[1] Lautenschläger served for a year in the German Imperial Army before returning to medical study, eventually receiving his MD from the University of Freiburg in 1919.

[1] According to Diarmuid Jeffreys Lautenschläger became aware of the Holocaust in 1943 after junior colleagues who had witnessed gassings told him about their experiences.

[2] Arrested by the American Military Government in 1946 he was brought before the IG Farben trial the following year on charges of mass murder and slavery.

The court stated that the pharmaceutical department had been responsible for sending drugs to the Schutzstaffel in order that they be tested on prisoners but ruled that Lautenschläger himself was not personally to blame and so acquitted him.

[1] Like many of his colleagues at IG Farben he was taken under the wing of Bayer chairman Ulrich Haberland, who gave him a job as a research associate at the company's Elberfeld facility.