Marburg University clinic and the psychiatrists

Yes, I am back on the subject of Marburg: 2012 will be the centenary of Hermann Cohen leaving the university and still the tourist town will not have named a street for him (unlike Paul-Natorp in Cappel.)

The university further disgraced itself by the hiring it engaged in immediately after the war.  Perhaps you think I exaggerate?

Here is a quote from the Schilpp volume (1957, 1981) for Karl Jaspers (the later edition contains his comments on Heidegger.)  I will quote Kurt Kolle of Munich University (Psychiatry and Neurology) on page 457 (the later edition cleverly preserved pagination) in his criticism of a naive Jaspers:

[objections to Jaspers'] rigorous condemnation to any kind of eugenic measures; Jaspers denies that 'degeneration' is an 'inescapable process.'  The present writer believes that Jaspers does not sufficiently take into account the total rise of the population which carries with it the danger of the suppression of valuable minorities, the increase of inferiors and the gradual dying out of the white races

The entire paragraph is worth reading for the paragraph which follows on Jaaspers for anyone who has to deal with human beings.  Not treat, understand or attempt to heal or cure: deal.

The medical profession and especially the academic wing, embraced the National Socialist programme.  It had meant a real prospect for a social corrective in the forced sterilization of the unfit.  They had made a great deal of progress at Hadamar prior to the failure of the Wehrmacht to defeat the Slavs.

The consolation to the eugenic-minded practitioners: that the tiny German minority might yet survive in the face of the Slavic hordes and the yellow masses, the swarming brown-skinned inferiors.  You really must read in this the one great consolation they could take: that so many Slavs had been prevented from reproducing through the natural coial porcess of warfare.

You think that I exaggerate.  Surely I exaggerate.  They sat over their coffees or beers and talked about the outcome of the war: here they were, back at their research, and what would an objective assessment be - a scientific assessment of the outcome and of their research prospects and prospects to influence social policy.

We lament the failure to de-nazify eastern Germany and Austria: but there could not be the luxury of de-nazification of the psychiatrists because too careful screening would mean having to engage foreign-trained staff - and you know what that means.

While it was thought a service to philosophy to re-isse the expanded Schilpp volume with Jaspers view of Heidegger, the real value is in having preserved the essays by Kolle, Arendt and Ricoeur.  It is to be hoped that the volumes available as microfilm will be preserved as digital resources.

Documents with evidence concerning the beds being "freed" at the Marburg Anstalt - freed for use by slave labor at Stadtallendorf Nobel Dynamite - are archived here at the University of Minnesota in what had been the remnant of the German colony at Memphis, now 'ethnically polluted' but fortunately in one of the bastions of modestly cosmopolitan and liberal mid-west America.

a note on ad hominem consideration of a line of argument

ad hominem is sometimes lumped together with attacking the example someone chose to illustrate a point rather than their argument [or, if you insist, "the" argument.]

But consider Michael Martin on R. Taylor's case for teleology and design.  Martin's 1990 book reports that Taylor had occasion to respond to critics but that he did not reply (although someone sympathetic to his argument, Creel, did reply.)

When we are asked to consider such things as "I think that what Philo was trying to say ... " or "I think that what Philo may have intended was ..." then the failure to respond can be more than a refusal of dialog - especially so if the argument or line of thought has been published as a non-specialist text.

In Taylor's case, his book "Metaphysics" was not aimed just at the specialist, but also at a more general reader and likely had the philosophy student in mind.

That an effort to defend or clarify is seen to fail, is one thing. To fail to make that effort is quite another.  Whether due to arrogance, or unwillingness to retract, or due to pride or neglect, it is a moral failing of the philosopher.

Sometimes the philosopher's choice of where to speak can be likened to the choice of a regrettable example.   Peter Singer launched a storm of irrational and emotional protest by proposing to speak on medical ethics and the termination of life at Uni. Marburg/Lahn.  This location was construed as no idle choice for the organizers and no doubt Singer was ignorant of the history of the Marburg University medical clinic in the Nazi "T4" program (and the university's readiness to hire Nazi medical staff after the war.

To make matters worse, Marburg, untouched in the war, failed to rebuild the great synagogue destroyed in the November Pogrom.  Marburg and the surrounding area had failed to find even a small lane to bear the name of Hermann Cohen (other streets bear the names of academic notables - Cohen merited only a small plaque at the old university.)  For years the inscription at the old site was in memory of those residents of Marburg who feel in the war ( a slight variant on typical village memorials to Great War heros which one finds in small towns in the area.)

Once Marburg psychiatric housing had been emptied, it served to house slave labourers for the Noble dynamite factory at near-by Allendorf (per documentation at the archive of the University of Minnesota.)

Historians indicate that public objections to Action-T4 had an affect on the Nazi regime: there is no historical record that any public objections by Marburg notables were ever made such as might have served to spare the Jews of Marburg, the home of theology and philosophy and sometime home to the industrious Brothers Grimm.

When a philosopher from Marburg says nothing (Heidegger never returned to Marburg to urge the rebuilding of the synagogue - nor did the illustrious Hannah Arendt) it can be as serious a concern as when a philosopher choses to advocate mercy killing in a town which has yet to come to terms with its complicity in willful human slaughter.  It brings into question who is that "we" who are ready to engage Peter Singer in that particular dialog no matter how impressive his line of argument.  The city of Marburg is not yet that place.  Tourists arriving to see the St Elizabeth church and enjoy shopping in the quaint streets are able to enjoy their visit most often without having once to consider who is missing from the scene.  A building advertises the Grimm brothers worked here; no building says "the family Rosenberg had a business here prior to ..." or "This house was purchased below market price after the Rosenberg family ...".  They need not advertise: but the plaque needs to be there to be read by this generation and the next and perhaps even one more after.  And the synagogue must be rebuilt.  link: History page of the tiny renewed Jewish community of Marburg.