Ewald Stier

Ewald Stier
Prof. Dr. med. Stier, a military psychiatrist with a post at the Charité, was part of a generation of doctors whose careers were made by the war. His military background was reflected in the views he took on the issue of pensions and malingering. He is regarded as the “Nestor” of German military psychiatry.
Birth name	Hermann Otto Ewald Stier
Birth date	28 October 1874(1874-10-28)
Place of birth	Neuruppin, Province of Brandenburg, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Death date	1962
Place of death	West Germany
Allegiance	German Empire Weimar Republic
Service/branch	Prussian Army Imperial German Army Preliminary Reichswehr
Rank	Generaloberarzt (= Lieutenant Colonel)
Battles/wars	World War I
Awards	Iron Cross
Relations	∞ 1902 Martha Rost
Other work	Reichspost appraiser Consultant for the magazine “The German Military Doctor” (1936–1944)

Hermann Otto Ewald Stier (1874–1962) was a German physician, military doctor (Sanitätsoffizier), neurologist, psychiatrist and author. He became one of the foremost authorities on military psychiatry and pension questions in pre- and interwar Germany.

Life

Stier attended the Kaiser Wilhelms-Akademie für das militärärztliche Bildungswesen (KWA) from 29 March 1893 to 30 September 1897. Stier did a physiological dissertation in 1897 (PhD on 13 July 1897), but served afterwards as a military physician with the II. Battalion/Thüringisches Feldartillerie-Regiment Nr. 19 in Erfurt. He was promoted to assistant doctor (equivalent to a 2nd Lieutenant) on 17 October 1899. From 1 May 1900 to 30 September 1902, he was commanded to the psychiatric university clinic in Jena where he served under Prof. Dr. med. Otto Ludwig Binswanger. From 1901, he published on military psychiatric issues. On 22 April 1902, he was promoted to Oberarzt (equivalent to a 1st Lieutenant) and was later appointed to the at the Cologne Fortress Prison after his service in Jena. In 1905, he was serving with the II. Battalion/2. Garde-Regiment zu Fuß in Berlin.

The application of military psychiatry in the recruitment process led to new diagnostic technologies in psychiatry, notably the creation of intelligence testing. The crucial decisions were taken at a conference held in 1905 by the Scientific Senate of the Kaiser Wilhelms-Akademie in Berlin, the most respected academy for military physicians. The aim of the conference was to decide on methods to diagnose mental illnesses as early as possible in the course of military service. The main speakers were Ewald Stier, who was at the time a military physician on the medical staff of the academy, and Theodor Ziehen, a former supervisor of Stier and then director of the psychiatric clinic of the largest medical hospital in Berlin, the Charité. The decisions of the conference were later published officially. The participants of the 1905 conference agreed on strategies to be taken against mental illnesses in the army.

On 21 July 1906, he was promoted to Stabsarzt (equivalent to a Captain) and appointed to the KWA (since 14 June 1906) where his career had started 13 years earlier. At the same time, he was commanded to the Polyclinic for Nervous Diseases (Nervenklinik der Charité) at the Charité – Berlin University Medicine. A private lecturer for psychiatry and neurology since 1909, Dr. Stier qualified (Habilitation) as a professor in psychiatry and neurology in 1911 and was appointed extraordinary professor at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin in 1917. According to the doyen of German military psychiatry, Ewald Stier, in his inaugural lecture in 1911, the most important lesson of psychiatry is to illustrate the fact of the "inequality of the mental disposition of people". Basically, Stier meant social inequality, because he also warned against ignoring the inherited predisposition for certain professions and the "difference between the sexes, whether in work or in the profession of women" when filling leadership positions in society.

With regard to the "neurotic problem," psychiatrists demanded that doctors have greater authority than that provided for in the Reich Welfare Act and that this be anchored in institutions accordingly. In their view, the competence to make judgments in cases involving mentally injured soldiers clearly lay with the specialists. The lawyers and administrative officials involved in the welfare process were considered "laymen" by the psychiatrist Ewald Stier. He vehemently advocated an expansion of doctors' powers in order to, as he believed, also achieve a "speeding up" and "cheapening" of the process. To this end, the selection of experts for each individual case should be subject to a medical control body. He also hoped that this would enable him to eliminate diverging medical opinions. In the year before the war, he served as district staff doctor of the Landwehrbezirk III in Berlin.

