NEW PRIMARY-SOURCE EVIDENCE: WHAT WAS PETER EMIL BECKER ACTUALLY DOING UNDER THE NAZI REGIME?
Over the past several weeks, I have been conducting a much deeper investigation into the Nazi-era career of Peter Emil Becker, the German neurologist and geneticist after whom Becker muscular dystrophy is named.
When I began this campaign, much of the discussion surrounding Becker relied on secondary sources and later accounts of his life. I wanted to go further.
I have been examining contemporary documents from Becker's career, including personnel records from the University of Freiburg and Becker's own scientific writing.
What I have found adds important new evidence to the debate about Becker's Nazi era activities.
I also want to be clear about the limits of that evidence. I have not found evidence that Becker participated in the Aktion T4 killing programme, personally ordered the sterilisation of disabled people, or participated in the killing of muscular dystrophy patients.
Where the evidence does not support an allegation, I will say so.
But the documents I have now examined show that Becker's involvement with Nazi era hereditary biology and racial hygiene was more substantial than simply working alongside controversial scientists.
A Freiburg document describes Becker as conducting racial-hygiene research
One of the most important documents I have found is dated 22 November 1939.
It was produced as part of an application to continue Becker's employment at the Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic of the University of Freiburg.
The document explains why Becker was needed by the clinic. It states:
„Dr. Becker ist o. Assistent. An der Klinik wird er benötigt zur Wahrnehmung oberärztlicher Funktionen; außerdem ist er fachausgebildeter Erbbiologe, der insbesondere die Erb- und rassenhygienischen Forschungsaufgaben an der Klinik wissenschaftlich betreibt.“
A careful English translation is:
“Dr Becker is an ordinary assistant. He is required at the clinic to perform senior medical functions; in addition, he is a professionally trained hereditary biologist who is specifically engaged in the clinic's research work in hereditary biology and racial hygiene.”
The same document says that the university intended eventually to propose Becker for habilitation, an important qualification for advancement within the German university system, based on his scientific achievements.
This document is important because it is not a post-war accusation against Becker.
It is a contemporary University of Freiburg personnel document describing Becker's scientific role in 1939, while the Nazi regime was in power.
Becker himself described his field as “hereditary research”
Another document takes us back even further.
In February 1938, shortly after arriving in Freiburg from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin, Becker completed and signed an NSD-Dozentenbund questionnaire.
Under:
„Wissenschaftliches Fachgebiet“
— scientific field —
Becker wrote:
„Erbforschung“
alongside neurology and psychiatry.
“Erbforschung” means hereditary research.
This matters because it helps establish a chronology.
From 1936 until early 1938, Becker had worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin.
In February 1938 he personally identified hereditary research as one of his scientific fields.
And in November 1939, Freiburg described him as a professionally trained hereditary biologist specifically engaged in the clinic's hereditary and racial-hygiene research.
The same 1938 document gives us more information about Becker's SA career
The questionnaire also records Becker's entry into the SA on 8 July 1933.
Even more interestingly, a section of the form headed:
„Führerstellungen innerhalb der Bewegung, z.B. HJ, SA, SS usw.“
— approximately, “leadership positions within the movement, e.g. HJ, SA, SS etc.” —
contains Becker's handwritten entry:
„bis 30.1.38 Sturmarzt d. SA.“
meaning that until 30 January 1938 he had been an SA Sturmarzt, a medical position within the SA.
This has created an important new research question.
In a statement Becker made during denazification proceedings in 1945, he wrote:
„Ich habe auch niemals eine Führerstellung oder überhaupt eine Dienststellung bekleidet.“
“I also never held a leadership position or indeed any official/service position.”
I am currently investigating how the position of Sturmarzt was formally classified within the SA before drawing conclusions about whether these statements actually contradict one another.
I have contacted the German Federal Archives to request Becker's surviving SA personnel records and contemporary documentation concerning the organisation of the SA medical service.
Until those records are examined, I do not believe it would be responsible to claim that Becker's 1945 statement was false.
Becker was also carrying out hereditary assessments concerning marriage and reproduction
Another important piece of evidence comes from Becker's own published scientific work.
In 1939, Becker published:
„Ein Beitrag zur psychiatrischen Begutachtung der Ehetauglichkeit. (Ein Gutachten.)“
— “A Contribution to the Psychiatric Assessment of Fitness for Marriage (An Expert Opinion)”.
This was not simply theoretical genetics.
Becker assessed the hereditary psychiatric risk of a real 28-year-old man whose family history included serious psychiatric and neurological conditions.
He considered the man's suitability for marriage under the Nazi-era Ehegesundheitsgesetz — the Law for the Protection of the Hereditary Health of the German People / Marital Health Law — and calculated hereditary risks associated with conditions appearing within the man's family.
The assessment had been requested by the Reich Labour Service.
This shows Becker personally participating in an applied system in which hereditary information was used to assess marriage and potential reproduction.
However, there is an important piece of evidence here that cuts against a simplistic interpretation of Becker.
He did not recommend that this man should be prevented from marrying.
Becker concluded that there was insufficient evidence of a condition making the man legally unfit for marriage. His assessment ultimately regarded the marriage and prospective offspring favourably.
That matters.
