Albert Fraenkel (medic, 1864)

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Julius Albert Fraenkel (born June 3, 1864 in Mußbach an der Weinstrasse , † December 22, 1938 in Heidelberg ), who was called Albert, was a German doctor who became known as a tuberculosis and heart researcher. At the beginning of the 20th century he developed a treatment for heart failure by intravenous injection of the cardiac glycoside strophanthin .

Although he in 1896 from Judaism to Christianity converted , he was lost in the era of National Socialism because of its origin in succession his job , his professor and finally the medical license .

family

Albert Fraenkel's birthplace in Mußbach

Albert Fraenkel came from a Jewish family and was the son of the wine merchant Jakob Fraenkel (1836–1905) and his wife Emilia nee. German (1838-1880). On the occasion of his marriage to Erna Bertha Mathilde Thorade from Oldenburg in 1896, Fraenkel converted and became a member of the Protestant Church .

The couple had two daughters: Annemarie Fraenkel (1897–1967) gained fame as a social worker because she worked for the youth pastoral care of the Protestant church. She did her doctorate in June 1921 at the University of Heidelberg with a 306-page thesis on "The professional organization of nurses". On October 1, 1933, Annemarie Fraenkel was briefly taken into so-called protective custody by the National Socialists, despite her Christian creed , and released as head of the Evangelical Community Service in Heidelberg. The second daughter Liselotte Fraenkel (1902-1992) was a teacher.

Life

Fraenkel first attended school in Neustadt, then until graduation in 1883, the Humanist Gymnasium (today Eduard Spranger Gymnasium ) in Landau in the Palatinate . He then studied medicine in Munich and Strasbourg , where he passed the state examination in 1888. During his service as an assistant doctor in Munich, he fell ill with pulmonary tuberculosis . That is why he consistently expanded his knowledge of this infectious disease while continuing to work as an assistant doctor in Berlin.

In 1891 Fraenkel settled in the small Black Forest town of Badenweiler ( Baden ) as a country doctor. Under his work, the community developed into a health resort especially for tuberculosis patients. He founded and managed two sanatoriums : from the 1890s the "Villa Hedwig" for the dietary treatment of internal diseases and from 1903 the "Villa Paul" for lung patients.

Albert Fraenkel's family grave in the Heidelberg mountain cemetery

In addition to his clinical work, which was focused on the summer, he conducted research from 1893 in the winters at the Pharmacological Institute of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , at that time headed by Waldemar von Schroeder (1850–1898) and then Rudolf Gottlieb , and at the Medical Clinic of Kaiser Wilhelm -University of Strasbourg, then headed by Ludolf von Krehl , on the effects of cardiac glycosides. From 1906 he inaugurated the intravenous strophanthin therapy.

During the First World War he was chief physician at the Heidelberg observation hospital and also acted as a consultant physician at the Rohrbach Hospital in what is now Heidelberg-Rohrbach . In 1927 he founded the SME Speyererhof internal medicine sanatorium in Heidelberg and became medical director. After Hospital Rohrbach GmbH was founded in 1928 under the leadership of the Baden State Insurance Company , which was renamed Tuberculosis Hospital Rohrbach GmbH a little later , Fraenkel became Medical Director and, at the same time, second managing director.

In 1928 he became a professor at the Heidelberg Medical Faculty with a teaching position for tuberculosis.

Immediately after the so-called seizure of power by the National Socialists, Fraenkel was dismissed from all offices as a Jew on April 1, 1933. He anticipated the withdrawal of his teaching post in Heidelberg by renouncing any further teaching activity. In September 1938, like all Jewish doctors, his license to practice medicine was revoked.