At the end of WWI, he was a Oberstabsarzt (equivalent to a Major) and was released from military service in March 1920 as Generaloberarzt (equivalent to a Lieutenant Colonel). During the Weimar Republic, Stier was invited to speak at the Reich Insurance Office several times, whose officials were always informed about the latest state of medical research in scientific questions relevant to the assessment, e.g. “accident neurosis”. A fundamental mistrust of patients who could unjustifiably ‘obtain benefits by fraud’ is evident from the reversal of the burden of proof in the case of the ‘purely subjective phenomena’ of those suffering from neurological accidents. In 1928, Dr. Stier recommended the following guideline for the assessment to the audience at the Medical Conference:

"[...] we must be clear that pain is always a subjective symptom under all circumstances, that we can only base the diagnosis as such on the objective symptoms and that in the final judgment, in the case of subjective symptoms, we must take a detailed position on the question of whether, based on medical experience with uninsured patients, it can be assumed that the findings we have objectively proven actually make the pain complained of credible in terms of form, intensity and duration."

The doctors' self-image as experts acting on behalf of the "public good" inevitably changed their view of the doctor-patient relationship. According to the psychiatrist Ewald Stier, the psychiatric clinic in particular can no longer be just a place for therapy. Rather, it is the "task of university clinics - and this is the only reason they are maintained at the public's expense - to conduct unbiased and objective research and thus create new knowledge that should then benefit the public."

Military feeblemindedness

Since the 1890s some military physicians with a special interest in psychiatry, for example, Theophil Becker, Friedrich Düms and Ewald Stier, built their careers in military psychiatry on the critique of the assumed pathology of military service. Their critique used a hereditary aetiology against the term ‘military psychosis’. They argued that notions like ‘war’ or ‘military’ psychosis were conceptually wrong because the military profession or service in the army could not cause a mental illness. Rather, the pathology was due to the hereditary disposition that soldiers already had before their service.50 Instead of ‘military psychosis’, these authors preferred to speak of ‘neurasthenia’, ‘hysteria’ or ‘feeble-mindedness’, disease concepts related to hereditary predispositions. Of course, this replacement of socio-aetiological by hereditary models was not specific to the military but was quite common in late nineteenth-century psychiatry, also explaining, for example, the rapid rise of Morel’s theory of degeneration. In the army, this conceptual change was effected by 1896, when the concepts of ‘neurasthenia’, ‘hysteria’, and ‘feeble-mindedness’ were officially integrated into the medical statistics of the German army.

From 1900 onwards, feeblemindedness was the dominant theme in military psychiatric publications. The discussions were a result of the Psychiatric Conference of the Kaiser Wilhelm Academy, at which Stier gave the main lecture together with the Director of the Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic at the Charité, Georg Theodor Ziehen. The results were published under the title "On the Determination of Irregular Mental States in Conscripts and Army Members".

In 1902, Dr. Stier warned that the conscription of feebleminded people was one of the greatest dangers to the Prussian Army. The debate about feeblemindedness in the military gained momentum again after 1906, after various legal measures were passed that were intended to enable the discharge of those conscripted to the military who were considered feebleminded. A year later, Ewald Stier gave a lecture at the Special / Auxiliary School Teachers' Day in which he emphasized the importance of special schools in general and the personnel form in particular. Not only could special schools help to educate some young men to become useful soldiers. The special schools should also achieve something that even three mass medical examinations could not reliably achieve: identifying mentally inferior men and preventing them from being accepted into the military. This was a necessity both to protect the mentally inferior from unjust punishments and to protect the military from being undermined by mentally inferior people.

