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With the implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (1933), including the Third Implementation Decree (1934), the Regulation for Obtaining a Teaching License (1934) and the Law for the Dismissal and Transfer of University Teachers (1935), the National Socialist (NS) government created legislative instruments to ban university staff (from lecturers to full professors) labelled as Jewish or considered politically unwanted from teaching and research. Whereas around 20% of the staff at the universities were affected by these measures after 1933, at various medical faculties the figures reached 30–40% and at neurological departments and institutes sometimes up to 90%. Student Nazi activists played a significant role in expelling faculty members from office. As beneficiaries of the expulsions, young doctors often improved their career prospects and established professors remained silent out of political conviction, opportunism or fear. A (self) coordination (Gleichschaltung) with immediate or gradual exclusion of "non-Aryan" members and boards is documented for numerous medical organizations and associations (e.g. Deutscher Ärztevereinsbund, Hartmannbund, German Medical Women's Association, Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians) as well as for scientific academies (e.g. Leopoldina) and research societies (Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes, German Research Foundation). The NS-loyal Society of German Neurologists and Psychiatrists, which had been founded in 1935, tolerated "Jewish" members until 1938. As a whole, the picture that emerged from everyday medical (and neurological) practice is one of drastic changes that massively affected not only the lives of many doctors but also the moral standards in terms of patient care, teaching, research and collegiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

John Rittmeister was a German neurologist (1898-1943) who was executed in Berlin-Plötzensee because of his decision to support organized political resistance against National Socialism. He grew up in a socially and materially privileged environment and following his final school examinations (Abitur) in 1917 he volunteered for war duties despite limited physical capabilities and was posted as a private to the war front in the Italian Alps and the Champagne district. While he was there he made his first social experiences outside his original surroundings. After the war he studied medicine and following the final state examinations and graduation he progressed to specialist training as a neurologist in Munich. At this time he came into contact with C.G. Jung. During a study period in London in 1929 he worked for several weeks as a resident at Toynbee Hall, a university institution in Whitechapel and experienced the methods of community work used there which were known under the term settlement movement. He continued his specialist activities in the neurological clinic in Zürich founded by C. von Monakow. Following the experiences in London he broke up with C.G. Jung and turned to Sigmund Freud and therapeutic analysis under Gustav Bally. In 1937 he returned to Germany. In 1939 he became director of the Policlinic of the German Institute for Psychological Research and Psychotherapy. Probably also due to his own war experiences in 1941/1942 he participated in the drafting of a flyer for the Schulze-Boysen/Harnack group against the war and after 8 months in prison he was executed in Berlin on 13 May 1943. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]