Following a resolution by the City Council on February 23, 1967, a street in the Bierstadt district was named after the physician and university professor Gerhardt Katsch. Gerhardt Katsch was born in Berlin on May 14, 1887, the son of playwright and painter Hermann Katsch and his wife, dramaturge Elisabeth Katsch (née Beutner). Katsch attended middle school and the French Gymnasium in Berlin from 1893 to 1905. He then studied biology, physics, and philosophy in Paris.

Beginning in 1906, Katsch studied medicine in Marburg and Berlin and received his doctorate in Berlin in 1912. That same year, he became a resident physician at the Hamburg-Altona Municipal Hospital and was promoted to senior physician there in 1914. After the outbreak of World War I, Katsch served in the military as a reserve battalion physician from August 1914 to January 1917 and from August to November 1918. In 1917, at the urging of his academic mentor Gustav von Bergmann, Katsch was granted a leave of absence from the army and completed his habilitation at the University of Marburg.
After the end of World War I, Katsch remained in Marburg as a senior physician under his mentor von Bergmann and moved with him in 1920 to the University Hospital in Frankfurt am Main, where he was appointed adjunct professor. In 1926, Katsch was appointed chief physician of the Medical Clinic at Heilig-Geist Hospital in Frankfurt am Main, and in 1928, he was appointed director of the Medical Clinic in Greifswald as well as professor of internal medicine at the University of Greifswald.

Katsch’s work and research focused on diabetes mellitus. To advance the study and treatment of diabetes, the “Arndt Foundation Garz Diabetes Home” was established on the island of Rügen with Katsch’s involvement. In 1937, the physician authored the “Garzer Theses,” a treatment method for diabetes, and initiated a paradigm shift in the characterization of the disease. Katsch regarded diabetes as a treatable condition.

Katsch based his treatment on a four-pillar system: diet, insulin, work, and community life. He sought to put this concept into practice at his diabetes home on Rügen.

After the National Socialists “seized power” in 1933, medical researchers debated whether people with diabetes should be included in the National Socialist eugenics program and sterilized. In the context of this debate, Katsch reiterated his “Garz Theses” and took the position that while people with diabetes were indeed ill, the disease was treatable. He rejected sterilization as a matter of principle, though he did not rule it out in individual cases.

Various speeches and lectures show that, despite his reservations about the general sterilization of people with diabetes, Katsch essentially argued within the paradigms of Nazi racial hygiene and the National Socialists’ concept of public health. In the debate over the inclusion of people with diabetes in forced sterilization processes, Katsch ultimately prevailed. Those affected were not generally subject to the “Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases in Offspring” of July 14, 1933.

Katsch became a probationary member of the NSDAP in 1937 and received his party membership card in 1943. Katsch was also transferred to the SA in 1933–34 as a member of the “Stahlhelm—League of Frontline Soldiers,” where he held the rank of Oberscharführer. In addition, Katsch likely served as a Sturmbannarzt in the SA. Gerhardt Katsch was also a supporting member of the SS and the National Socialist Air Corps. The supporting members of the SS formed a sub-organization of the SS that was open to non-NSDAP members and served to raise funds for the establishment and expansion of the SS. These financial contributions, which were generally paid monthly, did not entail any formal service in the SS. Additionally, his memberships in the National Socialist People’s Welfare Organization, the Reich Air Defense League, and the Reich Colonial League are documented.

In the immediate postwar period, probably in 1946, Katsch addressed his relationship with the NSDAP and the Nazi regime in a written statement. In this statement, he emphasized that conflicts with the party had arisen because he had insisted on retaining a Jewish assistant, the physician Alfred Lublin. Katsch also reported attempts to denounce him. In 1935, he was ordered to submit proof of ancestry on short notice. In addition, a request from the Reich Minister of Science, Education, and Public Enlightenment dated October 1938 has been preserved, asking him to submit proof of his wife’s ancestry to complete his personnel file. Katsch subsequently submitted his wife’s ancestry certificate. Party correspondence regarding Katsch also contains references indicating that he was in fact subjected to attacks by colleagues because of his allegedly “non-Aryan” ancestry. Paul Rostock, the Commissioner for Medical Science and Research under the Nazi General Commissioner for Medical and Health Services, inquired about the internist in 1944 with several of the physician’s colleagues and the Nazi Lecturers’ Association at the University of Greifswald. The reason for this was the intention to appoint Katsch to a full professorship at a larger university. In response to this inquiry, Gunther Schultze, the Nazi faculty leader at Greifswald, confirmed in late March 1944 that there were no reservations whatsoever regarding Katsch.

No attacks or professional disadvantages could be substantiated. Accordingly, Katsch was considered a candidate for a professorship at a larger university in 1944. At the same time, it remains unclear whether the internal attacks against Katsch at the university were also a reason for his numerous memberships in Nazi organizations.

It also remains questionable whether Katsch’s alleged assistance to his assistant Lublin was in fact the cause of hostility from the faculty at the University of Greifswald. In any case, contemporary documents contain no evidence of active assistance to Lublin.

The outbreak of World War II also affected Katsch’s medical practice. In 1940, for example, he proposed to his dean that classes be moved to a large military hospital. The proposal was not accepted.

