Neurologists as victims of National Socialist extermination policies have been rarely addressed as a special group in historical research. On the basis of archival documents and biographical literature, this essay presents 9 exemplary fates of a group of victims of violence whose number and structure so far cannot be estimated. These neurologists died in the ghettos of Lwów (e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe persecution and expulsion of German-speaking neurologists were not limited to research centers, such as Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt am Main and Hamburg. The exclusion from science, teaching and clinical care also occurred at other (university) sites. The different aspects and implementation of the exclusion are presented here exemplified by 10 physicians involved in neuroscience.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn Hamburg, the National Socialists' racially motivated exclusion principally hit neurologists from two institutions: the Eppendorf Neurological Clinic (director until 1934 Max Nonne) and the Psychiatric and Neurological Clinic of Friedrichsberg State Hospital (director Wilhelm Weygandt). The chief physician of the neurological department of Barmbek Hospital, Heinrich Embden (1871-1941), who had been trained by Nonne, emigrated to Brazil, whereas Friedrich Wohlwill (1881-1958), another Nonne pupil who had been a pathologist at St Georg since 1924, lived for many years in Lisbon, before he found a new scientific home at the Harvard Medical School. The cerebrospinal fluid researcher Victor Kafka (1881-1955), a Freemason and intermittent member of the Communist Party, was briefly in so-called protective custody (Schutzhaft) in Fuhlsbüttel then fled via Norway to Sweden.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the 1920s, the situation of neuropsychiatry in Frankfurt was characterized by the rivalry between two institutions (Edinger Institute and University Neurology Clinic), two subdisciplines (neurology and psychiatry), and the physicians Kurt Goldstein (1878-1965) and Karl Kleist (1879-1960). After the National Socialists' assumption of power, university neuropsychiatric institutions in Frankfurt showed the highest number of dismissed university teachers and personnel in the German Reich. In neurology and psychiatry alone the university lost almost 50% of the personnel.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAustria's so-called annexation (Anschluss) to Germany from March 1938 was followed by the ousting of "Jewish" doctors out of Vienna which happened faster and with more brutality than in the "Old Reich". According to National Socialist (NS) criteria, 92% of the neurologists at Vienna University were understood as being "non-Aryan". Victims of these expulsions were prominent figures, such as the head of the Neurological Institute Otto Marburg (1874-1949), a renowned multiple sclerosis researcher, and his pupil Ern(e)st Spiegel (1895-1985), a pioneer of stereotaxis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBefore 1933 Berlin was considered a center of clinical neurology and neuroscientific research in the German Reich. Using a group biographical approach and drawing upon scattered secondary literature as well as upon various archival documents, this article provides an overview of 12 less well-known physicians and researchers who were forced into exile during the nationalsocialist (NS) era, primarily for racist reasons. Among those affected by NS persecution were Franz Kramer and Fredy Quadfasel (Charité), Ernst Haase, Carl Felix List, and Lipman Halpern (Moabit Hospital), Paul Schuster (Hufeland Hospital), and Clemens Ernst Benda (Augusta Hospital).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe neurologists Sir Ludwig Guttmann and Robert Wartenberg had a number of things in common, e.g., both enjoyed high international recognition for the clinical care they provided to paraplegics and for their contributions to the development of neurological diagnostics.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArchival documents and further biographical testimonies reveal that dismissal and expulsion on racist grounds also affected neurologists in leading clinical positions and at an advanced age. Alfred Hauptmann (1881-1948), full professor for neurology and psychiatry in Halle/Saale, member of the Leopoldina and discoverer of phenobarbitone treatment for epilepsy, emigrated first to Switzerland and then to the USA after the anti-Jewish pogroms in November 1938 and a subsequent "protective custody" imposed on him at the age of 58 years. Adolf Wallenberg (1862-1949), a self-made neurologist, described the syndrome later named after him in 1895.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper commemorates the careers and the scientific influence of the clinical neurologists Kurt Goldstein and Friedrich Heinrich Lewy including their forced migration in the mid-1930s. Goldstein (1878-1965) set up independent neurological departments in Frankfurt/Main and Berlin, adopting a decidedly holistic approach in medical care, research and teaching. He is therefore considered a co-founder of modern neuropsychology and neurorehabilitation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article focuses on the historical context of the emigration of "Jewish" doctors during the "Third Reich". The approximately 9000 Jewish physicians, who were still able to emigrate, represented 17% of the German medical profession in 1933. Around three quarters of them left the German Reich by 1939, mainly for the USA, Palestine and Great Britain.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWith the implementation of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (1933), including the Third Implementation Decree (1934), the Regulation for Obtaining a Teaching License (1934) and the Law for the Dismissal and Transfer of University Teachers (1935), the National Socialist (NS) government created legislative instruments to ban university staff (from lecturers to full professors) labelled as Jewish or considered politically unwanted from teaching and research. Whereas around 20% of the staff at the universities were affected by these measures after 1933, at various medical faculties the figures reached 30-40% and at neurological departments and institutes sometimes up to 90%. Student Nazi activists played a significant role in expelling faculty members from office.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn order to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanisms and background leading to the persecution and expulsion, particularly of physicians labelled as "Jewish" in Nazi Germany, this article outlines their gradual disenfranchisement, through laws and decrees in the years 1933-1939. As the publicly visible terror immediately after the Nazi takeover was rejected in large parts of society, the regime resorted early on to supposedly legal forms of exclusion. With the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service of 7 April 1933, "non-Aryan" (§ 3) and politically unreliable (§ 4) persons could be removed from office, if necessary, even without any further comment (§ 6).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe German Neurological Society (DGN) has commissioned historical research related to the expulsion and murder of German-speaking neurologists during the National Socialism era (NS). Intended as an introduction to the following background essays and biographies in this special issue of Der Nervenarzt, this article summarizes the results and perspectives of medical historical research addressing the persecution of German physicians. Additionally, it shows how the current project of the DGN fits into the context of an interdisciplinary culture of commemoration by a confrontation with National Socialism.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: As part of a larger project commissioned by the German Neurological Society (DGN), this paper focuses on the DGN's German and Austrian honorary members. In particular, the question of whether former membership in the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) or other Nazi organizations was an obstacle to becoming an honorary member in the years 1952-1982, and whether victims of the Nazi regime were also considered for honorary membership.
