After a serious illness, our deputy institute director Prof. Dr. Gerrit Hohendorf passed away in July 2021. Gerrit Hohendorf was a medical historian, a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy, an adjunct professor at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), and head of our medical history department at the Institute for the History and Ethics of Medicine (IGEM). His work has focused on medicine under National Socialism, the history and ethics of psychiatry, and current ethical issues at the beginning and end of life from a historical perspective.

Gerrit Hohendorf was a leading international expert in the field of research on Nazi medicine. His work on Nazi euthanasia was particularly groundbreaking. Between 2002 and 2007, he led a DFG project entitled "On the scientific indexing and evaluation of the medical records of the National Socialist 'euthanasia' action T4", which for the first time provided a sound statistical-empirical basis for research into the events surrounding the central "T4" hospital murder action. Already during this research project, a major concern of Gerrit Hohendorf crystallized with the consistent consideration of the perspective of those affected. The book he co-edited in 2007, "Forgetting the Extermination is Part of the Extermination Itself," impressively describes the lives of more than 20 victims of Nazi "euthanasia." In 2008, the publication was awarded the Research Prize on the Role of the Medical Profession in National Socialism by the German Federal Ministry of Health, the German Medical Association and the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. In the further course of his scientific career, Gerrit Hohendorf was also very concerned that the victims of Nazi "euthanasia" be accorded an appropriate and dignified place in the German and international culture of remembrance of the "Third Reich" and its medical crimes.

In this context, the establishment of an information and memorial site for the victims of National Socialist "euthanasia" at Tiergartenstraße 4 in Berlin was particularly important to him. On September 2, 2014, the memorial site, which he played a leading role in designing, was opened to the public. Gerrit Hohendorf's collaboration on the memorial book for the Munich victims of Nazi "euthanasia" was also groundbreaking. The book was published in 2018 and offers fundamental information on the investigation of victims of Nazi infanticide from a methodological point of view. Gerrit Hohendorf's postdoctoral thesis "Death as Redemption from Suffering - History and Ethics of Euthanasia since the End of the 19th Century in Germany" is considered an important reference work and was awarded the Publication Prize of the German Museum in 2014.

Gerrit Hohendorf was an amiable, people-oriented, helpful, reliable, and cooperative colleague beyond measure. We will greatly miss him as an enthusiastic teacher, as an always open and reflective interlocutor, and as an excellent researcher. Our thoughts are with his family, to whom we wish much strength in the face of this terrible loss.

To commemorate him, an academic memorial service was hosted at the Institute in the fall of 2021, honoring the work and accomplishments of Gerrit Hohendorf.

In memory,

the colleagues of the Institute for History and Ethics of Medicine, Technische Universität München