Reiter, Hans Conrad

(¤ 1881, † 1969) Hans Conrad Reiter, a German bacteriologist and hygienist, was born in Reudnitz on February 26, 1881. He attended the Thomasschule in Leipzig. Subsequently studied medicine in Leipzig, Breslau and Tübingen. In 1906, doctorate on the subject of nephritis and tuberculosis. Further training at the Institute of Hygiene in Berlin, at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and at St. Mary 's Hospital in London. There he collaborated with Sir Almroth Wright. Subsequently, Hans Conrad Reiter was an assistant physician in the pulmonary clinic of the University of Berlin until he became a private lecturer at the Institute of Hygiene in Königsberg in 1913. After participating as a physician and senior physician in World War I, he was appointed associate professor in Berlin in 1918. From 1919 to 1922, Reiter was first assistant and department head at the Institute of Hygiene at the University of Rostock. Appointed associate professor of social hygiene.

In 1926, he was appointed head of the Mecklenburg Regional Health Office. In 1928 first junior professor with teaching duties in social hygiene and in the same year honorary professor. Hans Conrad Reiter was an outstanding lecturer who enjoyed great popularity among his students. Reiter received a number of awards abroad, was a corresponding member of the Royal Society of Medicine in London.

As early as 1931, Hans Conrad Reiter joined the NSDAP, became an active supporter of the Nazi regime. Reiter was a member of the state parliament of the Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, president of the Reich Health Office, member of the Expert Advisory Council for Population and Racial Policy in the Reich Ministry of the Interior. 1933-1945 President of the Nazi Reich Health Office, Berlin (forerunner institute of today's R.Koch Institute). With Johann Breger he wrote a book on racial hygiene with the following basic racist statements:

• The hygiene of the future will be a hereditary-biological one, and any properly conceived population science will have to be a hereditary-biological hygiene.
• Only the state will be able to secure its existence which ensures the greatest possible development of its power through a rationally controlled human economy."
• The German people have "a right to defend themselves with all their strength against the over-alienation" by "forces completely foreign to their nature""

As head of the Reich Health Office, Reiter pushed the persecution of "racial" minorities. His "Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle" (racial hygiene research center) worked for the extermination camps by "registering" Roma and Sinti families. At Buchenwald concentration camp, the "Robert Koch Institute" - an offshoot of the Reich Health Office - organized spotted fever experiments on prisoners beginning in 1943. The experiments served to develop a vaccine. Of the approximately 450 people who were deliberately infected with the life-threatening disease, one in three died.

Reiter joined the SA on July 21, 1941, and received the rank of Standartenführer as an honor from party committees. As head of the Reich Health Office, Reiter pushed the persecution of "racial" minorities. His "Rassenhygienische Forschungsstelle" (racial hygiene research center) worked to the benefit of the extermination camps by "registering" Roma and Sinti families. At Buchenwald concentration camp, the "Robert Koch Institute" - an offshoot of the Reich Health Office - organized spotted fever experiments on prisoners beginning in 1943.

On August 18, 1942, Adolf Hitler appointed him an extraordinary member of the Scientific Senate of the Army Medical Service. After World War II, Reiter was interned from 1945 to 1947. He then worked as a physician at the Queen Elena Clinic in Kassel until his retirement in 1952. Hans Conrad Reiter died in Kassel on November 25, 1969. There was no public confrontation with National Socialism.

Hans Conrad Reiter is known for Eponyme Reactive Arthritis (Reiter's Syndrome, Reiter's Disease), Reiter's Spirochaeta.

Because of his inglorious role during the National Socialist rule in Germany, the term Reiter 's Syndrome is avoided in Anglo-American circles. In the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology, U.S. physicians Daniel Wallace and Michael Weismann call for the German to be stripped of the honor: "Should a war criminal be rewarded with such an award?" Reiter's disease should be replaced by the term "reactive arthritis." The New York Times also reflected on the problem on 280 lines, but came to no recommendation.

From a dermatological point of view, the terminology"reactive arthritis" is not very suitable to reflect the complexity of the syndrome, since the (non-bacterial) inflammation of the skeleton is only a partial symptom of the complex clinical picture.

1. Michael H. Kater: Doctors as Hitler's Helpers. Europa VerlagGmbH, Hamburg/Vienna; 568 pages;

2. Schwarz M, Alex O (2000) Eponyms in dermatology. Vivital Verlag Cologne, p. 153-154