Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring
In 1912 Karl Bonhoeffer succeeded Theodor Ziehen as professor of psychiatry at the Berlin Charité hospital. He became a prominent psychiatric consultant on culpability and insanity defense, who, after the Reichstag fire of 1933 attested Marinus van der Lubbe's capacity for guilt in the Leipzig Trial. As a follower of Emil Kraepelin, he worked on differential diagnosis to delimit schizophrenia and paranoia from a delirium as organic brain syndrome. He opposed the ideas of Freud and Jung and, although initially in favour of sterilization programmes, it is said he refused to participate in the Nazi-sponsored sterilizations started by the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring enacted in 1933. Karl Bonhoeffer officially retired in March 1936, though he continued to give scientific lectures until 1938. His successor at the Charité Hospital, Max de Crinis, was deeply involved in the Nazi abuse and murders of the Action T4 "euthanasia" programme.