[Honors granted by the German Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy (DGKJP) and its predecessors]

Honors granted by the German Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy (DGKJP) and its predecessors Abstract. Abstracts: This research on the "honors" granted by the German Society for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics and Psychotherapy (DGKJP) investigated all persons honored by the society from 1950 (following the postwar reestablishment of the society) up through 1990 (German reunification). We explored the adequacy of the honors regarding the professional ethics of the honorees during the NS-regime. Ethics violations included so-called T4-assessments (euthanasia) leading to death, working in "special units" where children were murdered using drugs, or any form of nontherapeutic experiments on humans. The Heinrich Hoffman Medal was first awarded in 1957, with honorary memberships being conferred from 1963 onward. From 1957 to 1990, the DGKJP awarded 19 honorary memberships and 9 Heinrich Hoffman Medal to 27 recipients (one person received both). Of those honored, three were detected as violators of professional ethics. After long internal discussions, the DGKJP had already distanced itself from Elisabeth Hecker (1895-1986), Hans-Alois Schmitz (1899-1973), and Werner Villinger (1887-1961). The ideology shared by these three was formulated by Villinger as the "ineducability" of their child victims because of an "inferiority paradigm." The rejection by the DGKJP went little noticed in public, and until 2021 was only briefly mentioned in the society's newsletter. Eleven honored persons were former members of the NSDAP without demonstrable ethical transgressions; the investigations are still ongoing for three others, whose ethical transgressions have neither been ruled out nor confirmed.