Hans Conrad Julius Reiter Hans Conrad Julius Reiter ( February 26 , 1881 – November 25 , 1969 ) was a German physician convicted of war crime s for his medical experiments at the concentration camp at Buchenwald . He wrote a book on " racial hygiene " called " Deutsches Gold , Gesundes Leben - Frohes Schaffen " . Reiter was born in Reudnitz near Leipzig in the German Empire . He studied medicine at Leipzig and Breslau ( now Wrocław ) and received a doctorate from Tübingen on the subject of tuberculosis . After receiving his doctorate , he went on to study at the hygiene institute in Berlin , the Pasteur Institute in Paris and St . Mary ' s Hospital in London , where he worked with Sir Almroth Wright for two years . Reiter was also known for implementing strict anti - smoking laws in Nazi Germany . First World War . During the First World War , Hans Reiter worked as a military physician on the Western Front and in the Balkans , where he served in the 1st Hungarian Army . It was here in 1916 that he reported a German Lieutenant with non - gonococcal urethritis , arthritis and uveitis . He was not the first person to describe this syndrome , which would later become known as Reiter ' s syndrome ( later renamed to Reactive arthritis when his Nazi affiliation came to light ) . In the same year , and quite separately , the triad was reported by Feissinger & Leroy , and the triad was first reported by Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie ( English surgeon 1783 - 1862 ) . However , the combination of two of the elements ( arthritis and urethritis ) had been known from the 16th century . Reiter erroneously thought the triad to be due to a spirochaete related to but distinct from the causative agent of syphilis . This error probably was influenced by his discovery of the spirochaete cause of leptospirosis and a nonpathogenic strain of treponema related to T . pallidum ( the cause of syphilis ) . This " Reiter strain " of treponema enabled drug companies to later develop the " Reiter Complement Fixation Test " for syphilis . 1918 – 1939 . After the war ended , Reiter became chief of the hygiene department at Rostock . Hans Reiter was a political man , and an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazi regime . His career was further boosted when , in 1932 , he signed an oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler . In 1933 he was made department director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Experimental Therapy . In 1936 , his meteoric rise continued when he was made director of the health department of Mecklenberg - Schwerin and received an honorary professorship in Berlin . With Johann Breger he wrote a book on racial hygiene — " Deutsches Gold , Gesundes Leben — Frohes Schaffen " ( " German Gold , Healthy Life — Glad Work " ) . He was also a strong supporter of Hitler ' s anti - smoking campaign , medically progressive at the time . Reiter was a talented teacher who was popular with his students . Second World War . As a member of the SS during the Second World War , Hans Reiter designed typhus inoculation experiments that killed more than 250 prisoners at concentration camps like Buchenwald . He was an enthusiastic supporter of and participant in enforced racial sterilisation and euthanasia . After the Nazis were defeated , he was arrested by the Red Army in Soviet Union - occupied Germany and tried at Nuremberg , where he was found guilty of his involvement in the deaths of hundreds of inmates at Buchenwald . He was interned at an American prisoner - of - war camp . Later life . After his release , Reiter went back to work in the field of medicine and research in rheumatology . He died , aged 88 , in 1969 at his country estate in Kassel - Wilhelmshöhe . Controversy . In 1977 , appalled by his war crimes , a group of doctors began a campaign for the term " Reiter ' s Syndrome " to be abandoned and renamed " reactive arthritis " . In 2009 the campaign began to become successful and the term " Reiter ' s syndrome " is increasingly anachronistic .