My purpose in investigating Becker is not to select only evidence that supports a predetermined conclusion.
The 1939 assessment demonstrates Becker's participation in Nazi Germany's hereditary-health system, but the outcome of this particular case does not show him seeking to prevent the man's reproduction.
Becker's political affiliations are also clearer
The Freiburg records provide further contemporary documentation of Becker's political affiliations.
His 1938 questionnaire records his SA membership beginning in July 1933 and describes his NSDAP status at that time as „Anwärter“ — an applicant/candidate.
By 1941 and 1943, Freiburg personnel documents explicitly record:
„SA und NSDAP“
— SA and Nazi Party.
A later personnel card also records Becker as an Obertruppführer in the SA.
I am continuing to investigate the precise chronology of his Nazi Party membership because surviving records currently appear to contain discrepancies concerning when he formally joined.
Becker's academic career continued to advance during the war
The records also allow us to reconstruct Becker's academic advancement more precisely.
In January 1943 Freiburg still recorded him as not habilitated.
But by September 1943 he was Dr. med. habil.
On 2 October 1943, the Reich Minister for Science, Education and National Culture formally declared:
„Ich habe dem wissenschaftlichen Assistenten Dr.med.habil Emil Becker die Lehrbefugnis für Neurologie und Psychiatrie verliehen und ihn zum Dozenten ernannt.“
In English:
“I have granted the scientific assistant Dr med. habil. Emil Becker the authorisation to teach Neurology and Psychiatry and appointed him Lecturer.”
I am seeking the complete habilitation records before drawing conclusions about the reasons for this advancement.
What happened after the war?
The Freiburg records also show that Becker was dismissed by the French occupation authorities in 1945.
The university subsequently sought his provisional reinstatement, arguing that Becker's specialist clinical work treating war casualties with head injuries was needed at the clinic.
Again, this is useful counterevidence against reducing Becker's entire medical career to hereditary biology or racial hygiene. He was also performing conventional neurological and clinical work.
Becker subsequently submitted his own account of his involvement with the SA and Nazi Party during denazification.
Among other things, he portrayed his involvement as primarily professional and opportunistic rather than ideological.
I am now attempting to obtain his complete denazification case file from the Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen so that his post-war account can be compared systematically with records created before the collapse of the Nazi regime.
An important unanswered question
The Freiburg denazification records contain another intriguing entry:
„Anfrage betr. Zugehörigkeit zum ‘SD’ Dozent Dr. Becker Emil“
— an inquiry concerning the possible affiliation of Dr Emil Becker with the SD, the Sicherheitsdienst.
I want to emphasise this particularly strongly:
An inquiry is not evidence that Becker was a member of the SD.
I have not found evidence establishing that he belonged to the organisation.
The important question is why the inquiry was made and, most importantly, what answer investigators received.
I am seeking the complete documentation before saying anything further about it.
Why does this matter?
There has recently been disagreement about how Becker's Nazi-era career should be understood.
In a 2025 correspondence, Becker's son Tilman Becker argued that his father avoided racial-hygiene and racial-biological ideas in his scientific work and that previous allegations concerning him went too far. The article appropriately declares that Tilman Becker is Peter Emil Becker's son.
Some of that criticism deserves to be taken seriously.
I agree that association with people such as Fritz Lenz cannot, by itself, establish Becker's own beliefs or actions. Nor does membership in Nazi organisations automatically prove participation in medical crimes.
But the contemporary Freiburg documents add evidence that needs to be considered in this debate.
We now have a 1939 university document explicitly describing Becker as a trained hereditary biologist engaged in the clinic's “hereditary and racial-hygiene research.”
We have Becker himself identifying “hereditary research” as one of his scientific fields in 1938.
And we have Becker's own published 1939 assessment applying hereditary-risk calculations to questions of marriage and reproduction under Nazi hereditary-health legislation. Even Tilman Becker's recent defence acknowledges that this assessment occurred within the framework of the 1935 Marital Health Law and was requested by the Reich Labour Service.
These findings do not establish that Becker participated in Aktion T4 or the killing of disabled people.
They do, however, make it increasingly difficult to describe Becker's Nazi-era career without discussing hereditary biology, racial hygiene and the Nazi hereditary-health system.
The investigation continues
Several important archival enquiries are now underway.
I am seeking Becker's SA personnel records from the German Federal Archives, his complete denazification file from the Staatsarchiv Sigmaringen, several of his original 1930s hereditary and twin-research publications, and his 1939 publication „Erbbiologische Fragen bei der Muskeldystrophie“ — “Hereditary-Biological Questions in Muscular Dystrophy.”
That last document could be particularly important because it may help establish how Becker himself discussed muscular dystrophy and heredity in 1939, rather than relying on his much better-known post-war work.
I will publish further evidence as these records arrive.
This investigation has become larger than the question with which I began. It raises questions about how medicine remembers scientists whose careers developed within institutions involved in hereditary biology and racial hygiene under National Socialism, and about how modern medicine should respond when new archival evidence changes our understanding of those careers.
My position remains that these questions should be decided on the best available historical evidence.
Where that evidence supports criticism of Becker, I will publish it.
Where it contradicts allegations against him, I will publish that too.
Disabled people deserve nothing less than an honest examination of the history attached to the names medicine continues to use.