Results: From the early 1950s to the early 1980s, the DGN awarded honorary membership to 55 individuals.
Background Fictional portrayals of dentists in feature films have remained largely unexamined to date. The aim of this review is consequently to catalogue and analyse available films produced by US entertainment industry that present 'dentists in action'.Methods Relevant motion pictures were identified by means of keyword-based inquiries in search engines, online databases, websites and by handsearch.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis paper discusses the 17 Nobel Prize nominations for the neurologist and neurosurgeon Otfrid Foerster (1873-1941). Drawing on files from the Stockholm Nobel Prize Archive, primary and secondary literature, it addresses the following questions: what were the reasons given by nominators for Foerster's nominations? What was the relationship between him and his nominators? Why was he ultimately not awarded the Nobel Prize? Most nominators of Foerster's highlighted as the main motive his Handbuch der Neurologie, which he had edited with Oswald Bumke. According to the nominators, this book together with Foerster's neurosurgical work had an enormous impact on contemporary neurology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOn behalf of the German Neurological Society (DGN), a study was conducted into how far former chairmen, honorary chairmen, and honorary members could be regarded as incriminated from the National Socialist period. While an online supplement of this journal presents seven individual biographies (in six papers) by way of example, this paper offers an overview summarizing the project results and introducing the biographies. The first part and the methodological section discuss the difficulties of retrospectively identifying neurologists involved in the Nazi movement.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMedicine in silent film has a long history. Although the silent era in cinema was dominated by burlesques (using escaped "lunatics") a number of themes emerged after systematic review. The cinematic representation of medicine coincided with the discovery of X-rays.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: There is no shortage of books, chapters and papers on the history of stroke focusing predominantly on the last 150 years and enumerating endless "milestones". Instead of adding another article to this body of knowledge, this essay aims at ensuring awareness for the "big picture", the "grandes routes", and the "striking breakes" without overloading the reader with too much detail.
Results: From a medical point of view, the history of stroke consists of two periods: the early era from the beginnings to 1812, and the following period from 1812 up to the present.
Introduction: This article provides for the first time an overview of the most often nominated European neurologists for the Nobel Prize, who never received the award. It sheds light on candidates from France, Germany, Italy, Russia, and the UK during the first half of the 20th century. The aim is to highlight the candidates in the field of neurology, to discuss key arguments in the nomination letters, and to raise questions about research trends and hotspots in European neurology 1901-1950.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOn behalf of the German Neurological Society (DGN) former presidents, honorary presidents and honorary members were checked for possible formal or ideological affiliations with National Socialism (NS) 75 years after the NS dictatorship. When the DGN was reformed in 1950, 6 of the 7 "founding fathers" were former members of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), which is in strong contrast with the traditional narrative of a "new beginning". The first four (Pette, Schaltenbrand, Vogel and Döring) and in total 10 out of 13 incumbent presidents until 1976 (Zülch, Bay, Hirschmann, Jung, Bauer, Behrend) as well as honorary president Bodechtel had belonged to the NSDAP, Storm Troopers (SA), or "Schutzsstaffel" (SS).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFrom the mid-1950s to the early 1980s the German Neurological Society (DGN) appointed in addition to international physicians, numerous German physicians as honorary members. From a present day perspective, some of them are to be classified as "incriminated" with their commitment to the National Socialist "movement" and its health policy goals, which at times went far beyond a formal membership of the party and its organizations. Thus, there is no doubt about the völkisch views of the Würzburg psychiatrist Martin Reichardt (1874-1966), which he articulated in lectures and publications.
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