman treatment," the lawyers for the co-plaintiffs write in their complaint. The lawyers say that Boere willingly played a role in their deaths.

Detlef Hartmann and Wolfgang Heiermann, lawyers for the co-plaintiffs -- representing the families of two of those Boere shot dead in 1944 -- say that the new evidence disproves Boere's claim to merely have been following orders. It provides proof of Boere's initiative and thus his guilt as a perpetrator of Nazi war crimes, the lawyers say.

It is unclear what effect the new research may have on the progression of the trial, public prosecutor Andreas Brendel said on Thursday. He did say, however, that it would likely not change Boere's sentence should he be found guilty -- he is seen as being too old to send to prison.

Boere's defense attorney, Gordon Christiansen, declined to respond to questions posed by SPIEGEL ONLINE, saying only that he needed more time to study the new evidence.

Volunteer for the SS

Boere was born in 1921 in Aachen on Germany's border with Belgium and the Netherlands. According to the charges levied against him, Boere killed 22-year-old pharmacist Fritz Bicknese on July 14, 1944 and bike-shop owner Teunis de Groot on Sept. 3. He also is charged with having murdered a man named Frans-Willem Kusters.

The son of a Dutch father and a German mother, Boere told SPIEGEL ONLINE in 2007 that he had been a "fanatic" member of the SS. As an 18 year old, he volunteered for the SS in 1940 and fought for two years on the Eastern Front. In 1942, he returned to occupied Holland where he was assigned to a small SS unit comprised of 15 men.

The unit, called "Feldmeijer," was charged with breaking any signs of resistance in Holland via arbitrary shootings of civilians seen as being anti-German.

Whenever there were attacks on German troops or people who collaborated with them, senior SS and police commander Hanns Albin Rauter dispatched his killing squad by issuing the codeword "Silbertanne," which means "Silver Fir." At least 54 Dutch citizens are believed to have been murdered by these SS hitmen.

Boere admitted to having committed three of the killings during interrogations as early as 1946. Only recently, Boere repeated his admission to the killings before the Aachen court, once again claiming that he had been under orders.

Afraid of Disobeying

The only living witness to one of the shootings, Jacobus Peter Bestemann, gave testimony to the court via a video feed. Bestemann, now 88 and living in Rotterdam, said that members of the SS were afraid of disobeying orders. "That was dangerous," Bestemann said.

In his confession, Boere claimed that Bestemann, too, had fired shots -- an allegation Bestemann has denied. He says he only accompanied his comrades and that he never carried a weapon. "Someone must have ordered me to go along," he says. He also says that he doesn't know if Boere fired shots or not. Despite his denials, Bestemann served 13 years in prison in Holland for the murders of two mayors.

Boere has also been convicted of his crimes once before. In October 1949, an Amsterdam court sentenced him for the murders. But by then, Boere was back in Germany and he was never extradited.

New evidence may indicate that Boere was involved in seven additional deaths. Co-plaintiffs in the case argue that his activities as an SS spy demonstrate his initiative and thus his guilt as a perpetrator of Nazi war crimes.

Teun de Groot, the son of one of the men Boere is said to have shot dead, is one of the co-plaintiffs in the case. The SS unit Boere belonged to was charged with murdering Dutch civilians out of revenge for activities by the Dutch resistance.

Detlef Hartmann is representing de Groot in the trial. "We would like a German court to finally reach the verdict that what Boere did was murder," he says.

Siegfried Lenz, né le 17 mars 1926 à Lyck en Prusse-Orientale (aujourd'hui Ełk en Pologne), est l'un des écrivains allemands les plus connus de la littérature de l'après-guerre et d'aujourd'hui, et un scénariste allemand. Il est l'auteur de quatorze romans et de nombreux recueils de courtes histoires, d'essais et de pièces radiophoniques ou théâtrales.

Il a obtenu le Prix Goethe à Francfort-sur-le-Main en 1999. Lenz est le fils d'un officier de la douane. Il finit ses études en 1943 et est enrôlé dans la marine allemande. Selon des documents du fichier central du parti nazi, il aurait adhéré à ce dernier le 12 juillet 19431. Peu avant la fin de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, au Danemark, il déserte, mais est fait prisonnier de guerre à Schleswig-Holstein.

La guerre finie, il étudie la philosophie, l'anglais et l'histoire de la littérature à l'université de Hambourg. Il interrompt rapidement ses études mais est tout de même engagé au quotidien allemand Die Welt, dont il est rédacteur en chef de 1950 à 1951. C'est là qu'il rencontre celle qu'il épousera en 1949, Liselotte (décédée le 5 février 2006). Dès 1951, Lenz travaille comme écrivain indépendant à Hambourg. Depuis 2003, il est professeur honoraire à l'université Heinrich Heine de Düsseldorf.

John Charles Cutler, M.D. (June 29, 1915 – February 8, 2003) was a senior surgeon, and the acting chief of the venereal disease program in the United States Public Health Service. Following his death in 2003, his involvement in several controversial and unethical medical experiments regarding syphilis was revealed, including the Guatemala and the Tuskegee syphilis experiment. Cutler was born on June 29, 1915 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Grace Amanda Allen and Glenn Allen Cutler. He graduated from Western Reserve University Medical School in 1941, and joined the Public Health Service in 1942. In 1943 he worked as a medical officer in the U.S. Public Health Venereal Disease Research Laboratory on Staten Island.

Cutler oversaw the syphilis experiments in Guatemala in the 1940s, during which doctors deliberately infected an estimated 1500 Guatemalans, including orphans as young as nine, soldiers, prisoners and mental patients with syphilis without the informed consent of the subjects. This study not only violated the hippocratic oath but it echoed Nazi crimes exposed around the same time at the Nuremberg trials. In 1954, Cutler was in charge of experiments at Sing Sing prison to see if a vaccine made from the killed syphilis bacterium, would protect prisoners against infection when he later exposed them to the bacterium. Those infected were later treated with penicillin. Cutler became assistant surgeon general in 1958.

In the 1960s, Cutler was involved in the ongoing Tuskegee syphilis experiment, during which several hundred African-American men who had contracted syphilis were observed, but left untreated. In “The Deadly Deception”, the 1993 Nova documentary about the Tuskegee experiments, Cutler states, “It was important that they were supposedly untreated, and it would be undesirable to go ahead and use large amounts of penicillin to treat the disease, because you’d interfere with the study.”

In 1967 Cutler was appointed professor of international health at the University of Pittsburgh, where he also served as chairman of the department of health administration and acting dean of the Graduate School of Public Health in 1968–1969. He died on February 8, 2003 at Western Pennsylvania Hospital in Pittsburgh. The university started a lecture series in his name after his death, but discontinued it in 2008 when his role in the Tuskegee experiment emerged.

published 12/02/2003 at 09:27 PM by Jan Ackerman, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Long before AIDS became an international health problem, Dr. John Charles Cutler led the way in trying to prevent and control sexually transmitted diseases around the world.

Dr. Cutler, a former assistant surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service, was part of a group that in 1944 worked out the ways penicillin could be used to treat syphilis.

As one of the founders of the Family Health Council of Western Pennsylvania in 1971, he worked tirelessly to find better ways to provide affordable reproductive health-care services to women who need them.

"He thought every person should have access to these services, regardless of income," said Richard Baird, acting president of the Family Health Council.

"To him, health was more than simply studying microbes. It was life," said Ravi Sharma, professor of demography at the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Public Health.

Sharma said Dr. Cutler looked at the study of health in a "holistic" fashion, relating it to social, political, economic and cultural customs.

"He was a pioneer who had firsthand experiences of living and working in the Third World," he said.

Dr. Cutler, of Point Breeze, a retired professor at Pitt's Graduate School of Public Health, died Saturday at West Penn Hospital of pneumonia following a heart attack. He was 87.

His wife of 60 years, Eliese S. Cutler, said he was modest about his personal accomplishments but resolute in his mission.

Interviewed in 1988, Dr. Cutler told a reporter for The Pittsburgh Press that the AIDS problem was a replay of venereal disease scenarios of bygone years.

"The control of AIDS will come only when there's a shift from a preachy, moral approach to a medical viewpoint," he said.

"The kind of education that worked during World War II is needed again. The military services provided education about venereal disease and backed it up with making condoms and prophylaxis kits readily available."

Dr. Cutler was born and raised in Cleveland and graduated from Western Reserve University Medical School in 1941 with a Phi Beta Kappa key. In 1942, he joined the Public Health Service as a commissioned officer and remained active until 1967. During World War II, he was a medical officer on convoy duty in the Coast Guard.

