Background
Gerhardt Wagner was born on 18 August 1888 in Neu-Heiduk.
Gerhardt Wagner was born on 18 August 1888 in Neu-Heiduk.
Co-founder and head of the Nationalsozialistischer Deutscher Àrzte-Bund (National Socialist German Doctors' Association) from 1932, he was appointed Reich Medical Leader two years later. A member of the Reichstag ( Wahlkreis Pfalz) from 12 November 1933 and Nazi Medical Leader for Franconia.
Already in September 1935 the former Freikorps man and archetypal Nazi physician had emerged as a notorious public advocate of the anti-Jewish racial laws, in a speech which he made at the Nuremberg Party rally.
The orator, a protégé of Rudolf Hess (who was his patient), advocated sterilization for Jews as well as defectives. In the same speech Dr Wagner emerged as the godfather of the euthanasia programme and an advocate of the survival of the fittest, deploring the millions of marks spent each year for children and adults afflicted with congenital diseases such as blindness, deafness, dumbness and mental illness.
Wagner was one of the most rabid Jew-baiters in Hitler's entourage.