Benno Richard Ottow

He served as a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology in Berlin and became a controversial figure for his role in sterilization measures as part of the policy of the Third Reich.

He went to the University of Yuryev (Tartu) to study medicine but left in 1905 due to unrest in Russia.

He then studied gynaecology, working in Berlin (1912) at the Charité under Ernst Bumm (1858-1925) and Karl Veit Franz (1870-1926) and later at Dresden under Ferdinand Adolf Kehrer (1837-1914).

In 1933 he was put in charge of the Brandenburg State Women's Clinic in Berlin-Neukölln after the dismissal of Sigfrid Hammerschlag (1871–1948) on the grounds of having a Jewish ancestry.

In 1945 he fled to Schleswig-Holstein as there was a risk that the Allied denazification court would find that he was not merely acting on orders.