I, Professor Dr. med. Hans Otto Luxenburger, born on 12 June 1894 in Schweinfurt, residing in Munich, 22 Liebigstrasse 35/II, have been informed that I will be liable to punishment if I make a false affidavit. I declare under oath that my statement is true and was made in order to be submitted in evidence to Military Tribunal No. 1 at the Palace of Justice, Nuernberg, Germany.
Being a psychiatrist myself, I took an interest in Professor Rose’s malaria research insofar as we talked now and again about Rose’s progress and the results of his research. For me as a psychiatrist it was always noteworthy that Rose regarded cooperation with the psychiatrists of hospitals for the insane by no means only from the point of view of his interest in malaria research. On the contrary, he always showed definite interest in the related psychiatric-therapeutic questions. Contrary to the opinion formerly advocated by Wagner-Jauregg, he hoped to attain more thorough and permanent success in treatment by infection with mosquitoes as advocated by him (Rose) instead of the formerly customary blood transfusion, because in his opinion endothelia infection was also attained thereby.
He also was particularly interested in the question of finding a benign tropical strain and employing it in treatment, in order to carry out thorough and long fever treatments on cases of paralysis relapse; this is generally unsuccessful when employing the usual tertiana strains in cases of relapse.
He was especially interested in the possibility of therapeutic influence upon schizophrenia. In the well-known psychiatrist Dr. Sagel, he had a co-worker who advocated the opinion that schizophrenia, apart from its hereditary basis, must be caused by an additional external impairment, and he suspected that these causes lay in infectious diseases, especially rheumatic infections. Working from this assumption, he hoped for success with this disease similar to that with paralysis. This idea was not a new one. Similar experiments were conducted earlier. Rose was especially encouraged in this work by some impressive isolated successes in quite hopeless cases of schizophrenia. I can recall his joy as he told me, apart from other, cases, of a woman who was about to be divorced, after the head of the institution had declared her condition, which had existed for more than 3 years, to be incurable. In this case Rose’s treatment, according to his report, not only resulted in completely restoring the sick woman’s health but also led to her return to her family and the reestablishment of the marriage.
Munich, 24 March 1947
[Signed] Prof. Dr. Hans Luxenburger
The above signature of Professor Dr. med. Hans Otto Luxenburger, residing in Munich, 22 Liebigstrasse 35/II, given before me, Notary, Theobald Petri, Administrator, is herewith certified and attested.
Munich, 24 March 1947.
[Signed] Petri, Notary
(Theobald Petri), Notary