Medicine under National Socialism: research connects different perspectives
Since 2025, the Jung Foundation has supported doctoral research on medicine under National Socialism through its Jung Fellowship for Medical History. As the first recipient, Maria Krümpelmann has now completed her funded year of research and presented findings from her doctoral project to date. Her research also offers points of connection with another medical history project supported by the Jung Foundation: research into medical care at the Neuengamme concentration camp.
The two projects focus on different historical settings and research questions. What they share is an interest in how medical knowledge, institutional structures and administrative decisions operated under National Socialism – and what consequences they had for the people affected.
Schizophrenia as a diagnosis with far-reaching consequences
Maria Krümpelmann examines the role and function of the diagnosis of schizophrenia in patient records from Hamburg’s Friedrichsberg State Hospital (Staatskrankenanstalt Friedrichsberg) during the National Socialist era. For her research, she analysed the hospital’s admission books from 1929 to 1949 as well as several hundred patient records.
Her findings show that schizophrenia was not a clearly defined and unchanging disease category in everyday clinical practice at the time. Alongside clinical observations, contemporary ideas about gender, family, work and social behaviour also influenced diagnostic assessment
The diagnosis could have far-reaching consequences. Drawing on the patient records, Krümpelmann traces how psychiatric classifications were linked to forced sterilisation and transfers to other institutions. The subsequent institutional trajectories of individual patients also reveal connections to the wider system of National Socialist psychiatric patient killings.
At the same time, many patient records preserve personal testimony in the form of letters, notes, drawings and other documents. Krümpelmann includes these sources in her research, helping to make the experiences of the people affected visible.
Different research settings, shared questions
This is where points of connection emerge with the research project at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial, which the Jung Foundation has supported since 2024. The four-year project focuses on the prisoners’ infirmary at the Neuengamme concentration camp. It examines, among other aspects, approaches to illness and dying, medical care provided by prisoners, the role of SS physicians and medical violence.
The historical contexts of the two projects are clearly distinct: while Maria Krümpelmann examines psychiatric diagnosis and its consequences within Hamburg’s psychiatric system, the Neuengamme project focuses on medical care and violence within the concentration camp system. Both projects, however, ask how medical knowledge and institutional structures became effective – and how the experiences of the people affected can be made visible today.
Medical history research as part of historical accountability
The Jung Foundation’s support for both research approaches is linked to its examination of its own history. Following a study initiated by the Foundation on its founder Ernst Jung and his companies during the National Socialist era, the Foundation adopted a package of measures in 2023. These include supporting the research project at the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial and establishing the Jung Fellowship for Medical History.
With Maria Krümpelmann’s funded year of research now complete, the first findings from the Fellowship are available. Together, the two projects shed light on the role of medical knowledge and medical institutions from different perspectives – while also bringing the experiences of the people affected into focus.