Georg (Georges) Schaltenbrand

Georg Schaltenbrand grew up in Oberhausen and Upper Silesia. His father Eugen, who was married to Adele Pastor, was a member of the board of Gutehoffnungshütte in Oberhausen and chairman of the steelworks association in Düsseldorf. Georg Schaltenbrand obtained his university entrance qualification at the Oberrealschule in Katowice in 1916. After studying in Breslau, Göttingen, Munich, and Hamburg, he was awarded a doctorate in medicine in 1923. The title of his Hamburg dissertation, supervised by Emil Kraepelin, was "Untersuchungen über Parkinsonismus und Hyoscinwirkung". Schaltenbrand continued his education in the USA, for example with the neurosurgeon Harvey Cushing in Boston (Rockefeller Foundation) in 1927/28. He returned to Hamburg in 1928, where he married Luise "Lu" Kleinwort the same year and habilitated with a study on human motor function. He was then appointed associate professor of neurology at the Rockefeller University in Beijing. He returned to Germany in 1930, joining Max Nonne at the Neurological Clinic in Hamburg-Eppendorf as a senior physician. After Nonne retired in 1934, Schaltenbrand took over as provisional clinic director, but then moved to Würzburg as an assistant physician in 1935, where he established the neurological department at the Internal and Nervous Diseases Clinic. He took the chair of neurology when it was established in 1937/38 and was soon appointed director of the neurological clinic. He continued to manage the clinic, with a five-year interruption after the end of the Nazi era, until 1968 even after his retirement in 1966.¹

In Favor of Hitler

Schaltenbrand joined the anti-democratic "Stahlhelm" movement in 1933 and signed the "Bekenntnis der Professoren an den deutschen Universitäten und Hochschulen zu Adolf Hitler und dem nationalsozialistischen Staat" (Confession of Professors at German Universities and Colleges to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist State) of November 9, 1933, and was a member of the NSDAP (May 1, 1937, no. 4850745). He was transferred to the SA as a "Stahlhelm" member, but left in 1936 due to occupational stress.² He was also a member of the Reichsschaft Hochschullehrer (Oct. 1, 1933), the NSD Ärztebund (1938, No. 24542), the NS Volkswohlfahrt, and of the NS air corps as Obersturmführer.

Transfers of Cerebrospinal Fluid Between Humans and Monkeys

Schaltenbrand believed that multiple sclerosis was an infectious disease throughout his life. He thus contradicted Friedrich Curtius' view that it was a hereditary disease, which was more dangerous to those suffering from it under National Socialism.³ He removed cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) from MS patients and transferred it to monkeys as part of a research project funded by the DFG in 1940.⁴ After some time, he removed the monkeys' cerebrospinal fluid and injected it into about 35 patients at the Werneck Psychiatric Clinic (Schweinfurt County) and about 20 critically ill patients at his own clinic.⁵ Michael Martin et al. summarize the "Schaltenbrand experiment" as follows: "The main focus of the series of experiments was the over-inoculation of supposedly infectious animal CSF (13 individual experiments) and, according to Schaltenbrand's conviction, infectious human cerebrospinalflfluids (10 experiments), in each case with cisternal application; control punctures were performed after about six weeks and after three months. Thus, in at least 23 cases he assumed to have transferred multiple sclerosis with humoral consequences (however, he also hoped for morphological sequelae) to the patients he was entrusted with. Schaltenbrand himself saw the series of experiments as fully confirming his infectious hypothesis of MS."⁶

Schaltenbrand was well aware of the ethical problems of his experiment, in which two seriously ill patients died. Regarding his approach, he wrote: "Nevertheless, one cannot, of course, subject a healthy person or even a sick person to such an experiment. But I do believe that I can bear the responsibility of carrying out such experiments on people suffering from incurable complete stupefaction."⁷

Impeachment and Rehabilitation

Schaltenbrand was removed from office in 1945 for having carried out these human experiments, but was formally rehabilitated in 1950, not least because of a decisive expert opinion by former DGIM committee member Viktor von Weizsäcker.

Schaltenbrand had been able to obtain lenient sentences in the denazification process from the beginning. First classified as follower (Category IV), he was completely exonerated (Category V) after an appeal. Schaltenbrand submitted papers proving intrigues against him by his Würzburg colleague Werner Heyde, the head of the medical department of the Berlin "euthanasia" headquarters. There was also talk of links to military resistance.⁸ Schaltenbrand was politically active on the center-left in the Federal Republic. He participated in demonstrations against "rearmament" and signed a declaration against the emergency laws in 1966.⁹

Honorary Member of the DGIM in 1976

Multiple sclerosis and the functioning of the brain continued to be the focus of his research after 1945, culminating in his "Gehirnatlas" in 1959. He had already been awarded the Martini Prize of the University of Hamburg in 1928. This was followed by the Röntgen Prize of the University of Würzburg (1943), the Wilhelm Erb Memorial Medal (1954), the Max Nun Memorial Medal (1966), and the Rinecker Medal of the Medical Faculty of Würzburg (1977). He was a member of the Leopoldina (1941), the Swiss Neurological Society (1955), the American Neurological Association (1955), and the American Acadamy of Neurology (1955). He was chairman of the German Neurological Society in 1953/54 and its honorary chairman since 1967. He also became honorary chairman of the Multiple Sclerosis Society in 1967. The DGIM made him an honorary member in 1976. His honorary membership was revoked in 2021.

A bust honoring Schaltenbrand at Würzburg University Hospital was removed in 1996 and has been owned by the family since 1999. His work had previously been the subject of the film "Ärzte ohne Gewissen" (Doctors Without a Conscience), based on Ernst Klee's research.¹⁰ While Schaltenbrand may have cultivated the image of "Nazi opponent" in his family, his unethical human experiments will not be forgotten.¹¹