Max Clara

Max Clara (12 February 1899, Völs am Schlern, Austro-Hungary – 13 March 1966, Munich) was a German anatomist. He was appointed as Chair of Anatomy at Leipzig University in 1935. Clara is known for having close ties with the Nazi Party, controversially basing much of his work on his studies of the bodies of executed prisoners, without the consent of the prisoners' families. His main work, "Das Nervensystem des Menschen" (The Nervous System of Humans, alternatively The Human Nervous System) was written in 1942 in Leipzig during the Third Reich's dictatorship.

In 1937, he discovered previously unknown cells found in human lungs, which were later eponymously named Clara cells; because this was considered equivalent to honoring him, in 2013 medical journals began a two-year transition period of changing the name from "Clara cell" to "club cell".

Political activity

Clara was an active member of the Nazi Party, and became a professor at the University of Leipzig as a result of support from Max de Crinis. He subsequently proposed reforms to German law which had forbidden the scientific use of human cadavers without the consent of the deceased's family; he also proposed that, until such reforms could be implemented, researchers should preserve cadavers' external appearance so that the deceased's family would be unaware of what had been done.

After the Second World War ended, Clara was officially denazified; he subsequently taught at the University of Istanbul.