The mass examinations carried out by psychiatrically trained doctors during the conscription, recruitment and hiring ultimately only led to "keeping away almost all physically and mentally really ill people". Unfortunately, the "minor deviations" could not be detected using the rapid examination methods used during the conscription. It was impossible to determine mental inferiority in this way because "during the mass examinations during the conscription and recruitment, all young people were actually in a mental state that differed considerably from the usual one" - not least, the staff doctor suspected, because most young men tried to calm their excitement before the examination with alcohol. Stier described the determination of "real mental abilities" as "simply impossible", an indication of fundamental epistemological problems with psychological and psychiatric examinations.

However, the drafting of mentally inferior people into the Prussian Army had to be prevented, also in order to avoid publicly scandalized problems such as mistreatment by officers and to counteract the high suicide rate among ordinary soldiers, which Stier directly associated with "feebleminded, imbecilic and those without willpower." Stier was not alone in this assessment. The military regularly had to face parliamentary debates and daily press reports about violent measures. The diagnosis of mental retardation, which was made against the victims of this abuse, regularly served as an excuse for the military to accuse them and enabled the roles of perpetrator and victim to be reversed. The trigger for the abuse could be blamed on the mentally retarded soldiers and their rebellious behavior, and this made it possible to protect the superiors from punishment.

Stier saw the solution in having information about the young men's background available during the conscription and recruitment process, which had been the "main effort of the army administration for many years," but was actually more due to the insistence of military psychiatrists. The result of these efforts was an order from the Ministry for Religious, Educational and Medical Affairs on 7 November 1906, the purpose of which was to instruct the heads of the special schools to send an annual list of the pupils who have left their schools after completing compulsory schooling, together with their leaving certificates and any other assessments they deem appropriate (medical certificates, etc.), to the heads of the local authorities, who are obliged to compile the recruitment lists, for transmission to the civilian chairman of the replacement commission.

By successfully incorporating another intuition into the recruitment process in the form of the special school, military psychiatry stabilized its own position. At the same time, this use of the personnel forms as expert opinions in the recruitment process significantly increased the value of the special school teachers' knowledge recorded in the forms and of the special school as an institution, and gave it significance beyond the school system. Nevertheless, the doctors retained the power to decide on exclusion from the military, because the decree explicitly states

"that the fact that a conscript previously attended a 'special school' does not necessarily mean that his unsuitability for military service can be considered to have been proven."

The military recognition of the expertise of special school teachers with regard to the character and mental defects of special school students made the introduction of a standard form for special schools in Prussia seem an urgent necessity. In order for such a report to be of long-term use to the military and to ensure that the reports could be compared, it had to be written according to standard criteria, as Stier also demanded at the end of his lecture:

"The next and most important task of the special school heads will now be to contribute to ensuring that every conceivable and possible benefit and advantage for our army actually arises from all efforts by carefully implementing the Ministry of Education's order of 7 November 1906, and above all by creating a report form that is as standardized as possible, satisfactory in every respect and also short."

In 1907, Stabsarzt Dr. Stier had already emphatically stated what, from the point of view of military psychiatry, would be "the next and most important task of the special / auxiliary school directors": the "creation of a uniform, satisfactory in every respect, as well as short, reporting scheme." As a result, the disputes over the invariable form gained momentum. The new Berlin form already contained, as requested by the Dr. Stier, a page for a description of the military and the court. This short summary was not filled filled out for the majority of the children for whom the "Martini form" was used for the first time – an indication that the form specified something whose meaning could not be understood in practice. Just two years later, most of the brief descriptions for the military were filled out, and it is noticeable that there were often vehement warnings against conscription, e.g.:

"The special school urgently warns against taking the student into military service because he is too low mentally to be able to meet the requirements even as a man fit for work. He is also too slow and clumsy physically to be of any use."

In some cases, however, the degree of mental weakness was classified as so low that there was nothing standing in the way of military service despite attending special schools.

