General institute against tumor diseases

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The General Institute against Tumor Diseases was an institute for the clinical treatment of cancer and experimental cancer research that existed from 1935 to 1945 at the city's Rudolf Virchow Hospital in Berlin .

Structural development

The General Institute against Tumor Diseases was opened on July 1, 1935. In addition to the city of Berlin, the Reich Ministry of the Interior and the Reich Ministry of Science, Education and Public Education were involved in its creation . Background of the establishment was the de facto destruction of the 1903 Cancer Research Institute created the Berlin University by the beginning in 1933 took place dismissal of Jewish employees after the takeover of the Nazis in Germany .

The institute was divided into a central X-ray institute with diagnostics and therapy wing and a tumor institute with two clinical departments with 50 beds each, a biological department, a physical department and a department for tissue engineering and micro-cinematography. From 1936, the tumor farm of the German Research Foundation (DFG), a central breeding institute for laboratory animals for experimental cancer research, was attached to the biological department . In 1939 the biological department was divided into a biological and a chemical department.

An employee of the General Institute against Tumor Diseases in the Institute for Pathology of the Rudolf Virchow Hospital was active for pathological-anatomical questions. The spatial and institutional allocation of the tumor farm later changed to the Central Institute for Cancer Research, which was newly founded in Poznan in 1942 . From 1943 onwards, the institute's facilities were damaged due to the war and parts of various departments were outsourced. After the end of the Second World War , the institute was not rebuilt.

financing

The city of Berlin financed the structural changes and expansions at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital that were necessary to set up the General Institute against Tumor Diseases, as well as the equipment and staff of the institute. The DFG was responsible for financing the research projects and the tumor farm. In addition, there was a so-called “Führer donation” of 100,000 Reichsmarks per year for cancer research.

Doctors and scientists working at the institute

The surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch was appointed curator of the General Institute against Tumor Diseases . The director was the radiologist Heinrich Cramer , who had previously been the head of the X-ray Institute at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital. As director of the General Institute against Tumor Diseases, he also became one of the hospital's three medical directors from then on. His deputy was Arthur Hintze , who had been head of the X-ray Radium Institute at the Surgical University Clinic in Berlin since 1927. Cramer and Hintze also headed the first and second clinical departments at the General Institute against Tumor Diseases.

Friedrich Holtz initially took over the management of the biological department . He was followed in 1939 by Friedrich Kröning from the University of Göttingen , who had already headed an experimental animal breeding facility for the DFG there from 1937. Erwin Hasché and Karl Höfer became heads of the physical department as well as the tissue engineering and micro-cinematography department . Hans Lettré , who also moved from the University of Göttingen to the General Institute against Tumor Diseases, was responsible for setting up the chemical department, which was separated from the biological department . After returning to Göttingen to take up a professorship for organic chemistry, he continued to be associated with the institute as an external scientific member from 1942.

literature

  • Ulrike Scheybal: The General Institute Against Tumor Diseases 1935-1945. In: Wolfgang U. Eckart (Ed.): 100 Years of Organized Cancer Research. Georg Thieme Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-13-105661-4 , pp. 51-55
  • The cancer institutes in the period 1900-1945. In: Gustav Wagner, Andrea Mauerberger: Cancer research in Germany. Prehistory and history of the German Cancer Research Center. Springer-Verlag, Berlin and Heidelberg 2012, ISBN 978-3-642-75021-2 , pp. 18–45; in particular section The General Institute against Tumor Diseases in the Rudolf Virchow Hospital , p. 25