{{Short description|German psychiatrist (1889–1945)}}{{Infobox person | name = Max de Crinis | birth_name = Maximinus Friedrich Alexander de Crinis | birth_date = 29 May 1889 | birth_place = Ehrenhausen, Austria | death_date = 2 May 1945 (aged 55) | death_place = Stahnsdorf, Nazi Germany | death_cause = Suicide by cyanide poisoning }}
Professor '''Maximinus Friedrich Alexander de Crinis''' (29 May 1889 – 2 May 1945) held a chair in psychiatry in Cologne and at Charité in Berlin, and was a medical expert for the Action T4 Euthanasia Program who wrote the Euthanasia Decree, signed by Adolf Hitler on 20 September 1939.
Crinis was born in Ehrenhausen near Graz. As an Austrian, he joined the Nazi Party in 1931. Not only was de Crinis a high-ranking SS member,<ref name="Woywoodt2010">{{cite journal |last1=Woywodt |first1=A |last2=Lefrak |first2=S |last3=Matteson |first3=E |title=Tainted eponyms in medicine: the "Clara" cell joins the list |journal=The European Respiratory Journal |date=October 2010 |volume=36 |issue=4 |pages=706–8 |doi=10.1183/09031936.00046110 |pmid=20889455|type=Review|doi-access=free }}</ref> he was the most outspoken and influential Nazi in German psychiatry, a psychiatric consultant at the highest level of the regime. He was involved in the Venlo Incident in November 1939 under the alias Colonel Martini. De Crinis became medical director of the Ministry of Education in 1941. He was also a director of the European League for Mental Hygiene. Furthermore, he politically supported fellow Nazi Max Clara's attempts to obtain professorship at the University of Leipzig.<ref name="Woywoodt2010"/>
According to Heinz Guderian, Dr De Crinis was the first doctor to correctly diagnose Hitler's malady as being Parkinson's disease.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Guderian|first=Heinz|title=Panzer Leader|publisher=Da Capo Press|year=1996|isbn=0-306-81101-4|pages=443}}</ref> The diagnosis made in early 1945 was kept secret. On 1 May 1945, after killing his family with potassium cyanide, de Crinis took his own life in Stahnsdorf near Berlin, by taking a cyanide tablet himself.
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== * [http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic.php?t=92789 Photograph at Axis History Forum] * Psychiatrists: The Men Behind Hitler by Roeder, Kubillus and Burwell {{ISBN|0-9648909-1-7}} * Geoffrey Cocks: ''Psychotherapy in the Third Reich: The Göring Institute'' (2nd ed), Oxford University Press, New York, 1985 ({{ISBN|0195034619}}) {{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Crinis, Max de}} Category:1889 births Category:1945 suicides Category:1945 deaths Category:Burials at Stahnsdorf South-Western Cemetery Category:Austrian psychiatrists Category:Medical doctors of the Charité Category:Austrian eugenicists Category:Austrian mass murderers Category:Austrian Nazis Category:Austrian war criminals Category:Psychiatrists in the Nazi Party Category:SS-Standartenführer Category:History of psychiatry Category:Aktion T4 personnel Category:Holocaust perpetrators in Germany Category:Nazis who died by suicide in Nazi Germany Category:Suicides by cyanide poisoning Category:Joint suicides by Nazis Category:20th-century Freikorps personnel Category:Poisoners Category:20th-century Austrian medical doctors
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