Joseph Mengele, born in 1911 in Ginzburg (Bavaria), originated from anindustrialist family and entered the “Stahlhelm”, a right-wing militant organisation which had been founded by former soldiers of the war, as a 20-year old man. In 1934 he changed to the SA and became a member of the NSDAP and SS in 1937. At the University, his national socialist ideology was developing. He studied in Munich, Bonn, Frankfurt and Vienna. He first concluded his philosophical studies in 1935, at the Anthropological Institute in Munich.
Title of his dissertation: “Rassenmorphologische Untersuchung des vorderen Unterkieferabschnitts bei vier rassischen Gruppen” (“race morphological examination of the lower part of the jaw bone among four racial groups”) which was followed in 1938 by the medical thesis about “Sippenuntersuchungen bei Lippen-Kiefer-Gaumenspalte” (“Clan examinations at lip-jaw-palate-cleft.”) which sounds very much alike his later works in Auschwitz. Mengele had already pointed out the importance of researchs on twins. As member of the NS-Institute for “Erbbiologie und Rassenhygiene” (“Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene”) he joined the “Waffen-SS” voluntarily and worked as medical officer in France and the Soviet Union, where he received high distinctions before he was declared unsuitable for military at the front after an injury. In 1943, he went to Auschwitz – again voluntarily – in oder to conduct medical and anthropological examinations and was therefore supported by the “Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft”. Priority of his “research” was a fanatically pursued “Research on twins”.
Obviously he wanted to verify the hereditary influences on people. Each twin-couple could be observed under the same life conditions and sent to death in best health – an ideal assumption for post-mortal research. Other fields of his “research” were the examinations of Lilliputians as example of the “Abnormal” and the “Noma” – illness of cheeks which were caused by physical and psychical exhaustion. Until shortly before the evacuation of Auschwitz, he worked there before he returned to Gnzburg, where he was not prevented from building up the firm of Carl Mengele and Sons again. It was not until the mid-50ies, when the author Ernst Schnabel made Mengele an object of public discussion with his publication about Anne Frank. Mengele had been going to South America already. He was never sent to Germany and presumably died in Brazil in 1979 at a swim.
