Professor Maximinus Friedrich Alexander de Crinis (29 May 1889 – 2 May 1945) held a chair in psychiatry in Cologne and at Charité in Berlin, and was a medical expert for the Action T4 Euthanasia Program who wrote the Euthanasia Decree, signed by Adolf Hitler on 20 September 1939.
Max de Crinis | |
|---|---|
| Born | Maximinus Friedrich Alexander de Crinis 29 May 1889 |
| Died | 2 May 1945 (aged 55) |
| Cause of death | Suicide by cyanide poisoning |
Crinis was born in Ehrenhausen near Graz. As an Austrian, he joined the Nazi Party in 1931. Not only was de Crinis a high-ranking SS member,[1] he was the most outspoken and influential Nazi in German psychiatry, a psychiatric consultant at the highest level of the regime. De Crinis became medical director of the Ministry of Education in 1941. He was also a director of the European League for Mental Hygiene. Furthermore, he politically supported fellow Nazi Max Clara's attempts to obtain professorship at the University of Leipzig.[1]
According to Heinz Guderian, Dr De Crinis was the first doctor to correctly diagnose Hitler's malady as being Parkinson's disease.[2] The diagnosis made in early 1945 was kept secret. On 1 May 1945, after killing his family with potassium cyanide, de Crinis took his own life in Stahnsdorf near Berlin, by taking a cyanide tablet himself.
References
edit- ^ a b Woywodt, A; Lefrak, S; Matteson, E (October 2010). "Tainted eponyms in medicine: the "Clara" cell joins the list". The European Respiratory Journal (Review). 36 (4): 706–8. doi:10.1183/09031936.00046110. PMID 20889455.
- ^ Guderian, Heinz (1996). Panzer Leader. Da Capo Press. p. 443. ISBN 0-306-81101-4.
Further reading
edit- Photograph at Axis History Forum
- Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler by Roeder, Kubillus and Burwell ISBN 0-9648909-1-7
- Geoffrey Cocks: Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Göring Institute (2nd ed), Oxford University Press, New York, 1985 (ISBN 0195034619)
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