His interest in the prevention and control of sexually transmitted diseases began in 1943 when he worked as a medical officer in the U.S. Public Health Venereal Disease Research Laboratory in Staten Island, N.Y. That led to his appointment to head a venereal disease research program for the Pan American Sanitary Bureau in Guatemala in 1948.

In 1949, the World Health Organization asked him to lead a venereal disease demonstration program for Southeast Asia that was based in India, which had won its independence from the British crown in 1947.

"There were 80 Americans in all of India," said Dr. Cutler's wife, who accompanied him there and to other international posts. She said her husband was always proud that he was able to raise the Indian flag in Simla, India, after the independence.

After returning to the States in 1950, Dr. Cutler continued to rise in rank until he became assistant surgeon general of the U.S. Public Health Service in 1958.

In 1960, he worked for the Allegheny County Health Department, organizing the final polio vaccination program in the Hill District. From 1961 to 1967, he was an assistant and then deputy director of what later became the Pan American Health Organization in Washington, D.C.

He returned to Pittsburgh for good in 1967 when he was recruited as professor of international health to head the population division in the Graduate School of Public Health at Pitt. In that post, Dr. Cutler was instrumental in getting funds for a major international health project in West Africa. With federal funding, he organized a program that enabled obstetricians and gynecologists from Third World countries to come to the United States for training in reproductive health technology.

He served as chairman of Pitt's department of health administration and was acting dean of the Graduate School of Public Health in 1968 and 1969.

Dr. Gordon MacLeod, professor of health policy and management at the graduate school, said Dr. Cutler had continued to return to the school on a weekly basis until a few weeks ago.

"He was a much beloved professor, both at the graduate school [of Public Health] and at the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs," MacLeod said.

In addition to his wife, Dr. Cutler is survived by a sister, Elizabeth Cobb of Manson, Wash.

Friends will be received at John A. Freyvogel Sons Funeral Home, 4900 Centre Ave. at Devonshire Street, Shadyside, from 7 to 9 p.m. today and one hour prior to an 11 a.m. memorial service tomorrow.

 published 09/04/2013 at 05:59 PM

In 1983, Stern magazine stunned the world by saying it had found Adolf Hitler's diaries. Unfortunately, they were fake. Now Gerd Heidemann, the reporter who discovered them, wants the diaries back, citing a clause in his original contract.

Gerd Heidemann presenting a volume of 'Hitler's diaries' at a news conference in Hamburg in April 1983.

It has been 30 years since Germany's Stern magazine ran what it thought was the scoop of the century, stunning the world with the claim that it had found Adolf Hitler's diaries. Lots of them, in fact. The reporter who unearthed them, Gerd Heidemann, acquired 62 volumes for 9.3 million deutsche marks ($6.1 million) from Konrad Kujau, an antiques dealer and painter.

What happened next is history. The diaries turned out to have been penned not by Hitler but by Kujau, Stern took years to recover from the embarrassment, Heidemann spent time in jail for embezzlement and Kujua was jailed for fraud.

But now Heidemann wants the diaries back, citing a clause in his original contract with Stern's publisher, Gruner & Jahr, that states that the original manuscripts would be handed back to him 10 years after they had been published.

"If I had the financial means, I would sue the publisher for their release. I can only hope that the publisher will honor the contract," Heidemann told Bild newspaper on Tuesday.

Heidemann could not be reached for comment.

An Amusing Read

Gruner & Jahr said it still has most of the volumes, and that some are on display in a history museum in Bonn and will go on show at Hamburg's police museum, Bild reported.

Heidemann said that if he got the diaries, he would make them available to Germany's national archive.

It is unclear what price the forged diaries could fetch if they were sold. Some of them make for entertaining reading. Kujau's Hitler wrote this passage about his girlfriend Eva Braun, for example:

"I've really got to have a serious talk with Eva. She thinks that a man who leads Germany can take as much time as he wants for private matters." An entry dated June 1935 reads: "Eva now has two dogs, so she won't get bored."

One entry during the 1936 Berlin Olympics reads: "Eva wants to come to the Games in Berlin, have had tickets delivered to her and her girlfriends. Hope my stomach cramps don't return during the Games."

published 30/01/2013 at 06:35 PM by Steffen Winter

Adolf Hitler and his Nazi henchmen amassed huge amounts of valuable art, jewelry and other collectibles prior to and during World War II. It is a poisonous legacy which German museums and governments have failed to properly address. The moral disaster continues to the present day.

The Allies were well aware that Nazi bigwigs spent much of World War II stealing art and other valuables from across Europe. In 1945, they set up a collection point for looted art in Munich. Here, an American GI takes a look at some valuable works temporarily stored in a former Nazi air force barracks near Königssee in southern Bavaria.

For decades, item number 471/96 has only seen the light of day in exceptional cases. On those rare occasions, fingers encased in clean, white cotton gloves carefully lift the platinum watch out of its velvet-lined case. Diamonds encircle the round face, refracting the ambient light into a glittering cascade.

The watch, made in the southwestern German city of Pforzheim by Eszeha, was kept in a plain cardboard box after the war. It isn't difficult to discover whose wrist it once adorned. The following inscription, along with a handwritten signature, appears on the back of the casing: "On February 6, 1939. With all my heart. A. Hitler."

That February day was the 27th birthday of Eva Braun. The Reich Chancellor had dedicated the diamond-studded watch with a chain clasp to his mistress, 22 years his junior. The precious watch survived the turmoil of the ensuing violence virtually unharmed.

Today the watch is kept in storage at the Pinakothek der Moderne, a modern art museum in Munich, where it is registered as "Estate of Eva Hitler, née Eva Braun" -- in a cabinet that contains a large number of other devotional objects from the darkest period of German history.

The collection includes a 41-piece set of silverware engraved with Hitler's initials. There is also a diamond-studded gold cigarette case that belonged to Field Marshall Hermann Göring (inventory number 466/96), with an inscription from 1940 on the inside cover: "Filled with happiness and pride, we congratulate you on your appointment as 'Field Marshall.' With our deepest love, Emmy and Edda" -- Göring's wife and daughter.

For decades, the Pinakothek has had in its custody an entire case of blood diamonds that Hitler's paladin once called his own: a tiara with 32 carats of diamonds, a platinum tie ring with emeralds, gold cufflinks with rubies, a diamond ring and a large amethyst -- just the sorts of things a worldly fiend needs.

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

It's the kind of legacy that is inconvenient in the extreme for a fledgling democracy. What should a newly emerging political system do with such valuable refuse, the true origins of which are unknown? What was to be done with the gaudy ornaments of a regime that no one wants to exhibit? The answer proved simple. They were placed into storage and locked away, never to be seen again. Out of sight, out of mind.

Even today, this remains Germany's preferred way of dealing with the treasures that Hitler, Göring and all the other Nazi leaders snatched up and stole from others during 12 years of tyranny. The items being kept in a Munich museum's storage rooms are merely a tiny portion of the Nazi legacy that fell into the lap of postwar Germany. Almost seven decades later, the German state continues to hold paintings, rugs, furniture, graphics, sculptures, silver vessels, tapestries, books and precious stones appropriated by the Nazi clique. The German government owns about 20,000 items, including paintings, sculptures, furniture, books and coins. According to a 2004 estimate, the 2,300 paintings alone have an insurance value of €60 million ($81 million). Hundreds more are in the storage rooms of museums in the country.

No one likes to talk about this enormous cache of Nazi treasure, partly because of a feeling of guilt for possessing assets that are often of unclear provenance: Art objects acquired from Jewish collections that were sold off in a panic after 1933, or that were simply taken from their rightful owners before they disappeared into concentration camps.

Not all of this art is being kept from the public. A number of works are distributed throughout Germany in public museums, private collections, at the office of the German president, at the Chancellery in Berlin, in government guesthouses and in German embassies around the globe.

The treatment of the gigantic art collections of Hitler, Göring, Chancellery head and Hitler confidant Martin Bormann and other Nazi top brass counts as a particularly macabre chapter in Germany's efforts to come to terms with its Third Reich past. For almost 68 years now, those in charge of the art -- no matter their political persuasion -- have done little to investigate the provenance of the valuable pieces that make up this poisonous legacy and return them to their rightful owners.

