Ewald Meltzer

Ewald Meltzer (11 August 1869 in Auerbach, Vogtland – 30 January 1940 in Herrnhut, Oberlausitz) was a German director of an asylum in Saxony whose work was used by the Nazis to justify their T-4 euthanasia program.

Life Conrad Ewald Meltzer was born in 1869 in Auerbach, Vogtland, to Ernst Meltzer (1833–1896) and Marie Martha Beyer. Meltzer had six siblings. A younger brother, Hermann Meltzer, became a teacher and educator, while a sister, Marie, married the priest and educator Karl Ernst Thrändorf.

Many members of Meltzer's family held positions in fields which involved civic duty, education and personal piety, which is thought to have played an integral part in Meltzer's life and his views on life.

Meltzer's father held the position of superintendent and pastor in Auerbach for the Evangelical-Lutheran church. on his dissertation Dynamometrische untersuchungen bei Geisteskranken.

Personal life Meltzer married Meta Melanie Warneck in 1899, and the couple had a daughter, Eleonore (b. 1900)

Career After graduation, Meltzer was an assistant physician in the sanatorium in Grobhennersdorf Katarinehof between 1901 and 1905. He then took a position at Altendorf-Chemnitz and subsequently became the head at the Zuchthaus Waldheim (English: house of corrections) in Löbau, where Meltzer worked with the criminally insane.

Meltzer was also physician for several other institutions, such as the mental asylums in Untergöltsch, Colditz, This care of his staff led to the institution having a very small turnover rate, compared with other similar institutions in Germany.

After the Nazi Party gained power in 1934, the ownership and direction of Grobhennersdorf was given over to the religious welfare organization Inner Mission, an organization that was tied closely to Nazi ideologies. The effect was soon noticed, and Inner Mission staff soon began replacing the nurses and orderlies who worked at Grobhennersdorf. but he disapproved of the way that the government was implementing it indiscriminately.

Meltzer officially retired as a director for Grobhennersdorf in 1937, but continued as unofficial director for two years until 1938.

Meltzer was a deeply religious man who was strongly committed to the Evangelical Lutheran faith.

According to Mostert, "In an attempt to support his belief, Meltzer surveyed the parents of his patients to ascertain their perceptions of disability and euthanasia." To Meltzer's astonishment, the survey results showed a widely held contradiction among the parents, that although they had strong emotional ties to their children, they simultaneously expressed, with varying degrees of qualification, a "positive" attitude toward killing them. In fact, only a handful of respondents completely rejected all notions of euthanasia". Meltzer also noted that many of the parents cited personal and economic reasons for their pro-euthanasia stance.

Meltzer attempted to publish his findings in several psychological journals, but found them rejected by readers as pure fabrication and too outlandish to believe.

However, this was one of many such documents which was brought to the attention to Hitler by his personal physician Theodor Morell and included in his memorandum "Extermination of Worthless Life". The form of the survey would be used in a way Meltzer had not intended, rather than as a hypothetical situation; among the German population for the euthanasia of the country's disabled population, and that such an action would not any substantial resistance from the families of the victims.

Death Meltzer died on 30 January 1940 in Herrnhut, due to complications of an operation.