Desertion

The fact that the majority of soldiers who desert from the troops do not intend to evade their duty was the first to lead to the fine distinction between desertion and unauthorized departure in our current Military Penal Code for the German Empire of June 20, 1872. Paragraph 64 of the Military Penal Code states: "Anyone who leaves his troops or his position without authorization or intentionally remains away, or who exceeds the leave granted to him without authorization, will be punished for unauthorized departure with imprisonment of up to six months." The punishment is in any case prison or fortress detention (paragraph 66) if the absence lasts longer than seven days through the fault of the absentee. Dr. Stier wrote:

"Anyone who has not studied the question of desertion will find it a natural assumption that almost all soldiers who desert from the army do so deliberately and with clear consideration, based on a clearly visible motive to evade their duty, and that they try to carry out this intention in the most clever and subtle way possible. If this intention were correct, then the deserters could in no way claim greater medical-psychiatric interest, even against other offences. A simple observation of the facts teaches that this view is erroneous, and that only a certain small proportion of people desert according to a preconceived plan and with the intention of permanently evading service. In my experience, this small proportion includes above all the sailors who came from the cabin boys' division, who committed themselves to nine years' service, and who then, after a few years, became tired of military service. In a few other cases, insurmountable aversion to military life in general or fear of punishment is the driving motive."

DVFjP

Ewald Stier and Franz Kramer were represented on the advisory board of the Deutscher Verein zur Fürsorge für jugendliche Psychopathen e. V. (DVFjP; German Association for the Care of Juvenile Psychopaths), the neurologist and psychiatrist Karl Bonhoeffer (1868-1948), head of the Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic at the Charité since April 1912, was one of the members of the working committee. With the DVFjP, Ruth von der Leyen created the central organization from which all activities in the context of psychopath care in Germany were brought together and coordinated. The association quickly developed into one of the most active and influential organizations in the context of (curative) educational, welfare and medical treatment of mentally disturbed children.

Family

In this document from the personell files of Fritz Krause, the birth year of daughter Ilse is wrongly stated as 1906.

Ewald was the son of teacher and Gymnasium professor Martin Rudolph Ehrenfried Stier (b. 13 May 1835 in Frankleben, Province of Saxony, Kingdom of Prussia, German Confederation; d. 1 June 1912 Neuruppin) and his wife (∞ 28 November 1862) Marie Luise, née Breithaupt (1843-1905).

He had nine siblings:

• Ernestine Marie Sophie (b. 26 October 1863)
• Anna Elisabeth Adelheid (b. 13 October 1865)
• Alwine Martha Adelheid (b. 18 March 1867)
• Wilhelm Rudolph August (b. 20 April 1868)
• Auguste Johanna Hedwig (b. 24 August 1869)
• Martin Ewald Siegfried (b. 25 October 1870)
• Hermann Otto Ewald (b. 28 October 1874)
• Theodor (b. 1876)
• Auguste Luise Elisabeth (b. 11 June 1878)
• Thekla Klara Gertrud (b. 6 January 1882)

Marriage

On 3 October 1902, Oberarzt (equivalent to a 1st Lieutenant) Dr. Stier married his fiance Martha Helene Marie Rost (b. 15 May 1877) with whom he had two children:

• Ilse Elisabeth Auguste Marie (b. 20 June 1904 in Berlin); ∞ 1927 Karl Gustav Fritz Krause, later Generalmajor of the Wehrmacht, 4 children
• Ernst Martin Günther (1906–1994), Dr. jur., jurist, officer

Dr. Günther Stier (son)

Son Günther, born on 20 April 1906, studied law and received his PhD (Dr. jur.). he was a trainee lawyer (Referendar), then assessor. Afterwards, he was employed as a university assistant in Frankfurt am Main. Stier joined the NSDAP in March 1932 (NSDAP-No. 989,186) and the reserves of the Reichswehr (later Heer (Wehrmacht)) in August 1933 where he would eventually be promoted to 2nd Lieutenant. As such, was activated for the Poland Campaign and the Battle of France until 3 July 1940.