Ridiculously Low

None of Germany's chancellors, be it Konrad Adenauer, who was persecuted by the Nazis, or former Nazi Party member Kurt Georg Kiesinger, emigrant Willy Brandt, former Wehrmacht officer Helmut Schmidt, Helmut Kohl, or those born near the end or after the war, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel, showed an interest in going beyond the unctuous speeches that are traditionally given on Nov. 9 to commemorate Kristallnacht ("Night of the Broken Glass") and take the last step of doing everything possible to return the Nazi loot.

SPIEGEL embarked on a search for the legacy of the Third Reich and, in doing so, stumbled upon long transfer lists of the assets of former Nazi officials, as well as tax officers who were somewhat reluctant to remember the valuable legacy. Museum officials seemed embarrassed as they shamefacedly opened their vaults. The search led to contemporary documents that attest to how the Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Bavaria, in the 1960s and 70s, threw works from the Hitler and Göring collections onto the art market at bargain basement prices, but neglected to turn over the proceeds to the possible previous owners or to Jewish victim organizations.

Documents turned up that show how Bavarian lakeside real estate seized by the Nazis changed hands for ridiculously low prices, even though the proceeds from the sales were initially supposed to be paid into a special fund for victims of the Nazi regime. Hundreds of drawings were found that had been hidden in steel cabinets for decades, partly to avoid having to face the heirs of Jewish collectors. It is also possible now to reconstruct how Hitler's personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, quietly and secretly withheld more than 100 paintings that are now part of a collection, probably worth millions, from the Bavarian government.

The effort led to an unmistakable conclusion: The handling of this Nazi legacy is a moral disaster that began in the 1950s and continues to the present day.

To its credit, five years ago the federal government created the "Working Group for the Research and Study of Provenance," which receives €2 million a year in government funding. But the group, which has four employees, has not been able to launch more than 84 research projects in museums and libraries since it was established -- 84 projects in 6,300 German museums. At this rate, it will take decades more before German cultural institutions have searched through their inventories for possible Nazi loot.

'A Lot to Be Done'

It's clear that without additional funding and without political will, what is currently the last chapter of reparations by postwar Germany will not come to a dignified end. Restitution is actually the reestablishment of an earlier legal state. As far as the return of the artworks is concerned, the Jewish Claims Conference (JCC) laments that there is "still a lot to be done" in Germany. The organization says that the funds made available by the federal government cover "only a small portion of the necessary measures." Instead, the JCC argues, "the heirs are forced to do their own research and, in case of doubt, fight for their family legacy and go to court."

Munich is the best place to begin tracking down the Nazi legacy. In 1945, when Germany was in ruins, up to five million works of art were gathering dust in mines and castle basements, monasteries and 1,500 other warehouse facilities of the defeated German Reich. Hitler had had his officials buy, steal or simply confiscate paintings and other precious items throughout Europe. The Allies were so well informed about this that they developed a plan to deal with the sensitive loot long before the end of the war. They chose a collecting point in a historic location: two adjacent, monumental structures, faced with pale Danube limestone, in downtown Munich. Hitler had used one of the buildings to receive state guests, while the other housed the Nazi Party headquarters.

The Central Collecting Point, or CCP, was formed in this gruesome reminder of the Nazi past, complete with balconies, marble staircases and an elaborate bunker system. Beginning in the summer of 1945, the artworks that had been secured in the three Western occupation zones began to accumulate at the CCP. They included Hitler's treasures, more than 4,700 objects that had been intended for the Führer Museum planned for the Austrian city of Linz, the 4,200 objects in Göring's collection, most of which he had kept at Carinhall, his country estate near Berlin, as well as the smaller collections of Joseph Goebbels, Joachim von Ribbentrop, Heinrich Himmler, Baldur von Schirach, Albert Speer, Martin Bormann and Hans Frank.

Part 2: A Train Full of Art

Not everyone in Hitler's entourage had a passion for art. But because Hitler, a former postcard painter, collected art, they all collected art. In this absurd way, says US historian Jonathan Petropoulos, the party luminaries complied with the so-called Führerprinzip (leader principle), which held that they were to treat the interests of the Führer as their own.

At the CCP, the Americans examined and registered everything that the Nazi leaders had collected. If the provenance was easy to determine (and when soldiers or civilian employees had not already sold the loot on the booming black market), the works were quickly returned to their original owners. Petropoulous estimates that, using this approach, the Americans and the British had returned some 2.5 million cultural assets -- including 468,000 paintings, drawings and sculptures -- to their rightful owners by 1950.

In the initial postwar years, the Germans were largely uninvolved spectators in the Munich art market. But starting in the summer of 1948, the US entrusted the remaining inventory to the care of then Bavarian Governor Hans Ehard, who later turned it over to the Foreign Ministry in Bonn. There, a specially formed restitution committee conferred for almost three years, ultimately setting the objective that the restitution issue was to be resolved by the 1960s.

This, of course, was much easier said than done because, in many cases, it proved enormously difficult to determine the rightful owners. Nevertheless, in 1966, the German parliament decided that suitable works of art were to be lent to museums as well as to top- and upper-level federal government agencies. This resulted in something of a roadshow for Nazi art. At CCP headquarters in Munich, as well as at the Baroque Schleissheim Palace and the Bavarian National Museum, curators from all over Germany were invited to pick out works that might fit well into their museums. The event was closed to the general public.

'Painful Matter'

Treasury Minister Werner Dollinger announced the results to the world press in 1966. Almost 2,000 works went to 111 German museums and 660 paintings to 18 federal government offices at home and abroad. As a result:

• There is a Sultanabad rug from the Göring collection at the Chancellery today;
• a painting once owned by Göring hangs in the federal government's guesthouse near Bonn;
• a three-drawer cherry secretary from the collection of Hans Posse, one of Hitler's top art thieves, stands in the Office of the Federal President;
• a copy of a painting by Giovanni Canaletto, "Canal Grande with Punta della Salute and Doge's Palace," acquired by Hitler, can be viewed at the German Parliamentary Society.

At the time, the government led citizens to believe that the subject of restitution had been resolved. According to Minister Dollinger, a "painful matter" had been brought to a close. SPIEGEL at the time also praised the government's efforts, noting that the works of art were no longer burdened with the "taint of unlawful acquisition."

But, as it turned out, we and others were mistaken. In fact, the provenance of the works had not been thoroughly investigated by any means. It remains unclear today in some cases, such as the painting in Bonn, the desk at the president's office and the Canaletto copy at the Parliamentary Society.

To understand why Germany never truly cleared up the biggest art theft of the last century, it's worth taking a look back at the perpetrators' obsession with collecting.

The White Leather Tuxedo

In May 1945, the Allies found two trains in Berchtesgaden, a town in the Bavarian Alps, that had apparently been used by Field Marshall Göring. The cars were filled with art from around the world. Göring had engaged in a true rivalry with Hitler to acquire the most significant works in the European market. In his Carinhall estate, some paintings were hanging on the ceiling because there was no room left on the walls.

It is unclear how the heavyset Wehrmacht officer developed an appreciation for art. Although he was from a wealthy family and had lived in castles as a child, unlike Hitler, Göring had never shown a passion for art. He had finished high school at a cadet school and taken an officer's exam, a test which likely didn't address Rubens and Rembrandt.

The art collection that the Americans uncovered in Berchtesgaden had an estimated value of 600 million reichsmarks. His other assets included Veldenstein Castle, a bombed-out villa at the Obersalzberg mountainside retreat, a hunting cabin near the town of Bayrischzell, an account with the Reichs-Kredit-Gesellschaft bank in Munich worth 1.1 million reichsmarks, as well as curiosities like a collection of antlers, a white leather tuxedo and a French blanket from 1730.

Under an agreement with the Allies, the top Nazis' private assets went to the state in which they had been found after the end of the war. This meant that Bavaria benefited more than most other states. In addition to Göring, with his homes in the foothills of the Alps, many other key players in the Nazi system, like Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler and Julius Streicher, had moved their possessions to secret hiding places in the south as the Allies advanced into Germany. The Munich State Archive has a list, compiled in 1949, of the confiscated assets of former Nazi Party leaders in Bavaria. The value of their real estate and bank accounts alone was estimated at 51.4 million deutschmarks at the time.

What happened to the Nazi properties is a particularly disturbing chapter in Bavarian postwar history, as documented in a 1971 report by the Bavarian Supreme Audit Court -- a document which was long kept secret and later forgotten. The auditors had scrutinized the State of Bavaria's real estate transactions between 1952 and 1967, including the sales of confiscated Nazi villas.

The 'Jovial Austrian'

It's a shameful report that tellingly demonstrates how quickly the victims of Nazi rule were once again given short shrift when it came to government transactions in the reconstruction years.