He died three months later in Heidelberg at the age of 74. The urn burial in the Heidelberg Bergfriedhof could only take place after the Second World War . His daughter Annemarie Fraenkel and his wife Erna Fraenkel found their final resting place in the Fraenkel family grave. In September 2013 the family grave was added to the list of honor graves of the city of Heidelberg.

research

With a few exceptions, for example concerning tuberculosis, Fraenkel dealt with the pharmacology and therapeutic application of cardiac glycosides such as the digitalis ingredient digitoxin and strophanthin, as early as 1898, when he ascribed a new measuring method to the glycosides "increased heart activity". Most important in retrospect is the careful observation of the "accumulation", the accumulation of glycosides in the body when administered over a longer period of time in animal experiments. Fraenkel's reasoning can generally apply to animal experiments:

“We know these symptoms, which are feared by doctors, from humans. Nevertheless, we believe that the experimental study of the cumulative digitalis effects in healthy animals offers enough of interest. The systematically designed animal experiment has the advantage of chance observations in man, above all, in that it allows the regularities to emerge in the phenomena of accumulation. In the case of uniform animal material, the differences in individual disposition disappear, but then the circulatory changes in healthy animals can only be related to the substance used, whereas when using digitalis in pathological cases one has to deal with much more complicated conditions. The study of the cumulative effect under the simplest possible and systematically graduated conditions of the administration can therefore serve as a basis for assessing the more complex conditions in humans. "

The digitoxin accumulated particularly clearly. Fifty years later, the Berlin pharmacologist Kurt Repke recognized the reason for this . The strophanthin impressed Fraenkel with the speed of its effect.

After the animal experiments in Heidelberg, Albert Fraenkel decided to test intravenous strophanthin in heart patients in the Strasbourg clinic. The success caused a sensation. The company CF Boehringer & Soehne brought the preparation onto the market. In 1910, Rudolf Gottlieb and the pharmacologist Hans Horst Meyer wrote in the first edition of their pharmacology textbook that intravenous incorporation had "proven to be an important advance in therapy since the recommendation ... by Fraenkel and Schwartz". Similarly, in the 9th edition of 1936, it was stated: "The very rapid cardiac action at the moment when the patient needs 'the new healing impulse' makes the intravenous injection of strophanthine in the treatment of acute heart failure an indispensable therapeutic intervention." 1933 Fraenkel's book “Strophanthin Therapy” was published with his assistant Rudolf Thauer . In 1935 he spoke to the British Pharmacological Society in Cambridge . The later Nobel Prize winner Henry Hallett Dale commented on his lecture and that of the pharmacologist Hellmut Weese : “It seemed to me ... that clinical observation and laboratory tests had finally found a common basis for active collaboration, from where experimental pharmacology and clinical therapy became the goal - the Relief of human suffering and ailments - being able to tackle together. "

From today's perspective, strophanthin was overrated back then, but this applies to cardiac glycosides in general. The 9th edition of the textbook by Meyer and Gottlieb covers 50 of 741 pages (6.7%). A pharmacology textbook from 2009 describes them on 5 of 1224 pages (0.4%), and strophanthin in particular is only mentioned when listing the parent plants of the cardiac glycosides. In clinical trials with control groups, other treatment principles have proven more effective.

recognition

Certificate of honorary citizenship of Badenweiler

In 1914, Grand Duke Friedrich II of Baden awarded Fraenkel the title of "Professor". Fraenkel received several military awards during the First World War. Badenweiler made him an honorary citizen in 1920, the year he moved to Heidelberg. His birthplace Mußbach honored him with a street dedication in the second half of the 20th century . A street in Heidelberg is also named after him.

In 1957, in his memory, the Boehringer Mannheim company donated the Albert Fraenkel Prize , which is now endowed with 5200 euros by their legal successor Hoffmann-La Roche and awarded by the German Society for Cardiology - Heart and Circulatory Research, and in 1976 the District Medical Association of South Baden donated the Albert Fraenkel Prize. Badge awarded to doctors who have made a special contribution to the medical profession and its public reputation.

In two murals in the stairwell of the National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico City , Diego Rivera depicted pioneers of cardiology in 1946. In addition to William Withering , who, as the discoverer of the medicinal benefits of cardiac glycosides, holds a thimble plant in his hand, the painter shows Fraenkel how he injects the strophanthin intravenously.