Since 1938, Dr. Stier was a member of the Allgemeine SS (SS-No.: 309,735). In 1939, he was appointed head of the West and Switzerland Department of the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle (Repatriation Office for Ethnic Germans; VoMi). After the Western Campaign, he was head of the Liechtenstein Department of the VoMi. In November 1940, he applied for the Foreign Department of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and was transferred to the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Nationality (RKFDV) in June 1941. As consultant (Referent) in the Main Department 1 (Human Deployment) he was tasked with the design and elaboration of the guidelines for the resettlement of foreign elements from southern Carinthia. After a meeting between the head of the Main Department 1 (human deployment) of the RKFDV office, SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Ernst Fähndrich, and the head of Office III B in the Reich Security Main Office, SS-Obersturmbannführer Dr. Hans Ehlich, the consultant Dr. Stier sent the draft to Dr. Ehlich on 24 June 1941. There is no difference between the draft and the original from 7 July 1941.

Stier was later appointed head of the Office in the Main Staff Office of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Nationality (Chef des Amtes im Stabshauptamt des Reichskommissars für die Festigung des deutschen Volkstums). As such, he was responsible for the establishment of German towns and villages in the occupied East. He only hesitantly, almost reluctantly, carried out the ordered evacuation of Poles in the Lublin (Zamosc) district to make room for the settlement of ethnic Germans, and was strongly criticized for this in writing to the Reichsführer SS by SS-Gruppenführer Müller on 31 October 1942. The criticism was not only directed at Dr. Stier but also at the German Settlement Company and the German Resettlement Trust Company. Head of the RKFDV office in Berlin SS-Gruppenführer Ulrich Heinrich Emil Richard Greifelt was also supervisory board member of the German Resettlement Trust Company and received an inquisitorial letter from Himmler on 3 December 1942. He assured him that Dr. Stier’s work was exemplary. On 30 January 1944, Dr. Stier was promoted to SS-Obersturmbannführer.

During the RuSHA trial in Nuremberg, Dr. Stier was a witness for the defence on behalf of SS-Obergruppenführer und General der Polizei Greifelt on 3 and 4 December 1947. He was later transferred to Poland in violation of international law and convicted in 1952 in Lublin during a show trial for participating in the resettlement operations in the Lublin and Zamosc area. It is assumed that he was released in 1956, but this is not clearly documented.

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Awards, decorations and honours

• Prussian Centenary Medal 1897 (Zentenarmedaille)
• Iron Cross (1914), 2nd and 1st Class
• Honour Cross of the World War 1914/1918 with Swords

Honours

• 1955 Honorary member of the Berlin Society for Psychiatry and Neurology (BGPN)

Works (excerpt)