An unbelievable case occurred in the town of Kochel am See. It revolved around a 4,312-square-meter (about an acre) waterfront property with a wooden house on it. It was where Nazi youth leader Baldur von Schirach went to relax -- before he was sentenced in Nuremberg to a 20-year prison term for crimes against humanity. The property went to the State of Bavaria. In 1939, the idyllic site was already valued at a land price of 2.50 reichsmarks per square meter. But in 1955, Bavaria sold the property for 1.45 deutschmarks per square meter, which was well below its value, as the Audit Court later wrote in its critical but classified report.

To add insult to injury, the property was then resold after only 10 months, with the fortunate buyer managing to sell it at a 100 percent profit.

The short-term owner was very familiar with the house. It was Von Schirach's wife Henriette, who was also the daughter of Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann and the Führer's secretary for a time. As recently as the early 1980s, Henriette -- the grandmother of attorney and bestselling author Ferdinand von Schirach -- attracted attention with a book in which she had reinvented Hitler, turning him into a "jovial Austrian."

An isolated case? Hardly. Heinrich Hoffmann owned an attractive, 956-square-meter (about 10,000 square feet) villa in Munich's Bogenhausen neighborhood, worth millions today. In 1954, the State of Bavaria, which had been awarded the assets of the long-time Nazi (Nazi Party membership number 59), sold it for 52,000 deutschmarks. For the appraisal, the government's real estate agents had used a 1936 construction index. The government chose not to sell the property at public auction.

And the list goes on. Nazi Interior Minister Wilhelm Frick, executed in 1946 as a major war criminal, owned a magnificent villa on 32,196 square meters of land (8 acres) in Kempfenhausen on Lake Starnberg. In 1959, a publisher bought the estate from the government. It was appraised at only 6 deutschmarks per square meter, even though the authorities themselves had described the property as a "luxury property" on "park-like grounds in an excellent lakeside location." According to the Audit Court, the price was too low, and it concluded: "Even in 1959, there was also considerable interest in large properties in such preferred locations."

Part 3: Selling Off the Hitler Collection

By today's standards, the Bavarian lawmakers would be found guilty of breach of trust, toward both the state's taxpayers and the victims' rights organizations.

A real estate deal concluded by Fritz Rüth, the president of the Munich regional tax office at the time, was also more than favorable to the buyer. In 1959, Rüth spent 7,000 deutschmarks to acquire the Schoberhof, a 5,311-square-meter property on Lake Schliersee that had been owned by Nazi war criminal Hans Frank, the "Butcher of Poland."

Neither the lucky bargain hunters nor the government brokers had much to fear. The Audit Court did not submit its classified report until 1971. And it had hardly been made public before a note was placed into the Finance Ministry files, to the effect that the public prosecutor's office was terminating its investigations because the statute of limitations had passed. The crime of breach of trust came under the statute of limitations after five years, and the last objectionable real estate sale had taken place eight years earlier.

As the auditors concluded, "none of the properties from the confiscated assets was offered for sale by public auction."

And why should they have been? The only people who could have had an interest in achieving the highest possible proceeds were the victims of the Nazi regime. Under the 1948 Bavarian law governing confiscation of property, the proceeds from these sales were to be paid to the Foundation for the Redress of Nazi Injustices and, following its dissolution, to the State Office of Restitution.

The Auerbach case illustrates the Bavarian authorities' reluctance in an especially brazen way. Philipp Auerbach, president of the Bavarian State Office of Restitution, had survived the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps and, after the war, was a member of the Central Council of Jews in Germany. The bulky Hamburg native had a powerful voice and confidently represented, in Bavaria, the interests of those who had been persecuted for political and racist reasons. Auerbach rubbed people the wrong way and frequently received anti-Semitic mail -- until the government stopped him.

On March 10, 1951, he was arrested while on a business trip and accused of fraud, embezzlement, neglect of official duties and wrongful disbursement of reparations money.

'Victim of His Duties'

A court riddled with old Nazi Party jurists sentenced the Holocaust survivor to two-and-a-half years in prison. Two days later, the 45-year-old committed suicide with sleeping pills. An investigative committee in the state parliament rehabilitated Auerbach two years later, and little was left of the charges against him. Today the following words are inscribed on his tombstone: "Helper of the Poorest of the Poor, Victim of his Duties."

A complaint by the "Association of Jewish Invalids in Bavaria" also documents the climate in the early 1950s. The State of Bavaria, the letter to American occupation forces reads, was deliberately delaying restitution payments, even as it was spending billions on the non-Jewish population. Furthermore, the Christian Social Union, the conservative political party that held sway in the state (as it still does), was accused of neglecting the interests of Nazi victims for political reasons. The population, still living in want itself, also had little sympathy for the victims of Nazi dictatorship. Many felt that the government should first attend to the needs of Germany's war widows.

A similar mentality prevailed in Munich government offices, where a fair number of collaborators and accessories from the Nazi days worked. For instance, the general director of the Bavarian State Painting Collections from 1953 to 1957 was the same man who served in the position before 1945: Ernst Buchner. US historian Petropoulos describes him as "part of Hitler's kleptocracy." According to Petropoulos, Buchner played an important role in the seizure of Jewish collections and the Aryanization of Jewish art galleries. After the Night of the Broken Glass pogrom, it was Buchner who opened the National Museum to the Gestapo so that it could store Aryanized Jewish collections there. He also advised Himmler and Hitler on the appraisal of their looted art.

And he wasn't the only one. There were "experts" in key positions throughout the art business in the postwar era who assisted in various capacities in the biggest art theft of the 20th century. The artworks they had looted now fell into their hands a second time. Not surprisingly, they had little interest in tracking down Jewish owners.

The lack of attention Germans paid to the origins of their art treasures did not go unnoticed by the Americans. They considered selling what was left of the sensitive collections overseas. Perhaps it would have been the only morally correct approach to putting an end to Hitler's mad looting expedition. But the opportunity was missed.

Deliberate Cover Ups

In the mid-1960s, Germany began selling off portions of the Hitler collection. In doing so, it resorted to traditional channels. Two of the art dealers involved in the selloff -- though unknowingly so -- Kunsthaus Lempertz in Cologne and Kunsthandlung Weinmüller in Munich had also been used to acquire individual works of art for the Hitler museum prior to 1945.

According to the federal government, some 243 paintings, 47 works of graphic art, 10 sculptures and 24 articles of furniture from Nazi estates were sold at the time "to explore marketability." Because the market was still sluggish, the proceeds amounted to only about 1 million deutschmarks. Once again, the money was not paid to victims' rights groups but ended up in the federal budget instead, even though the provenance of the artworks that had been sold off had by no means been adequately investigated.

On the contrary, in some cases the origins were deliberately covered up, as a number of sales by the State of Bavaria show.

An example from a December 1966 Weinmüller auction catalogue: Lot number 1374, Vincent Sellaer, "Leda and the Swan." Regarding the painting's provenance, the buyer is referred to the Thieme-Becker Artists' Encyclopedia, Volume 30. On page 478, the encyclopedia lists the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Valenciennes, France as the last owner.

The truth, however, can still today be found on the CCP file cards in the German Federal Archives: "Property of Dr. R. Ley." Robert Ley, a major war criminal, was head of organization for the Nazi Party and head of the German Labor Front. The Allies found the painting -- clearly looted art -- in his possession in 1945. It was then transferred to the State of Bavaria

By the time the rightful owners began searching for the painting, it had long since been sold off. The new owner had no idea about its true origins. In the end, the rightful owners were paid the paltry 2,200 deutschmarks that the painting had fetched at auction.

Hitler's Photographer

Under the leadership of then Governor Alfons Goppel, a former member of the SA, the State of Bavaria sold 106 paintings in this dubious manner. Most were hawked at up to 40 percent below their appraised value.

And the proceeds? They were invested in new artworks, specifically those with untainted provenance. Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne acquired Georges Braque's "Woman with Mandolin" in this fashion. In 1967, the Bavarian state parliament had approved the purchase of the work, valued at 1.25 million deutschmarks, for the State Paintings Collections. The public was given a vague account of how the purchase was to be financed: with a contribution from the state, a contribution from the Association of Friends of the Collections and "sales from the property of the state gallery." The latter referred specifically to the proceeds from the scandalous sale of Nazi art.

Much of what went wrong in the restitution debate, that is, what should have happened or what shouldn't have been allowed to happen, is reflected in the case of one individual: Heinrich Hoffmann, born in 1885, Adolf Hitler's personal photographer since 1923.

