Hitler's Nobel-ban decree also forced scientists Gerhard Domagk (1939 Medicine) and Richard Kuhn (1938 Chemistry) into declines unrelated to Ossietzky's own case

nobel-prizenazi-germanycoerced-refusalgerhard-domagkrichard-kuhn

The 1937 decree provoked by Ossietzky's Peace Prize (see claim-ossietzky-1935-nobel-peace-prize-hitler-decree-forced-decline) did not stay confined to Ossietzky's case. It reached at least two laureates in unrelated scientific fields. The Nobel Foundation's own page on the 1939 Physiology or Medicine prize: "Gerhard Domagk was caused by the authorities of his country to decline the award but he later received the diploma and the medal." Its 1938 Chemistry page carries identical sentence structure for the other case: "Richard Kuhn was caused by the authorities of his country to decline the award, but he later received the diploma and the medal."

Domagk (who discovered the antibacterial effect of Prontosil, the first sulfonamide drug — the compound itself was synthesised at IG Farben by Fritz Mietzsch and Josef Klarer; Domagk's Nobel citation reads "for the discovery of the antibacterial effects of prontosil") was arrested by the Gestapo on 17 November 1939 and held about a week; he received the medal and diploma in 1947, but not the prize money, which had already reverted to the Nobel Foundation. Kuhn (carotenoid and vitamin chemist) received the same boilerplate treatment on Nobel's own site. The near-identical wording on both pages indicates a documented institutional pattern rather than a single anecdote: a human-rights punishment mechanism, aimed at one dissident journalist, mechanically trapped scientists who had no connection to his case. A third case is sometimes cited — chemist Adolf Butenandt (1939 Chemistry) — but his page was not read this session and the claim is left unconfirmed; see the source capture's further-leads list.

Correction history.

• 2026-09-13 — the note's "third case ... unconfirmed" caution on Adolf Butenandt is now resolved: the Committee's own institutional history (Geir Lundestad, "The Nobel Peace Prize, 1901-2000") names a closed set of exactly three laureates caught by the decree, and Butenandt's own Nobel Foundation Facts page independently corroborates it at Tier 1. See claim-hitler-decree-closed-set-of-three-kuhn-butenandt-domagk (from 10-inbox/raw/2026-09-13-does-the-nobel-committees-own-2017-heritage-framing.md), which carries the full three-way count and both new quotes.