Adolf Greifenstein

Adolf Greifenstein (born April 8, 1900 in Hatzfeld an der Eder , † July 7, 1955 in Aachen ) was a German specialist in ear, nose and throat medicine and a university professor.

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After graduating from high school, Greifenstein studied medicine at the University of Marburg and graduated in 1924 with the state examination. A year later he received his doctorate . He then practiced as an assistant doctor at the Siegen City Hospital as well as at the Pathological Institute and the Surgical Clinic in Marburg . Greifenstein completed his specialist training at the Jena University Hospital under Wilhelm Brünings , whom he followed after he was transferred to the Munich University Hospital in 1931. At Brünings he submitted his habilitation thesis on otosclerosis in 1933 and received his venia legendi in 1935 .

During the time of National Socialism he joined several NS organizations for career reasons, including the SS (1934), the National Socialist People's Welfare (1935), the Reichsdozentenschaft (1935), the National Socialist German Lecturer Association (1936), the NSDAP (1937) and the Nazi Medical Association (1938). In 1938, he accepted a call to the Albertus University in Königsberg , where he was initially appointed the provisional management of the ENT clinic as the successor to the injured chief physician Wilhelm Berger. Just one year later he was appointed Associate Professor and Medical Director of this clinic. After the university clinic had been converted into a reserve hospital at the beginning of the Second World War , Greifenstein also served as a military doctor and set up a larynx ward there. In 1943 he was appointed full professor and until shortly before the end of the war was considered a promising candidate for the ENT ordinariate at the Berlin Charité , which is why he had previously rejected calls to Göttingen and Kiel .

During these years Greifenstein maintained an intensive association activity and was among other things chairman of the "Society of Munich Ear, Nose and Throat Doctors" from 1936 to 1939 and, after moving to Königsberg, chairman of the "Society of Northeast German ENT Doctors" and co-editor of the archive for Ear, nose and larynx medicine .

After the war years and through denazification , Greifenstein was denied a further university career due to his SS membership and membership in other organizations. In 1945 he took over a position at the hospital in Aachen-Forst and in 1952 moved again as chief physician to the ENT clinic of the Aachen city hospitals , where he suddenly died on July 7, 1955.

literature

• Alfred Kressner: In memoriam Prof. Dr. Adolf Greifenstein , in: Laryngol Rhinol Otol magazine. dated August 1955, No. 35 (12), pp. 776-778
• Richard Kühl: Leading Aachen clinicians and their role in the Third Reich , study by the Aachen Competence Center for the History of Science, Volume 11, Ed .: Dominik Groß, Diss. RWTH Aachen 2010, p. 114 and others; ISBN 978-3-86219-014-0 pdf