Viktor von Weizsäcker (18861957), professor of medicine in Heidelberg and Breslau, was probably the most important "philosophical doctor" in Germany in the 20th century. Since the twenties he has campaigned for a medical anthropology that places the subject at the center of medicine. Accordingly, the first sentence of his best-known work "Der Gestaltkreis" (1940) reads: "In order to research the living, one must participate in life." Udo Benzenhöfer gives a compact overview of the life and work of Weizsäfer and puts his trend-setting thoughts on a medical one Anthropology out. In addition, the not undisputed behavior of the medical practitioner during the Nazi era is fundamentally analyzed for the first time.