Recovering from trauma is, I have decided, snakes and ladders. And yes, I do class my experience this year as trauma. Being given the silent treatment is trauma. Being blindsided by someone I loved and never given a reason for it is trauma. Anyway, snakes and ladders. I was on a ladder roll, climb and trudge, up and slowly up. I went to Lisbon to stay with my friends Elliot and Amy and it was five days of walking, drinking, eating, socialising, touristing. It was wonderful and it was peaceful because the thoughts stopped. I stopped ruminating and imagining and wondering and hurting. It was a place that had nothing to do with him, and it was like a healing bath. I said to Elliot, right, I need to create the distance I have found here at home. I don’t know how to do that yet. Then yesterday, a big snake, a huge slap in the face and down I go again, to total distress and shock. Ladders and snakes. I know writing about this gets boring. But this is an endurance event not a sprint.
I just needed to write that bit and now I’ll get on to the evil Nazi doctor.
Hermann Stieve was a German doctor who was interested in the female reproductive system. Great! Women need more scientists and medics to be more interested in the female reproductive system. But maybe not like this. When the Nazi regime launched, he was fully in favour of it. He didn’t object when the Jews were kicked out of Leipzig University, where he was a professor. He was more interested in how difficult it was to study the impact of stress of human female ovaries. He tried with animals, putting foxes near hens to see whether they ovulated normally. Probably not, because you wouldn’t would you? Hermann managed to get some donated uteruses and such from accident victims. But he wanted ovaries from a healthy woman. Lucky Hermann, then came political prisoners.
By 1934, the Nazis were arresting many real and perceived opponents. All were imprisoned; enough were executed that there was no longer a shortage of bodies for researchers to use. "The execution chambers of jails throughout the Third Reich were virtual slaughterhouses, and the remains were delivered to every university institute of anatomy in Germany (and probably Austria)," writes University of Toronto medical historian William Seidelman.
Medical men being dodgy ethicists with executed or dug up and stolen corpses, nothing new there. Stieve got his hands on 182 victims of the Nazis between 1933-1945.
For the female corpses he was particularly interested in, Stieve made use of the prison's detailed recordkeeping. He got histories that included information about how the women had reacted to their death sentences, how well they had adjusted to prison life, and the timing of their menstrual cycles. When a woman of reproductive age was to be executed by the Gestapo, Stieve was informed, a date of execution was decided upon, and the prisoner told the scheduled date of her death. Stieve then studied the effects of the psychic trauma on the doomed woman's menstrual pattern. Upon the woman's execution, her pelvic organs were removed for histological (tissue) examination. Stieve published reports based on these studies without hesitation or apology. He wrote 230 papers on the effect of stress on the female reproductive system.
In Sabine Hildebrandt’s excellent paper “The women on Stieve’s list,”, she wrote that “he saw the situation of a prisoner condemned to death as a scenario that allowed him to explore the influence of chronic stress—in the form of imprisonment—and acute stress—elicited by the pronouncement of the time of execution—on the reproductive organs.”
Three women at least asked for their bodies to be returned home.
‘‘Make sure that my mortal remains are buried with my mother’s.‘‘ Last letter, Bronisława Czubakowska
‘‘As a last wish I have asked that my ’material substance’ be left to you. If possible, bury me in a beautiful place amidst sunny nature.‘‘ Last letter, Libertas Schulze-Boysen
‘‘I want her, if possible, to take me home, so that I can at least be with her in death.‘‘ Last letter, Herta Lindner
Instead they were given to anatomists and never given a grave. Because they had reproductive organs that men wanted to study.
Stieve believed that reproductive organs are directly influenced by the nervous system. He wanted to explore the effect of “massive fear” on these organs. “According to this hypothesis,” write Andreas Winkelmann and Isabel Freiburger in this paper, “nervous influence can lead to atresia of follicles in the ovary and to amenorrhoea, and the direct influence on the uterus can produce what Stieve termed “Schreckblutung [shock bleeding]”.
