Friedrich Crusius (15.8.1897 Tübingen – 8.3.1941 Niedernhart-Linz sanatorium and nursing home/Austria)

Friedrich Crusius was born in Tübingen in 1897; his father, Otto Crusius, was a professor at the university there. In 1903, the family moved to Munich, since the father assumed the chair for Classical Philology at the Ludwig Maximilian University. Friedrich Crusius went to school in Munich, and after completing high school, studied philosophy for two semesters before he was drafted for war service. After the war, he completed his studies; he met the woman who would become his wife, Dorothea, at the university, and earned a Ph.D. In Classical Philology. The couple had two children. After that, Crusius worked as a high school teacher in Ingolstadt. On sick leave in 1935 due to a nervous breakdown, he was diagnosed a little later with schizophrenia. He was treated in private sanatoriums, the psychiatric department of the Schwabing Hospital, and the Eglfing-Haar sanatorium and nursing home. The treatment methods available at the time, such as insulin coma and convulsions, did not improve his condition.

On October 24, 1940, Friedrich Crusius was deported as part of the ‘Action T4’ to the Niedernhart temporary institution of the Hartheim killing center in Upper Austria. Probably due to a letter from his wife dated October 26, 1940 to the director of the institution, in which she mentioned her relationship to Rudolf Heß and hoped therefore for preferential treatment for her husband, he was one of the few cases of a reversal of the transfer to the Hartheim killing center. Crusius died on March 8, 1941 in the Niedernhart-Linz sanatorium and nursing home “after several days of high fever accompanied by acute circulatory weakness” (OÖLA, patient notes of Dr. Crusius, no. 15859) in the department of Dr. Lonauer. All circumstances indicate that Crusius was purposefully put to death.

Nearly 25 years later, his brother Otto Crusius concluded his memories of his brother in a letter to his daughter Marie-Luise like this: “He [was] extinguished as a ‘creature unfit to live’ [...]” This was very well-known to the family. Nevertheless, there was no word about Friedrich Crusius until after the death of his wife and children.