German physician, a prominent “party doctor” of the NSDAP (Nazi Party), remembered infamously as a sadistic Sturmabteilung (SA) leader who viciously tortured political opponents.
Villain actively participated in the First World War with the Reserve Infantry Regiment 202 from May 1917. In August that year, he was seriously injured by a shell so that he had to remain in hospital for treatment for the rest of the war. In the summer semester of 1918, Villain enrolled at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin to study medicine. His fellow students at the university included Villain’s later rival Leonardo Conti.
Villain passed the preliminary medical examination in Easter 1920 and passed the state medical examination in December 1923. He received his licence to practise medicine on 23 December 1924.
In the spring of 1925 Villain concluded his studies with a M.D. at the Friedrich Wilhelm University. In his dissertation, completed on 30 March 1925, Villain dealt with the question of pigment excretion in the stomach.
After completing his studies, Villain practised in Berlin, joining the NSDAP (Nazi party) there in the late 1920s and also the NSDAP party army, the so-called Sturmabteilung (SA). As a member of the National Socialist Medical Association (NSDÄB), Villain endeavoured to implement National Socialist ideas in the professional network of the Berlin medical profession.
In November 1931 Villain was elected to the Berlin Medical Association together with Conti, now also a prominent “party doctor” of the NSDAP.
In 1933-1934, Villain participated in the elimination of political opponents of National Socialism and in particular in measures against Jewish doctors in his area of ??responsibility (Köpenick, Treptow and Lichtenberg). Villain was also associated with the Reichstag fire in February 1933, rumoured to have been the leader of a raiding party said to have started the fire.
In April 1933 the board of directors of the Greater Berlin Medical Association was completely replaced at the instigation of Conti, now state secretary in the Prussian Ministry of the Interior, with the exception of Villain. Villain’s non-National Socialist colleagues took the place of other NSDAP party supporters: The temporary board now consisted of Villain, Kurt Quandt and Martin Claus.
In June 1933 Villain took part in the so-called Köpenicker Blutwoche, during which the Köpenick SA harassed, tortured and murdered a few dozen communists, Social Democrats and Jews. Villain is said to have played a special role in the murder of members of the Social Democratic Reich Banner Schwarz-Rot-Gold, beating these opponents of the SA and torturing them with a collection of whips and torture tools made of iron and steel-penetrated rubber which he developed. He forced his victims to drink acids and toasted them over open fires.
Villain’s old enmity with Conti finally escalated in the spring of 1934 when Conti refused to appoint Villain as chairman and honorary court chairman of the Berlin Medical Association; a step that Conti justified as due to Villain’s “considerable lack of character”.
Villain invited Conti to a duel (“heavy sabres”) but Conti declined. On 4 March 1934 during a conference of Nazi doctors in Munich Villain attacked Conti in the hallway in front of his hotel room and seriously injured him before hotel guests called the police. Villain was arrested, but was released after a short time at the instigation of the Reich doctor of the SA.
At Hermann Göring’s request, Villain was to be arrested and brought to Berlin. Under the protection of SA leaders, Villain was eventually brought to the apartment of Berlin SA leader Karl Ernst after his discovery in Partenkirchen in Berlin.
On 4 May 1934, Villain was brought to justice despite opposition from the Berlin SA. The trial ended with Villain being sentenced to eight months in prison. The prosecutor’s office decided the penalty was too mild. Villain was excluded from the NSDAP.
On 1 July 1934, Villain was arrested by the SS Obersturmführer Kurt Gildisch in Köpenick as part of the Röhm affair on behalf of the Secret State Police, taken to the Lichterfelde cadet centre and shot there by an SS commando. He was 35.
Link to Wikipedia biography (German)