Correspondence and papers regarding Georg August Welz
Chronological
This collection of correspondence relates to a letter which Elizabeth Castonier had published in the Süddeutscher Zeitung in August 1958, alleging the culpability of Professor Georg August Weltz, then Professor of X-Ray Physiology at the university of Munich, in war crimes, specifically medical experiments on prisoners to test how their bodies react to extremely cold temperatures. The collection includes a copy of an affidavit by Weltz, dated 1946.
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Georg August Weltz was born in Ludwigshafen in 1889. He studied medicine at the universities of Jena, Kiel, Königsberg (now Kalingrad) and Munich. In 1913 he was awarded a PhD on the aetiology of fibroids on the abdominal wall. During the First World War he worked in the medical corps, eventually employed as assistant doctor. From 1919 to 1920 he was employed as assistant doctor in a surgical clinic in Munich and from 1921 to 1936 he was active as a radiologist. From 1937 Weltz was a member of the Nazi party. In August 1939 he was enlisted in the Luftwaffe as a medic. From 1937 Weltz sat on the board of the German Radiologists Association. From 1936 he was a lecturer at the university of Munich and head of the institute for aviation medicine which, from 1941 became known as the Institut für Luftfahrtmedizin der Luftwaffe. In 1943 he was appointed special Professor for Röntgenphysiologie (X-Ray physiology) with an emphasis on aviation medicine. At the university of Munich he taught intermittently work, sport- und military physiology. After the war he was tried at the Nuremberg Medical Trial for his involvement in severe chilling at altitude experiments. But was acquitted along with Siegfried Ruff and Hans-Wolfgang Romberg. At a later trial in Munich, 1959, proceedings were terminated due to lack of evidence. In 1952 Weltz was appointed special Professor for Röntgenphysiologie at the university of Munich. He also ran his own radiology practice. He died in 1963. According to a letter to the Süddeutscher Zeitung in September 1958, Elizabeth Castonier had been a former patient of Weltz in the early 1950s at his Munich practice.
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