Hoffmann, who Werner Friedmann, founder of the Munich Abendzeitung newspaper, described as one of "the greediest parasites of the Hitler plague," was one of the main profiteers of the Nazi state. The publisher and photojournalist, as a member of the "Commission for the Exploitation of Confiscated Works of Degenerate Art," advised the buyers for the Führer Museum in Linz and was named a professor of art by Hitler himself. In 1943, his personal fortune was valued at almost 6 million reichsmarks. Four years later, the Americans listed 278 works of art that Hoffmann claimed, untruthfully, to have acquired legally.

Hoffmann spent five years in prison after the war. In 1947, the Allies classified him as a "Major Offender," which meant that his assets were to be fully confiscated, a penalty he fought until 1956. Ultimately, he was permitted to retain 20 percent of his assets. In October 1956, the Bavarian Finance Ministry ordered "that all art objects (belonging to Hoffmann) under administration of the Bavarian State Paintings Collections" were to be "turned over to Mr. Heinrich Hoffmann, Nazi Party photographer."

Part 4: Receiving Honecker on Göring's Carpet

The paintings were apparently seen as a way to reinstate that portion of his assets which the denazification ruling had granted him. The estimated amount was 350,000 deutschmarks.

The act of mercy, largely unknown to this day, was the apparent result of settlement negotiations between the photographer and the finance minister. And Hoffmann was clever enough to keep the settlement quiet, and to not accept cash. The files suggest that no one was interested in wasting any further thought on the provenance of Hoffmann's paintings.

The consequences became apparent just two years later when the Austrian government lodged a complaint with Bavaria. According to correspondence in the archives of the Bavarian Paintings Collections, Austria demanded the return of two paintings from the Hoffmann collection: works by Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, the most important painter of the Viennese Biedermaier movement. The Munich officials replied somewhat sheepishly that they had already turned over the paintings to Hitler's former confidant in 1954.

Even before reaching his settlement with the state government, Hoffmann had repeatedly managed to reclaim individual paintings from the state government's custody. A popular technique was to have associates tell the state authorities that they had received a painting from Hoffmann's collection as a gift during the war. Hoffmann's physical therapist was one of them. On July 22, 1955, he was handed "The Angler," a painting by Carl Spitzweg, at the Bavarian Paintings Collections. He had claimed that the photographer had given him the picture during the Hitler era as a token of his gratitude. Conveniently, the art-loving physical therapist brought along his personal art historian, who scrawled his signature on the handover document: "Dr. Kai Mühlmann."

It was the same Mühlmann whom Göring had once named his special envoy for art in the occupied eastern territories -- an SS man who had verifiably seized Jewish collections and supplied them to Hoffmann.

Missing the Dignified Route

In the roughly seven decades since the end of World War II, there was one moment in which Germany could have, and should have, succeeded in embarking down a more dignified path. In December 1998, 44 countries met at the Washington Conference, where they agreed to track down art confiscated during the Nazi era and identify the original owners. A "just and fair solution" for the return of the works or compensation was to be found with the heirs. For the first time in decades, it was once again possible to file restitution claims.

State Minister for Culture Michael Naumann, a member of the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), enthusiastically supported the implementation of the Washington Declaration and, by virtue of his office, expanded the definition of looted art: If Jews had sold paintings to support themselves while fleeing the Nazis, they or their heirs could also file claims for compensation. Naumann wrote to all leading German museums and urged them to address provenance research. But, as he recalls today, he received a response from only one institution, the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation.

To this day, provenance research has remained a stepchild of accounting for Germany's Nazi past -- lacking in financial means and human resources, but replete with accusations that heirs care more for money than art. At least the federal government has now examined most of the paintings it holds, and German museums are gradually following suit.

The only specialist currently addressing the provenance of thousands of works in the Bavarian Paintings Collections is art historian Andrea Bambi. She likens her work to a police investigation. More than 10 years ago, her employer launched a research project to examine the provenance of 126 pictures from the Göring collection, 72 of which are still in the museum's hands. Bambi's job is to examine the rest of the massive Nazi legacy.

It's a role that is both unique in Germany and rather peculiar. In the spirit of the Washington agreement, she has an obligation to the victims of the Nazi reign of terror. On the other hand, she is paid by the museum and has lifetime tenure there. Her job is a balancing act, because she has to satisfy both sides. Heirs, such as those of Jewish art dealer Alfred Flechtheim, accuse the Collections of taking a restrictive approach.

A Chaotic Collection

In most of the cases, the art detective's job is a difficult one. Bambi walks out of her office, takes a sharp right around the corner and enters a dimly lit library, where there is a beige folder on a table. It contains parts of 3,500 document pages that Bambi has to comb through to ascertain the origins of the Munich paintings. It's a collection of loose sheets of paper, unsorted, with carbon copies on parchment paper, and with poorly legible notes made by long-retired colleagues. Estimated prices for sculptures are noted in red pencil on the back of a calendar sheet from February 1 of some year. It's a chaotic collection of documents.

Bambi says that she could use three staff members: an archivist, a historian and an art historian. The estimated personnel costs would be about €230,000 a year. The Bavarian finance minister, who holds both the rights to Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" and the entire legacy of the Führer, has refused to commit any funds to the project so far.

There is clearly a need for the federal government to step in. If the collections of the three Munich Pinakothek museums, the Schack collection and the 12 satellite galleries are combined, a total of 4,400 paintings and 770 sculptures that have accumulated in the Collections since 1933 will have to be examined.

The legacy is so extensive that not even Bavaria's senior-most politicians are unaware of the former Nazi property they use on a daily basis. The Bavarian State Chancellery, for instance, used a building on Prinzregentenstrasse for representational purposes for many years. Former Bavarian Governor and CSU Chairman Franz Josef Strauss used the great hall for cabinet meetings, as well as to receive state guests, like East German leader Erich Honecker.

A giant carpet was laid out on the floor of the room: 15.18 meters by 7.27 meters. The motif was Persian, but the carpet had been made in India. It still has the number 6498 on the bottom, which the Americans gave it at the CCP. The carpet also has a file card in the Federal Archives, where it is referred to as a "giant carpet" that was found in Berchtesgaden. It was on the Göring train.

Stuck Between Wooden Pallets

Very few people know what a significant role the carpet played in German history. It allegedly was once laid out at Göring's Carinhall estate, in the hallway to the library. And then there are photos of East Germany's anti-fascist leader Honecker's 1987 visit to Prinzregentenstrasse, with Strauss, Edmund Stoiber and a number of other prominent Bavarian politicians. And it all happened on Göring's rug.

Today the carpet is rolled up in a hallway at the Schack collection, where it illustrates the size of the dilemma the Nazi legacy poses. No one can use it anymore, and yet no one dares sell a carpet that is so steeped in history. A potential buyer from the US turned up a few years ago, but left empty-handed. Now the carpet lies, forgotten and wrapped in plastic, between old wooden pallets.

Of course, forgetting is also sometimes part of a strategy. The State Graphic Collection in Munich has 601 drawings and watercolors by the painter Rudolf von Alt (1812 to 1905), once owned by the Nazi Party. Hitler confidant Martin Bormann had procured the pictures for Hitler's Obersalzberg retreat, the Führer buildings in Berlin and Munich and the planned Führer museum in Linz. Drawings by the painter were also on the list of artworks returned to Hitler's personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann.

For decades, the Munich museum officials knew that, until the 1930s, the works were primarily the property of Jewish business people from Vienna. But what happened to them?

Since 1959, they were kept in two steel cabinets in the former Nazi Party administration building, which is now home to the State Graphic Collection. The status quo was only disturbed two years ago, when the London-based Commission for Looted Art in Europe came calling and filed claims for a watercolor. It demanded the return of the work "The Old North Train Station in Vienna," which had belonged to a Jewish woman from Brno, in the present-day Czech Republic, until 1938. The Commission announced its intention to pursue other claims as well, enough to finally push the State Graphic Collection to embark on a provenance project.

Breathtakingly Absurd

There are references to Jewish collectors like Eissler, Goldmann, Mautner and Zuckerkandl. The museum managers have promised to examine their collection "as thoroughly as possible." And they regret, of course, not having approached possible heirs directly.

It is a late start. And the fact that it has taken so long probably has a lot to do with an earlier generation of curators and their reluctance to exhibit the magnificent collection, for fear that Jewish heirs could promptly file claims for the art.

