Friedrich Panse (1899 – 1973)

Psychiatrist Friedrich Panse came from a working class family in Essen. Briefly a soldier in the First World War, he started studying medicine in Münster and Berlin in 1919. After graduating and obtaining his licence to practice medicine in 1924, he worked as a resident physician in the Wittenau Sanatorium in Berlin.

In 1936, Panse, now an associate professor, moved to Bonn, where he became the senior physician at the Institute for the Psychiatric and Neurological Study of Heredity in the Rhineland Province. In 1937, he was appointed lecturer for racial hygiene at Bonn University. Panse joined the NSDAP in 1937. From 1939 to 1945 he was an advisory Wehrmacht psychiatrist in  Münster and head of the reserve hospital in Porz-Ensen. Here, he treated traumatized soldiers with electric shocks (so-called »Pansen«). In 1940, he worked as an external expert for »Aktion T4«, assessing registration forms. In at least 15 cases, he pleaded for the killing of institutional patients.

Trials on account of his involvement in the »euthanasia« crimes ended with his acquittal in 1948 and 1950. Until his death, Panse was a director of various institutions, including director of the Psychiatric University Hospital Düsseldorf. In 1965/66, he was the President of the Society for Psychiatry and Neurology. His honorary membership there was revoked in 2011.