Quotes

  • The pharmacologist Wolfgang Heubner , who from 1901 sometimes worked as an assistant doctor at Fraenkel in Badenweiler:

“At that time Fraenkel was on his feet from 6 am to 10 pm in the summer. The good horse, who was pulling his carriage, trotted back and forth in the few streets of the small town. But as soon as he was sitting with a patient or met one on the way, he always had patient time to listen to all the physical and emotional complaints and all the worries and fears of depressed minds, including petty minds. Although he might moan to me afterwards about the time he had lost, the people who confided in him never noticed anything about their haste or impatience. He was deeply penetrated by the medical task of helping, be it simply as a confessor. I have always been amazed at his ability to adapt to the type of senses and the circle of interests of each individual patient, who came from very different origins, from the Markgräfler farmer or the Palatine leather merchant to the large winery owner, the intellectual professor's wife or half-spoiled plant from Berlin's Kurfürstendamm. He quickly felt his way into each and every one of them and saw with a bright eye where psychological misery was hidden behind physical. "

“The whole year we thought of your coming 70th birthday with sadness, with the pain that this holiday could not be a public one as it should have been, but even more with the joy that you will experience it and that of many to be loved and adored to celebrate, and indeed, as I imagine, with the wisdom that has permeated and ruled your so moved soul all your life. The medical world knows what you have done for it, even when it is quiet and the future generations are already taking for granted what had to be discovered one day. I can still remember the lecture with which Erb - around 1907 - opened a semester: with the report on the last Wiesbaden congress. At the time he said that all in all nothing new had come to light, except for a therapeutic discovery by Dr. Fraenkel about the strophanthin, which opens up extraordinary prospects. ... But it was not my business primarily to think about these objective things; rather, as you know, you were my only real doctor who not only helped me personally, but also showed me what a doctor was can be. ... The other day in Badenweiler, when I went back so vividly to the summer of 1901, I was once again very aware of how much you had taught me to be healthy when one was sick. "

“The most important of all the doctors with whom I became acquainted and whose friend I became was Albert Fraenkel. The history of medicine knows him as the initiator of intravenous strophanthin injections in the period around 1900. Both of his hometowns, Heidelberg and Badenweiler, owe him the founding of large sanatoriums and the formation of an elite of young doctors. In the short time in which I approached him and was his guest several times, it was the last few years before the First World War, Fraenkel was the king of Badenweiler. ... What amazed me most about him was his emotional openness, a limitless, apparently completely passive openness to everything that the day and the hour put in front of his eyes and ears, the reports and questions of the employees and the Nurses, the complaints and stories of suffering of the patients, the wise and the stupid, the talkative and the inhibited, the choleric and the patient. ... After the beginning of the war in 1914, he wrote to me in Bern that he could think of my attitude as 'intellectual neutrality', but that he and his followers were 'strictly national'. He also served his fatherland on a large scale during the war and afterwards. With the war, the connection between him and me was broken, and I knew nothing about him for many years. Then on a summer day in the thirties I was sitting at the stone table with my wife and a guest behind our house in Montagnola . A visit was reported. ... It was Fraenkel. ... The browns had not killed him, but robbed him of his title, his functions, his honor and dignity. He didn't say a lot about it. He didn't have to experience the second war. "

literature

  • Entry Dr. Albert Fraenkel in: Norbert Giovannini; Claudia Rink; Frank Moraw: Remember, preserve, commemorate: the Jewish residents of Heidelberg and their relatives 1933-1945 . Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-88423-353-5 , p. 114 .
  • Peter Drings, Jörg Thierfelder, Bernd Weidemann, Friedrich Willig, Michael Ehmann (eds.): Albert Fraenkel - A doctor's life in light and shadow 1864–1938 . Ecomed publishing house, Landsberg 2004.
  • Georg Weiss (ed.): Albert Fraenkel - doctor and researcher . 2nd Edition. CF Boehringer & Soehne, Mannheim 1964.
  • Dagmar Drüll: Heidelberger Gelehrtenlexikon 1803-1932 . (Ed.): Rectorate of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität-Heidelberg. Springer Berlin Heidelberg Tokyo. 2012. 324 pp. ISBN 978-3-642-70761-2