For years, a number of museum directors pursued a breathtakingly absurd line of reasoning. This attitude flared up as recently as 2006, when a painting by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, "Berlin Street Scene," worth about €30 million, was handed over to the granddaughter of a former Jewish owner, who lived in England. The incident prompted Michael Eissenhauer, president of the German Museums' Association at the time, to sharply criticize the "big business" of restitution art. "It's worthwhile to embark on a hunt and take a look at which paintings could inject new blood into the art market."

A "hunt"? By the victims? Former State Minister for Culture Naumann recalls a speech by Berlin art auctioneer Bernd Schultz, which was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, under the heading: "They Say Holocaust, But They Mean Money." That speech, says Naumann, "contained, without the man even noticing it -- which only made it worse -- a classic anti-Semitic sentiment. Shameless."

People like Gunnar Schnabel, who represents the interests of the heirs, continue to run up against the limits of openness and cooperativeness among museums today. Since the Washington conference, the Berlin attorney has taken on 30 cases relating to valuable paintings. The work often escalates. "I begin by researching three paintings and end up with 50," says Schnabel. On behalf of Jewish heirs, Schnabel has wrested a painting by Carl Spitzweg ("Fiat Justitia") from the Office of the Federal President. He is not particularly conciliatory as he sums up his experiences: "Negotiations with the museums remain tough and incredibly expensive."

No Evidence of Fairness

The cost of research is especially staggering for the victims. Schnabel remembers the case of a colleague, in which a painting was sold for €2.4 million after restitution. The legal fees amounted to more than €2 million, all but eliminating the concept of compensation. Schnabel accuses museums of sometimes "fighting with everything they have, and stalling the negotiations." Even if they do examine their collections once in a while, says the attorney, he knows of no cases in which a museum has approached heirs directly.

Monika Tatzkow agrees with his assessment. She too represents Jewish heirs, including her current clients, the heirs of Max Liebermann. A great-grandson has hired the Berlin provenance researcher to examine 62 paintings, 51 drawings, 10 volumes of graphics and one watercolor. The list includes top artists like Manet and Monet, and the works could be in museums or private collections. "The evidentiary requirements are getting more and more stringent and exaggerated," says Tatzkow. After 70 years, the heirs are still expected to furnish the "last sales receipt," to ensure that the restitution is completely watertight. The historian sees no evidence of fair and just agreements, as stipulated in Washington.

Former State Minister for Culture Naumann wants the next federal government to pass a law that goes beyond the moral impetus of the Washington agreement. "Lawmakers have to outline more specific restitution claims." He also has an idea of where the money for more intensive provenance research should come from. There are currently plans for a museum dedicated to the Sudeten Germans, those ethnic Germans forced out of lands belonging to present-day Czech Republic. The federal government together with the state government of Bavaria is to provide €30 million for the facility. It would be the third or the fourth such museum dedicated to the expellees, says Naumann, and hardly anyone visits the ones that already exist. "Diverting €10 million from this budget and putting it into provenance research is a possible approach." The states would also have to become more committed, says Naumann.

Of course, there are countless cases in which clarification of the ownership issue will no longer be possible, and in which doubts will never be set aside. But does the rule have to be: When in doubt, rule in favor of the state? Or the museum?

The Germans could learn from the Austrians. After the end of the war, 8,422 works of art, most of Jewish origin, were stored in a monastery near Vienna. Only in 93 cases were heirs able to prove ownership. After 50 years and many agonizing debates, the Republic of Austria decided on a solution that was morally unassailable: An auction at Christie's, with the proceeds benefiting Nazi victims. The October 1996 auction raised €11 million.

Could this be a solution for Göring's diamonds and Eva Braun's platinum watch? Perhaps it would only reignite the trade in Nazi devotional objects, as critics fear. But the Internet is already filled with such objects today: Hitler's brass desk set, notes by concentration camp doctor Josef Mengele, letters and postcards written by Joseph Goebbels. A few rings and tiaras are hardly likely to make a difference.

The idea at least merits a public debate. After all, the sale of the precious objects ought to raise enough money to pay for a few additional positions in provenance research.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Much of the art and collectibles amassed by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen fell to the state of Bavaria, where it remains. This diamond-studded watch was given by the Führer to his mistress Eva Braun on the occasion of her 27th birthday on Feb. 6, 1939.

The back of the watch Hitler gave to Eva Braun. The inscription reads: "On February 6, 1939. With all my heart. A. Hitler." Many such trinkets are kept hidden away in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich.

Part of a 41-piece set of silverware engraved with Hitler's initials in the possession of Munich's Pinakothek der Moderne. Such trinkets, however, represent only a tiny portion of the Nazi legacy that fell into the lap of postwar Germany.

US soldiers carrying paintings from a priceless collection discovered in an Austrian castle, much of which was to be hung in a giant art museum the Nazis planned to build in Linz. Postwar Germany showed (and continues to show) little desire to find out who the paintings originally belonged to.

A photo from Jan. 13, 1938 showing Hermann Göring admiring a painting given to him by Adolf Hitler on the occasion of his 45th birthday. The treatment of the gigantic art collections of Hitler, Göring, Chancellery head and Hitler confidant Martin Bormann and other Nazi top brass counts as a particularly macabre chapter in Germany's efforts to come to terms with its Third Reich past.

Much of the art looted by the Nazis ended up stored in Bavaria at the end of the war. But not all. In this May 3, 1945 image, a US soldier looks at a painting that had been stashed by the Nazis in a salt mine near Heilbronn.

published 12/02/2010 at 05:55 PM by Klaus Wiegrefe - Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Historians have long portrayed Adolf Hitler's mistress Eva Braun as little more than an apolitical accoutrement to the dictator. But a new biography of the woman who was Hitler's wife for a mere 40 hours casts doubt on that image.

Braun with Hitler at his Alpine retreat in the Alps near the Austrian border. Hitler tried to keep his relationship with Braun secret from his country out of fear that his female admirers would lose their adoration for him.

The field research on the details of the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun began while the dictator was still alive. The "Führer" was a late sleeper. In the late morning, after he had left his bedroom, with its connecting door to Braun's quarters, and the staff had removed the bed linens, the curious employees would scrutinize the sheets and pillowcases, searching for clues to what had happened there in the previous night.

"We snooped around in the beds," Herbert Döhring, the manager of the Berghof, Hitler's home in the Bavarian Alps, confessed to a television team decades later. But they found nothing, leading Döhring, a member of the Waffen-SS, to conclude that the relationship between the dictator and Braun, 23 years his junior, must have been platonic.

In the Third Reich, Döhring was one of only a small group of people who knew about Braun's close relationship with Hitler. It wasn't until after the war that the public learned that the dictator had spent many years in the company of an attractive blonde from Munich, who he married hours before the couple committed suicide, on April 30, 1945, in the Führer's bunker in Berlin.

Their secretiveness was based on political calculation. "Many women find me appealing because I am unmarried," Hitler believed. "It's the same thing with a film actor: When he marries, he loses a certain something among the women who worship him, and they no longer idolize him quite as much anymore."

Correcting the Image of Braun

Because of the relatively clandestine nature of their relationship, after the war the public was all the more intrigued about the daughter of a Munich vocational school teacher who had spent about a decade and a half at his side -- mostly at the Berghof in Obersalzberg in the German Alps, and occasionally in Berlin. But the initial answers did little to satisfy that curiosity. British historian and intelligence officer Hugh Trevor-Roper, who questioned Hitler's entourage immediately after the end of the war, concluded that Eva Braun was "uninteresting." Every other notable Hitler biographer would eventually arrive at the same conclusion.

But is it true?

Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker has now taken on the task of correcting this image of Braun, by writing the first scholarly biography of Braun, published by the prestigious Beck publishing house. Several, lighter works on Hitler's mistress have preceded the new tome.

By taking a strictly academic approach, Görtemaker manages to dispense with many of the anecdotes that have amused and occasionally titillated readers. According to one of these stories, Braun allegedly complained, in the Führer bunker, about her constant arguments with Adolf about meals. Hitler, an adamant vegetarian, allegedly demanded that she eat only gruel and mushroom dip, which she found disgusting ("I can't eat this stuff").

According to another story, told by one of the dictator's secretaries, Braun would secretly kick Hitler's German shepherd Blondie, supposedly because she was jealous of the dog. She is said to have gloated over Blondie's howls after abusing the dog ("Adolf is surprised at the animal's strange behavior. That's my revenge.").

