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 was in charge of making assessments on whether women with hereditary medical conditions needed to be sterilized.

Ottow was born in Kertel on the island of Dagö in the Estonian part of the Russian Empire.

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.