• Ueber Verhütung und Behandlung von Geisteskrankheiten in der Armee, 1901/02
• Die Psychiatrie in der Armee (lecture)
• Ueber Geisteskrankheiten im Heere, in: "Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie und psychisch-gerichtliche Medizin", Volume 59, Berlin 1902
• Zur pathologischen Anatomie der Huntingtonschen Chorea, in: "Archiv für Psychiatrie", Volume 37, 1903, pp. 62–85
• Die Bedeutung der Hilfsschulen für den Militärdienst der geistig Minderwertigen
  • Die Bedeutung der Hilfsschulen für den Militärdienst der geistig Minderwertigen (Part 1), in: Zeitschrift für Kindererforschung, Issue 8, pp. 225–235
  • Die Bedeutung der Hilfsschulen für den Militärdienst der geistig Minderwertigen (Part 2), in: Zeitschrift für Kindererforschung, Issue 9, pp. 257–267
• Die Bedeutung der Nerven- und Geisteskrankheiten in der Armee im Lichte der Sanitätsstatistik, in: "Deutsche militärärztliche Zeitschrift", 1905
• Fahnenflucht und unerlaubte Entfernung. Eine psychologische, psychiatrische und militärrechtliche Studie, in: "Juristisch-psychiatrische Grenzfragen", Volume II, Issue 3/4, Verlag von Carl Marhold, Halle 1905
• Der Militärdienst der geistig Minderwertigen und die Hilfsschulen, in: "Beiträge zur Kindererforschung und Heilerziehung" (Beiheft zur Zeitschrift für Kindererforschung), Hermann Beyer & Söhne, Langensalza 1907
• Die akute Trunkenheit und ihre strafrechtliche Begutachtung, mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der militärischen Verhältnisse, Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1907
• Die Simulation von Krankheiten und ihre Beurteilung (together with others), Georg Thieme Verlag, Leipzig 1908
• Studien über Linkshändigkeit I., in: "Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie", 25, 1909, pp. 408–428
• Erkennung und militärärztliche Beurteilung der 'Psychopathischen Konstitutionen', in: "Berliner klinische Wochenschrift", 47, 1910
• Trunksucht und Trunkenheit in dem Vorentwurf zu einem deutschen Strafgesetzbuch, in: "Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten", Volume 47, June 1910, pp. 278–315
• Die Bedeutung der Psychiatrie für den Kulturfortschritt, inaugural academic lecture, Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1911
• Untersuchungen über Linkshändigkeit und die funktionellen Differenzen der Hirnhälften. Nebst einem Anhang: „Über Linkshändigkeit in der deutschen Armee“, Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1911
• Die Wehrpflicht der Verbrecher, in: "Monatsschrift für Kriminologie und Strafrechtsreform", Volume 9, Issue 1, 1912
• Die akute Trunkenheit, in: "Handwörterbuch des Militärrechts", Rastatt 1912, pp. 746–750
• Zur Aetiologie des konträren Sexualgefühls, in: "Monatsschrift für Psychiatrie und Neurologie", 32, 1912, pp. 221–241
• Die funktionellen Differenzen der Hirnhälften und ihre Beziehungen zur geistigen Weiterentwicklung der Menschheit, in: "Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift", 1912
• Die Geisteskranken im Lichte der Soziologie und Rassenhygiene (The Mentally Ill in the Light of Sociology and Racial Hygiene); lecture, Winter Semester 1912
• Wandertrieb und pathologisches Fortlaufen bei Kindern, in: "Sammlung zwangloser Abhandlungen zur Neuro- und Psychopathologie des Kindesalters", Volume I, Issue 1–3, Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1913
• Die respiratorischen Affektkrämpfe des frühkindlichen Alters, in: "Sammlung zwangloser Abhandlungen zur Neuro- und Psychopathologie des Kindesalters", Volume I, Issue 6, Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1918
• Wie kann der Enstehung von Kriegsneurosen bei Feldarmee vorgebeugt werden?, in: "Deutsche militärärztliche Zeitschrift", 47, 1918
• Die seelischen Wirkungen des Krieges, in: "Zeitschrift für Politik", Volume 11, 1919
• Über Erkennung und Behandlung der Psychopathie bei Kindern und Jugendlichen, in: "Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie", Volume 45, December 1919, pp. 350–373
• Über Ohnmachten und ohnmachtsähnliche Anfälle bei Kindern und ihre Beziehungen zur Hysterie und Epilepsie, in: "Sammlung zwangloser Abhandlungen zur Neuro- und Psychopathologie des Kindesalters", Volume I, Issue 7, Verlag von Gustav Fischer, Jena 1920
• Fürsorge für Psychopathen, in: "Sozialärztliches Praktikum", 1921, pp. 176–186
• Schwachsinnigenfürsorge, in: "Sozialärztliches Praktikum", 1921, pp. 187–196
• Rentenversorgung bei nervösen und psychisch erkrankten Feldzugsteilnehmern, in: "Handbuch der Ärztlichen Erfahrungen im Weltkriege 1914/1918", Volume IV: Geistes- und Nervenkrankheiten, Part 1, Leipzig 1922, pp. 168-193
• Über das gewohnheitsmäβige nächtliche Kopfschütteln der Kinder, in: "Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie", Volume 90, December 1924, pp. 212–234
• Über die sogenannten Unfallneurosen, Georg Thieme Verlag, Leipzig 1926
• Soziologie der Nervosität, in: "Handbuch der Sozialen Hygiene und Gesundheitsfürsorge", 1927, pp. 615–633
• Psychiatrie und Heer – Ein Rückblick, in: "Der Deutsche Militärarzt", Issue 1, 1936, pp. 15–20
• Kopftrauma und Hirnstamm, in: "Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten", Volume 106, December 1937, pp. 351–406
• Über Störungen des Geschmacks nach Kopfprellungen und ihre Lokalisation, in: "Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten", Volume 113, August 1941, pp. 619–654