Katsch himself became a consulting internist for the medical service in Military District II and was put in charge of the Greifswald reserve military hospitals. As a military doctor, Katsch was deployed several times near the front lines in the Balkans and Ukraine during the war. Following the invasion of the Soviet Union, Katsch was assigned in June 1941 to provide medical supervision and care at the Stalag II C prisoner-of-war camp. In addition, as a consulting internist, Katsch worked closely with the Army Medical Inspectorate, particularly with Kurt Gutzeit, the Chief Consulting Internist at the Army Medical Inspectorate. As part of this work, Katsch also participated in military research projects and attended conferences such as the “Arbeitstagung Ost” (“Eastern Workshop”) organized by the Army Medical Inspectorate in March 1943. At this conference, Karl Gebhardt and his colleague Fritz Fischer presented the results of their experiments with sulfonamide on intentionally injured female inmates of the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Thus, by this time at the latest, Katsch was aware of criminal human experiments within the German concentration camp system.

At the Greifswald Medical Clinic, Katsch, together with his senior physician Martin Gulzow, personally conducted so-called “refeeding experiments” on Soviet prisoners of war from the prisoner-of-war camp assigned to him, beginning in November 1941. The experiments were intended to investigate metabolic disorders resulting from malnutrition.

These experiments were carried out on 16 prisoners of war. Three prisoners of war died, while thirteen made a full recovery. Several of these recovered prisoners of war were deployed as forced laborers at the Greifswald Clinic and in agriculture following their treatment. Gerhardt Katsch’s motivation for these experiments was not solely to save lives, but also to generate nutritional and physiological insights. They were of indirect interest to the Wehrmacht and military medicine and were considered relevant to the war economy.

When the Red Army advanced on Greifswald at the end of the war, Katsch was a member of a seven-person German surrender delegation that conducted negotiations in Anklam regarding the unconditional surrender of the city of Greifswald. Katsch described the events in a report he wrote himself after 1945. Exactly what role he played in the city’s surrender remains unclear. In any case, the involvement of a high-ranking medical officer in one of the numerous decentralized surrender negotiations conducted by Wehrmacht formations and units during the final days of the “Third Reich” was by no means unusual. The key accounts from the postwar period—particularly the dramatic description of the alleged danger to his own person—come largely from Katsch himself. Photographs confirm his presence at a meeting with the Red Army; however, it is no longer possible to reconstruct exactly what role Katsch played in these negotiations.

What is certain is that Katsch repeatedly brought up his involvement in the surrender of Greifswald himself and was ultimately named an honorary citizen of Greifswald in 1952. In the German Democratic Republic, Katsch was able to continue his research and received extensive support. He authored numerous studies, supervised several hundred dissertations and postdoctoral theses, received additional salaries and expense allowances, and traveled abroad to give lectures and attend conferences. In 1952, he received the GDR National Prize; in 1953, Katsch became a full member of the German Academy of Sciences; and in 1954, he was appointed rector of the University of Greifswald. He held this office until 1957. In 1955, he was elected to the Leopoldina.

Katsch served several times as chairman of the German Congress of Internists (opens in a new tab) in Wiesbaden and, in 1953, became chairman of the German Society for Internal Medicine, which operated as a pan-German association until 1959. Katsch also received numerous honors. In 1951, he was awarded the honorary title “Meritorious Physician of the People” in the GDR. In 1953, the University of Greifswald conferred upon him the title of Honorary Senator. In 1956, he was awarded the title “Outstanding Scientist of the People.” A year later, the University of Greifswald awarded him an honorary doctorate and the university’s chain of honor. He died on March 7, 1961, in Greifswald.

Gerhardt Katsch’s role during the “Third Reich” has been the subject of controversy since the mid-1990s. As early as 1994, a demonstration took place during Diabetes Day in Berlin against the continued awarding of the Gerhardt Katsch Medal—created in 1979—by the German Diabetes Society. In 2001, the diabetologist Michael Berger declined the honor of receiving the Gerhardt Katsch Medal. Berger not only criticized Katsch’s role in the “Third Reich” but also called for a more realistic assessment of Katsch’s contribution to German diabetes research. Berger’s criticism led the German Diabetes Society to convene a Historical Commission.
The commission, composed exclusively of medical professionals, primarily evaluated Katsch’s medical achievements. Regarding the question of his relationship to National Socialism and its health policies, however, the report followed Katsch’s postwar statements. The report initially had no immediate consequences. The Gerhard Katsch Medal was renamed the Medal of Honor of the German Diabetes Society when it was awarded in 2023, after recent studies in the history of medicine suggested that it could no longer be ruled out that Katsch had acted unethically during the Nazi era, as the German Diabetes Society itself noted.

The Historical Expert Commission—appointed by a resolution of the City Council in 2020 to review public spaces, buildings, and facilities in the state capital of Wiesbaden named after individuals—recommended renaming Gerhardt-Katsch-Straße due to Katsch’s memberships in various Nazi organizations (NSDAP, SA, supporting member of the SS, supporting member of the NSFK, NSV, RKB, RLSB). He also held positions within the SA as an Oberscharführer and Sturmbannarzt, thereby actively supporting the Nazi state. Prior to 1933, he was active in a völkisch-nationalist group through his membership in the “Stahlhelm – Bund der Frontsoldaten.” Katsch publicly articulated National Socialist ideology in his writings and speeches by advocating the health policies and racial hygiene of the Nazi regime. In doing so, he made a public commitment to National Socialism.

In June 1941, Katsch was also assigned medical supervision and care of the Stalag II C prisoner-of-war camp. As part of this role, beginning in November 1941, he conducted so-called “refeeding experiments” on 16 Soviet prisoners of war. For these reasons, Katsch was involved in the deliberate harm of others between 1933 and 1945.

The responsible Wiesbaden-Bierstadt local council followed the recommendation of the Historical Expert Commission and decided on April 25, 2024, to rename the street Anna-von-Doemming-Straße. The renaming was implemented by a resolution of the municipal council on May 5, 2026.