'The History of that Sofa'

Görtemaker puts as little stock in such "tabloid" stories told by the people in Hitler's immediate surroundings as she does in Döhring's bed-linen analysis. Instead, the historian assumes that the couple had a normal, intimate relationship, as Braun's friends and relatives would later report. According to those accounts, when Braun saw a photo depicting British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain sitting on the sofa in Hitler's Munich apartment in 1938, she giggled and said: "If he only knew the history of that sofa!"

The historian takes the character at the center of her book seriously, and in the material she has analyzed, there is credible evidence that Braun was more to Hitler than an "attractive young thing" in whom the dictator "found, despite or perhaps because of her unassuming and insipid appearance, the sort of relaxation and calm he was seeking," as Hitler's personal photographer Heinrich Hoffmann later claimed.

In his will, which Hitler drew up in 1938, Braun's name appeared immediately after that of the Nazi Party. Under the provisions of the will, the party was to pay her a substantial, lifelong pension, to be drawn from his assets. Propaganda minister and Hitler confidant Joseph Goebbels noted several times how much the dictator appreciated his mistress ("A clever girl, who means a lot to the Führer").

She was involved in the plans for the conversion of the Austrian city of Linz into the Führer's cultural capital, where Hitler, a native of Austria, planned to retire after the Nazi's final victory. And if he had had his way, Braun would also have survived the demise of the German Reich. He repeatedly asked her to leave Berlin in the final days of the war and fly to Bavaria. But Braun refused. Until the very end, Hitler spoke of her "with great respect and inner devotion," Albert Speer, Hitler's crown prince, said in his first statements to the Allies in 1945.

Devoid of Friends?

The notion that Braun meant something to the dictator is not as banal as it may seem at first glance. The perception of her as an inconsequential accoutrement contributed greatly to the image of Hitler as a purely political being. This is the perspective conveyed by best-selling Hitler biographers Joachim C. Fest, Sebastian Haffner and Ian Kershaw.

According to their versions, Hitler lived a life devoid of friends, love and passion -- a life that was easy to discard and, therefore, was accompanied by a constant readiness to commit suicide. For Haffner, at least, Hitler's 1945 suicide in his Berlin bunker was "to be expected." In a broader sense, the all-or-nothing policies Hitler pursued until total defeat could also be interpreted as a consequence of the dictator's emotional emptiness.

Görtemaker avoids directly criticizing this interpretation, but it is clear that her account raises the issue, once again, of Hitler's psyche. Of course, her book also shows how difficult it will be to find answers, because of the order Hitler issued in 1945 to destroy all private records. The order most likely extended to his correspondence with Braun, which has been proven to have once existed.

For this reason, the historian can only draw on a few letters Braun wrote to female friends and relatives, as well as fragments of a 1935 diary, although its authenticity is disputed. She also makes use of statements made by Hitler's servants, bodyguards, his chauffeur and various senior Nazis in the decades following the war, although she treats this information with a healthy dose of skepticism, and rightfully so. A constant thread throughout the book is Görtemaker's acknowledgement that there are many questions she cannot answer.

Even the beginnings of the affair are relatively murky. Hitler apparently met Braun in 1929, when she was 17, at the "NSDAP Photohaus Hoffmann," a photography shop, on Amalienstrasse in Munich. The young woman, who looks mischievous in pictures, had previously attended a girls' school for home economics and office management, and was now working in the photography shop. Her boss Heinrich Hoffmann, who was chosen as Hitler's official photographer, was one of the early members of the Nazi Party. A hard-drinking anti-Semite, Hoffmann made a fortune with propaganda photos and picture books, including a book titled "The Hitler Nobody Knows."

Part 2: How Political Was Eva Braun?

For Hitler, a 40-year-old opposition politician at the time, there were many opportunities to pay a visit to Hoffmann's shop. The Nazi Party's national office was around the corner, as were the editorial offices of the party newspaper Völkischer Beobachter and, of course, Hitler's favorite restaurant, the Osteria Bavaria.

If what Hoffmann's daughter later said is true, the party leader charmed the teenager with snide Viennese charm: "May I invite you to the opera, Miss Eva? You see, I am always surrounded by men, and so I can appreciate my good fortune when I find myself in the company of a woman."

When he was with women, the mass murderer's manners were refined, and he never showed the slightest inclination toward womanizing. The naïve Braun, who fantasized about the world of films and loved fashion magazines, succumbed to the strong suggestive powers that even neutral observers ascribed to Hitler. Soon after meeting Braun, the Nazi leader apparently issued orders to look into whether the Braun family had any Jewish ancestors.

No one knows when the banter turned into a relationship. In 1932, Braun tried to commit suicide with her father's gun, which some contemporaries suspected was an attempt to pressure Hitler to pay more attention to her. The Nazi leader had his eye on the chancellorship, and it would have been the second suicide by a young woman that could have been tied to Hitler. His niece, Geli Rauball, shot herself to death, presumably to escape the attentions of her jealous uncle.

The Back of the Group

Young Eva Braun, on the other hand, seemed to have suffered from a lack of attention or recognition from Hitler. The World War I veteran, who had been a failure in civilian life, continued to live a Bohemian existence after coming to power in 1933. He was often absent for days from the business of running the government in Berlin. He spent his time strolling through Munich, going to the opera and the theater with his shady entourage and visiting construction sites, which Hitler, a lover of architecture, felt were important. In good weather, the group would drive out to the countryside, and Braun often went along on these outings.

Of course, she was required to travel in a separate compartment with the secretaries, and during the country walks her place was at the back of the group. On occasion, Hitler would openly hand her an envelope filled with cash, which reminded Speer of "American gangster films."

In 1935, Braun attempted suicide again, this time with sleeping pills, and there are some indications that the relationship only became more intimate after that. Hitler paid for her apartment and later installed her in her own house, so that she could finally move out of her parents' house. She grew into the role of hostess at the Berghof, where Hitler would often spend weeks at a time, even during the war. Her official title was "private secretary." But at some point Hitler and Braun became more familiar with each other around other people.

Of course, the dictator continued to keep the relationship out of the public eye. Only one photograph of the couple eluded the censors and was released to the press. It depicts Hitler attending the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, with Braun sitting in the row behind him.

Detrimental to his Image

Despite his efforts to conceal the relationship, the Allied press eventually learned that Hitler had a girlfriend named Braun, and Time reported the story in 1939. But it remained a secret in Germany, and Hitler was probably correct in his assumption that going public with the love affair would have been detrimental to his image as Führer.

Reinhard Spitzy, a staunch Nazi and employee of the former German ambassador to London, Joachim Ribbentrop, was astonished when a young woman with whom he was unfamiliar suddenly interrupted a conversation between Ribbentrop and Hitler at the Berghof, and said that the men should "finally" come to dinner. A colleague explained Braun's position to Spitzy, who was appalled. He had imagined Hitler as an "ascetic, above sex and passion." Instead, his hero was no different from anyone else.

Braun had a strong interest in photography and making films, and she also liked to be photographed. The photo albums and films of her that have survived depict her as a carefree, athletic and extroverted woman, who sometimes posed in her bathing suit and even filmed her sister when she went swimming in the nude. After the war, a former member of the SS complained that she did not conform to the "ideal of a German girl." According to the SS officer, Braun would start "making the initial preparations for all kinds of amusements" -- parties at the mountain hideaway -- shortly after Hitler's limousine had pulled away from the Berghof.

Such statements conform to the image of an apolitical entourage that everyone involved -- from lowly servants to luminaries such as Albert Speer -- described after the war, and into which Braun seemed to have integrated herself seamlessly. There was said to be a rule at the Berghof: that politics was not to be discussed in the presence of women. Instead, the topics of discussion were apparently fashion, dog breeding and operettas.

Pure Politics

Biographer Görtemaker doesn't have any trouble introducing arguments against the exclusiveness of this version. A look into Braun's photo albums, which include pictures she took on Aug. 23, 1939, is enough to support this notion. On that day Ribbentrop, who had been promoted to foreign minister by then, was in negotiations with Stalin in Moscow over the partition of Eastern Europe between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Hitler wanted the alliance so that he could invade Poland. The photos show how tense and visibly restless he was while waiting for the outcome of Ribbentrop's talks with Stalin. It was pure politics, and Braun was there.

Görtemaker also believes that the woman at his side "shared Hitler's worldview and political opinions uncritically." The circumstances alone suggest that this was the case. Braun spent almost half of her 33 years in the company of fanatical Nazis.

It is well known that in 1939 Hitler spoke openly before the Reichstag of the destruction of European Jews -- and in his second will, which he wrote shortly before committing suicide, he once again underlined his hatred of Jews. It is hard to believe that Braun could have endured the 2,280 days between those two events if she hadn't been an anti-Semite herself. However, we will probably never know whether she tried to influence him in any way.

