About 500 anaesthetics, three deaths, a forged licence certificate: Landgericht Kassel's 15-year retrial sentence for the false anaesthetist of Fritzlar

In Germany a doctor's right to practise rests on the Approbation, a state licence whose certificate is issued by a Land authority, and on registration with the regional Ärztekammer. A hospital that hires a specialist is expected to see that certificate. The Fritzlar case, retried in 2025 and still not final at the start of 2026, shows what a forged Approbationsurkunde can do inside an operating theatre.

According to hessenschau on 28 May 2025, the Landgericht Kassel sentenced a 54-year-old woman to 15 years in prison in a retrial for posing for years as an anaesthetist at a clinic in Fritzlar, in the Schwalm-Eder district of northern Hesse, using false certificates. She started there as a doctor at the end of 2015 and worked as an anaesthetist from 2016, administering anaesthesia to about 500 patients. Three patients died and ten others suffered serious harm. She had apparently taught herself medicine, hessenschau reported, and had only training as a Heilpraktikerin, an alternative practitioner. She was convicted of bodily harm resulting in death in three cases and dangerous bodily harm in ten; the court followed the prosecution's demand, while the joint plaintiffs had sought life for murder and the defence seven to eight years.

Rechtsdepesche, in a report updated on 17 February 2026, described her as a trained biologist who had worked as a freelance lecturer in anatomy and pathology, was dismissed for poor performance, had her dissertation found to be plagiarised, and then applied to the hospital with a forged medical licence certificate and an invented CV. The court found repeated gaps in her competence: she missed serious situations, reacted too slowly or wrongly, and gave drugs that did not help. In 2022 the Landgericht Kassel had sentenced her to life for three murders and ten attempted murders; the Bundesgerichtshof set that verdict aside in February 2024 because intent to kill had not been adequately shown, and sent the case back. hessenschau reported on 6 June 2025 that both the defence and the joint plaintiffs had lodged appeals against the 15-year sentence, so the verdict was not final and the case would go to the Bundesgerichtshof a second time. hessenschau identifies her only as Meike S.

The mechanism was a document nobody tested. An Approbationsurkunde can be checked with the Land authority that issues it, and a doctor's registration with the Ärztekammer, but the sources do not describe any such check at the time of hiring, and the forgery survived years of anaesthetic practice.

For students and families, the lesson is that a hospital post is not in itself evidence of a licence. In Germany, ask the Landesärztekammer whether a doctor is registered, and expect any employer worth working for to verify an Approbation with the authority that issued it rather than with the applicant.