DR reported on August 22, 2026 that 63-year-old German Matthias Kötter learned through a DNA test that he was conceived with sperm from Danish Waffen-SS veteran Walther Frisch. Kötter is demanding an explanation from Karolinska Hospital in Stockholm.
Kötter, who lives in the Frankfurt area, took the DNA test in July 2025 as a birthday gift from his children. According to DR, the result showed he is a donor-conceived child with 15 half-siblings, all conceived at Karolinska Hospital. The half-siblings told him the donor was the Danish Nazi Walther Frisch.
Kötter says he first believed the information was a scam. As reported by DR, he then remembered a green folder given to him by his aunt after his parents died. The folder contained letters in old-fashioned German, including references to the Obrawalde hospital.
The family account had been that his father, Heinz Kötter, was sent to a labor camp at 17, contracted tuberculosis and was treated at Obrawalde. DR obtained the medical file through a Polish researcher. It showed Heinz was admitted with severe psychiatric problems diagnosed as schizophrenia, a condition Nazi authorities treated as hereditary.
Per DR, about 8,000 patients with hereditary illnesses were killed at the Nazi-controlled Obrawalde hospital. Heinz Kötter, trained as a shop clerk, was put to work at 18 registering the dead. Relatives were given false explanations, such as pneumonia.
The letters document the family’s campaign to get him out. DR reports that the Nazi authorities agreed to discharge him at 19 on the condition that he be forcibly sterilized. The procedure was carried out in 1944 at a hospital in Meseritz.
In the letters, Heinz Kötter accepts the operation and asks his father to keep it secret. Matthias Kötter now concludes that his father could not father children, and that this is why his parents sought insemination in Sweden. He says he does not believe his mother knew about the sterilization for many years.
DR’s earlier investigation, published on August 10, 2026, established that Frisch volunteered for the Waffen-SS, was convicted in Denmark after the war and later moved to Sweden. Swedish broadcaster SVT cites a written statement from Karolinska saying the events lie far back in time and that documents are missing. The hospital calls any ideologically motivated donor selection completely unacceptable and deeply unethical.
Dutch outlet NU.nl and Belgian broadcaster VRT NWS report that at least 15 donor-conceived people in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Germany have been identified. Both note that no evidence has been produced that the donor selection was ideologically motivated.
The DR feature accompanies the documentary series “Mysteriet om den danske nazi-donor”. Kötter met three half-siblings for the first time in March 2026 at a summer house at Sjællands Odde. A larger group plans to meet in Stockholm at the end of August 2026, and Kötter says he wants an explanation and an apology from Karolinska.