The Making of Legends

Braun was faithful unto death, and it was this unconditional loyalty that Hitler presumably valued in her above all else. "Only Miss Braun and my German Shepherd are loyal to me and belong to me," he is believed to have said near the end of the war, when Europe was in ruins and the murder of European Jews was already largely a fait accompli.

At that point, Braun had already decided to remain with the Führer. She even had someone teach her how to use a pistol when the Red Army had already advanced into Berlin. "We are fighting to the end here," she wrote from the Führer's bunker to her closest friend on April 22. "I will die as I have lived. It will not be difficult for me."

According to the records of the Berchtesgaden District Court, Eva Braun died on April 30, 1945, at 3:28 p.m., after biting into a capsule of potassium cyanide. Hitler followed her two minutes later.

The making of legends could begin.

In the early days of their relationship, Hitler would charm Braun with his Austrian manners: "May I invite you to the opera, Miss Eva? You see, I am always surrounded by men, and so I can appreciate my good fortune when I find myself in the company of a woman."

Eva Braun in Bavaria in 1937. Braun was an assistant in Heinrich Hoffmann's photography shop in Munich when she first met Adolf Hitler. Hoffmann had been chosen has Hitler's official photographer, and Nazi party headquarters were just around the corner.

Braun with an unidentified infant. Hitler's mistress tried to commit suicide on two occassions, likely as a way of demanding more attention from Hitler.

Hitler and Braun with their dogs. A new biography of Braun, by Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker, disregards unsubstantiated stories from earlier works on her -- like the anecdote about her kicking Hitler's German shepherd, named Blondie, because she was jealous of the attention it received.

Eva Braun pictured with her sister Gretel. Görtemaker, in contrast with many Hitler biographers, assume that the Führer and his mistriss had a normal, intimate relationship.

Hitler and Braun with two unidentified children. There is precious little historical material to draw on in creating an accurate image of Braun and her relationship to the Führer.

Braun's new biographer Görtemaker argues that she "shared Hitler's worldview and political opinions uncritically."

Hitler surrounded by top Nazis. Braun ultimately became comfortable enough with Hitler to interrupt his high-level meetings to ask the participants to come to dinner.

The couple was only married in the final days of World War II, in the Berlin bunker. Not long later, the two committed suicide.

The cover of Berlin historian Heike Görtemaker's new biography of Eva Braun.

Erika Flocken (12. November 1912 in Abterode ; 4. April 1965) war Ärztin bei der Organisation Todt und in dieser Funktion auch im Außenkommando Mühldorf tätig. Flocken, promovierte Medizinerin, war von Juni 1944 bis April 1945 als leitende Ärztin der Organisation Todt (OT) im OT-Krankenhaus Schwindegg als Zivilangestellte tätig. In dieser Funktion war sie auch für die Häftlinge des Außenkommandos Mühldorf, einem Außenlager des KZ Dachau, zuständig. Sie soll kranke Häftlinge vernachlässigt und ihnen medizinische Hilfe verweigert haben. Flocken war in Mühldorf am 25. September und 25. Oktober 1944 an Häftlingsselektionen beteiligt. Der erste Invalidentransport umfasste 277 Männer und drei Frauen, der zweite 554 Männer und eine Frau. Die mehrheitlich jüdischen Häftlinge wurden im KZ Auschwitz vergast.

Nach ihrer Verhaftung wurde Flocken am 1. April 1947 im Mühldorf-Prozess, der im Rahmen der Dachauer Prozesse stattfand, aufgrund der Anklage von Kriegsverbrechen mit 13 weiteren Beschuldigten vor ein amerikanisches Militärgericht gestellt. Am 13. Mai 1947 wurde Flocken wegen der Durchführung von Selektionen zum Tod durch den Strang verurteilt. Sie gehörte zu den ersten Frauen, die durch ein US-amerikanisches Militärgericht zum Tode verurteilt wurden. Die Todesstrafe wurde später in eine lebenslange Haftstrafe umgewandelt. Am 16. August 1956 wurde die lebenslange Haftstrafe auf 38 Jahre Haft reduziert. Flocken wurde jedoch am 29. April 1957 aus dem Kriegsverbrechergefängnis Landsberg vorzeitig auf Bewährung entlassen. Am 13. Juli 1958 erfolgte die endgültige Haftentlassung. Über ihren weiteren Lebensweg ist nichts bekannt.

Angela Maria "Geli" Raubal (4 June 1908 – 18 September 1931) was Adolf Hitler's half-niece. Born in Linz, Austria-Hungary, she was the second child and eldest daughter of Leo Raubal Sr. and Hitler's half-sister, Angela Raubal. Raubal was close to her uncle from 1925 until her suicide in 1931. Angela Maria "Geli" Raubal was born in Linz, where she grew up with her brother, Leo, and a sister, Elfriede. Her father died at the age of 31, when Geli was two. She and Elfriede accompanied their mother when she became Hitler's housekeeper in 1925; Raubal was 17 at the time and spent the next six years in close contact with her half-uncle. Her mother was given a position as housekeeper at the Berghof villa near Berchtesgaden in 1928. Geli moved into Hitler's Munich apartment in 1929 when she enrolled in medicine at Ludwig Maximilian University. She did not complete her medical studies.

As he rose to power as leader of the Nazi Party, Hitler was domineering and possessive of Raubal, keeping a tight rein on her. When he discovered she was having a relationship with his chauffeur, Emil Maurice, he forced an end to the affair and dismissed Maurice from his service. After that he did not allow her to freely associate with friends, and attempted to have himself or someone he trusted near her at all times, accompanying her on shopping trips, to the movies, and to the opera. Raubal was in effect a prisoner, but planned to escape to Vienna to continue her singing lessons. Her mother told interrogators after the war that her daughter was hoping to marry a man from Linz, but that Hitler had forbidden the relationship. He and Raubal argued on 18 September 1931—he refused to allow her to go to Vienna. He departed for a meeting in Nuremberg, but was recalled to Munich the next day: Raubal was dead from a gunshot wound to the lung; she had shot herself in the Munich apartment with Hitler's pistol. She was 23.

Rumours immediately began in the media about physical abuse, a possible sexual relationship, and even murder. Historian Ian Kershaw contends that stories circulated at the time as to alleged "sexual deviant practices ought to be viewed as ... anti-Hitler propaganda". The police ruled out foul play; the death was ruled a suicide. Hitler was devastated and went into an intense depression. He took refuge at a house on the shores of Tegernsee lake, and did not attend the funeral in Vienna on 24 September. He visited her grave at Vienna's Zentralfriedhof (Central Cemetery) two days later. Thereafter, he overcame his depression and refocused on politics. Hitler later declared that Raubal was the only woman he had ever loved. Her room at the Berghof was kept as she had left it, and he hung portraits of her in his own room there and at the Chancellery in Berlin.

Otto Frommknecht (1881 – 1969) is a German politician. He was a representative of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria and from 1919 to 1933 was a member of the Bavarian People's Party. He was a state minister for Verkehr.

Peter Bürgel (born March 22, 1953) is a German politician, representative of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria. He has been particularly active in his home town of Dachau, known as an artists colony. In 2007 he was elected President of Bürgel EuroArt.

Kurt Bürger (August 27, 1894, Karlsruhe, Baden as Karl Ganz – July 28, 1951, Schwerin) was a German politician. From 1912 to 1918, he was a representative of the Social Democratic Party. In 1919, he was a cofounder of the Communist Party of Germany. After World War II, he became a member of the East German Socialist Unity Party and served as minister-president of the East German state of Mecklenburg in 1951.

Karl Wilhelm Berkhan (April 8, 1915 in Hamburg – March 9, 1994 in Hamburg), also known as Willi Berkhan, was a German politician, representative of the Social Democratic Party.

Walburga Fricke (born 14 September 1936) is a German politician, representative of the Christian Social Union of Bavaria. She is a member of the Landtag of Bavaria.

Chimelli studied first law and economy. In 1968, he went to Beirut, from where he contributed to several newspapers with articles about the Arab world. In 1972, he moved to Moscow and was from 1979 to 1998 redactor in Paris for the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

He published many of his journalistic works. In 1986, the Bundesverband Deutscher Zeitungsverleger awarded him the Theodor-Wolff-Preis. In 1992 Chimelli was honored with the Joseph-Roth-Preis, and in 2007 he received the Officer's Cross of the Republic of Germany.