Ah. This is probably why I downloaded a page on Herman Stieve into my ideas folder. Shock bleeding. I know about that. And much as I don’t like to agree with a Nazi anatomist, I am certain my six weeks of deranged bleeding were caused by trauma and stress.
Winkelmann and Freiburger wonder, as I wonder, how Hermann got his information. His studies included analysis of the women’s biography and their “crimes.” But how did he get them?
A hallmark of Stieve’s publications are his elaborate case descriptions that bring the individual histology of ovary and uterus close to the women’s biography, including not only details of their cause of death and/or (alleged) crimes, but also intimate detail of their sexual life and their menstrual cycle. It is still controversial how Stieve gained access to such information. After the war, he explained that his sources had been court records, prison doctors and warders, or even the families of the deceased.
They are not persuaded. When they analysed 304 case descriptions from Stieve’s publications, they found that “of these, 88 could be linked with 33 identifiable women and related historical records. Nearly all reported causes of death and/or verdicts of executed women were false.”
From Medicine and Murder in the Third Reich, by William E. Seidelman (upon which much of the Wikipedia entry above is based):
After the war, Stieve lectured medical students on studies he had conducted on the migration of human sperm, studies performed on women raped before their deaths in Gestapo execution chambers. Stieve discussed this research before an audience of appalled but silent medical students in East Berlin. (Russian scientists reportedly sought out Stieve's research after the war.) Stieve served as dean of the Faculty of Medicine of Humbolt University, the East Berlin successor to the University of Berlin. A lecture room and a sculpture of his bust were dedicated in his honor at the Berlin Charité Hospital.
nice guy
In 1952, Stieve published the results of his research on executed women, “to international acclaim.”
Side point, I looked for a story I’d written on egg poachers and it is tagged with ‘this article is more than 21 years old.’ Cavolo and caspita as I’d say if I were an Italian being polite. Here is the 21-year-old story I wrote on egg poachers, weird men who damage wildlife for fun. I dug that up because the Metropolitan police has now disbanded its Wildlife Crime Unit. Egg poachers, and all you other bastards carrying out crimes against and using wildlife, fill your boots.
Barry is famous in Switzerland. He is known there as Barry der Menschenretter, which translates as Barry the People Rescuer. He was a Saint Bernard, and was born in 1800 at the Great St.Bernard Hospice, 2469 metres above sea level. St Bernards weren’t called St Bernards yet so he was probably an Alpine mastiff. The hospice has helped travellers cross the high pass for centuries. At some point, the monks thought dogs might be useful too.
Picture Barry and you will get it wrong.
He weighed around 45 kilos while an adult St. Bernard today can reach 80 to 130 kilograms. Over time the dogs were bred to be heavier and stronger so that they were better able to assist with rescues. Ironically, with the advent of helicopter rescue services, lighter dogs such as collies are preferred for avalanche rescue duties and St. Bernards are now considered too heavy.
a sylph
Barry is thought to have saved forty human lives during his twelve-year working life.
Most famously, he rescued a boy he found asleep in a cave of ice. The story goes that Barry warmed the boy by licking him, then carried him back to the hospice on his back. Legends of Barry tell of a dog that worked alone, going out into the snow and dragging back avalanche victims after digging them out. Only when a rescue proved too much for him would he alert the monks who would come to help. In reality it seems likely that the avalanche dogs of the time accompanied the monks as they patrolled the paths around the pass looking for travellers in difficulty.
Good dog, Barry.
He retired and spent two years living peacefully in Bern (don’t believe the daft story of him being killed by a Napoleonic soldier who mistook him for a wolf). Was he stuffed? See image above. Why was he called Barry? Ich habe keine ahnung.
All my Barry facts have come from this site, and this is possibly the best:
This is the bit where I politely urge you with Yorkshire grit to a) subscribe or b) upgrade to a paid subscription or c) click on the like button so I know you’ve read and maybe liked this. Needy? Yes.