Web links

Commons : Albert Fraenkel (1864–1938)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Fraenkel, Albert (1864–1938), physician. Alexander Kipnis, accessed October 18, 2013 .
  2. ^ Wolfgang U. Eckart : The medical faculty . In: Wolfgang U. Eckart, Volker Sellin , Eike Wolgast (Eds.): The University of Heidelberg in National Socialism . Springer Medizin Verlag, Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 978-3-540-21442-7 , p. 641-649 (Albert Fraenkel p. 648).
  3. ↑ Entry Dr. Albert Fraenkel . In: Norbert Giovannini, Claudia Rink, Frank Moraw: Remember, preserve, commemorate. The Jewish residents of Heidelberg and their relatives 1933–1945 . Das Wunderhorn, Heidelberg 2011, ISBN 978-3-88423-353-5 , p. 114 .
  4. ↑ Hubert Kolling: Annemarie Fraenkel (1897–1967) , in: Hubert Kolling (Ed.): Biographical Lexicon for Nursing History “Who was who in nursing history”, Volume 8; hpsmedia Nidda 2018, pp. 61–65.
  5. ↑ Heidelberg History Association: Annemarie Fraenkel. Retrieved August 25, 2010 .
  6. ↑ Friends of the Eduard-Spranger-Gymnasium: Famous students and teachers of the ESG. Retrieved August 25, 2010 .
  7. ↑ Weiss 1964, p. 12.
  8. ↑ Eberhard J. Wormer : Strophanthin. Comeback of a heart remedy , Kopp, Rottenburg 2015, pp. 51–55
  9. ↑ The grave of Professor Dr. Albert Fraenkel is added to the list of Heidelberg graves of honor. Press releases from the City of Heidelberg, September 11, 2013, accessed on October 18, 2013 .
  10. ↑ Albert Fraenkel: Tonographic studies on digitalis effect . In: Archives of Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology . 40, 1898, pp. 40-52. doi : 10.1007 / BF01931500 .
  11. ^ Klaus Starke : A history of Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology . 358, 1998, pp. 1-109, here pp. 34-35. doi : 10.1007 / PL00005229 .
  12. ↑ Albert Fraenkel: Comparative studies on the cumulative effect of digital bodies . In: Archives of Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology . 51, 1904, pp. 84-102. doi : 10.1007 / BF01840741 .
  13. ^ Klaus Starke: A history of Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology . 358, 1998, pp. 1–109, here p. 66. doi : 10.1007 / PL00005229 .
  14. ↑ Albert Fraenkel and G. Schwartz: Treatises on digital therapy. I. About intravenous strophanthin injections in heart patients . In: Archives of Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology . 57, 1907, pp. 79-122. doi : 10.1007 / BF01841302 .
  15. ↑ Hans H. Meyer and R. Gottlieb: The experimental pharmacology as a basis of drug treatment, pp. 259-260. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin and Vienna 1910.
  16. ↑ Hans H. Meyer and Ernst P. Pick : The experimental pharmacology as the basis of drug treatment. Ninth edition, p. 376. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin and Vienna 1936.
  17. ↑ A. Fraenkel in collaboration with R. Thauer: Strophanthin therapy. Published by Julius Springer, Berlin 1933.
  18. ^ A. Fraenkel: Pharmacological aspect of digital therapy . In: The Lancet . 226, 1935, pp. 1101-1106. doi : 10.1016 / S0140-6736 (00) 94623-3 .
  19. ↑ Weiss 1964, p. 30.
  20. ↑ T. Eschenhagen: Pharmacology of the cardiovascular system - the heart. In: K. Aktories, U. Förstermann, F. Hofmann and K. Starke: General and special pharmacology and toxicology. 10th edition, Munich, Elsevier GmbH 2009, pp. 395-448. ISBN 978-3-437-42522-6 .
  21. ↑ Albert Fraenkel Prize on the website of the German Society for Cardiology - Cardiovascular Research. Retrieved November 7, 2012.
  22. ^ District Medical Association South Baden: Foundation of the Albert Fraenkel plaque and award principles. (PDF; 12 kB) Accessed November 7, 2012.
  23. ↑ Wolfgang Heubner in Weiss 1964, pp. 6-15.
  24. ↑ Karl Jaspers in Weiss 1964, pp. 17-20.
  25. ^ A congress of the German Society for Internal Medicine .
  26. ↑ Hermann Hesse in Weiss 1964, pp. 63–67.
personal data
SURNAME Fraenkel, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor, tuberculosis and heart researcher
DATE OF BIRTH June 3, 1864
PLACE OF BIRTH Mußbach , Germany
DATE OF DEATH December 22, 1938
Place of death Heidelberg , Germany