Researching Fritz Fischer

Fischer was born in Berlin. He studied medicine first at Bonn, later at Berlin and Leipzig, and finally graduated in Hamburg in 1938. He joined the SS in 1934 (ultimately reaching the rank of Sturmbannführer [major]) and became a member of the NSDAP in June 1937. On 1 November 1939, he was assigned to the Waffen-SS of the SS-Department of the Hohenlychen Sanatorium as a physician and SS Second Lieutenant.

In 1940, he became troop physician of the SS Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler. After having been wounded he was posted back to Hohenlychen and worked in the camp hospital of the Ravensbrück concentration camp as a surgical assistant to Karl Gebhardt. He participated in the surgical experiments carried out on concentration camp inmates there.

After World War II, he was tried in the Doctors' Trial in Nuremberg, convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and was condemned to life imprisonment. His sentence was reduced to 15 years in 1951 and he was released in March 1954. Fischer subsequently regained his license to practice medicine and started a new career at the chemical company Boehringer in Ingelheim, where he stayed until his retirement.

Based on available records, when he died in 2003, aged 90 or 91, he was the last known living of those indicted at the Doctors' Trial.

Fritz Fischer studied electrical engineering at the ETH Zurich from 1917 till 1921 and graduated as Dr. sc. tech in 1924. Working at the Telephonwerke Albisrieden he improved the transmission quality of speech, whereupon he was called to the central laboratories of the mother company Siemens & Halske in Berlin. There he built the first remotely controlled ships and airplanes and investigated the physical properties of colour film. Over 70 patent applications resulted from his work at Siemens. He was lecturer at the Technical University of Berlin.

1932 he received a call to the ETH Zurich, where he became professor and founded the Institute of Technical Physics. He developed and patented the Eidophor technique of displaying television pictures the size of cinema screens. Edgar Gretener, his chief assistant at the ETH, was project leader for the development of Eidophor. This project was transferred to a company founded by Gretener, which later became Gretag AG. After years of development, Eidophor achieved commercial success until Liquid Crystal Display LCD (another invention with important Swiss contributors) and Digital Light Processing DLP video projectors became available.

Other early assistants at his Institute were Hugo Thiemann (founding member of the Club of Rome), Gustav Guanella, Werner Lindecker and Erna Hamburger, who became famous on their own.

Professor Fritz Fischer was one of the important technical scientists of his day. He was co-founder together with Max Lattmann, his first Ph.D. graduate, of Contraves AG, a Swiss defence and aerospace company, now part of Rheinmetall Air Defence AG, Zurich.