Hermann Stieve

Who was Hermann Stieve?

Hermann Philipp Rudolf Stieve was a German physician, anatomist and histologist. Following his medical studies, he served in the German Army during World War I and became interested in the effect of stress and other environmental factors on the female reproductive system, the subject of his later research. In 1921 he became the youngest doctor to chair the medical department of a German university. He taught medicine at the University of Berlin, and was Director of the Berlin Institute of Anatomy at the Charité teaching hospital in the later years of his life.

Much of Stieve's research was conducted during the 1930s, after the Nazi Party had come to power in Germany. He did not join the party himself, but as an ardent German nationalist supported Adolf Hitler in the hope of restoring national pride. The Nazis imprisoned and executed many of their political opponents, and their corpses became Stieve's primary research material, with his full awareness of their origin.