Amelie Du Vinage

Amelie Clara Minna Mathilde Du Vinage b. von Skopnik (born May 15, 1877 in Glogau , † May 8, 1968 in Berlin ) was a German doctor.

Life and activity

Du Vinage was born as Amelie von Skopnik, daughter of Captain Ernst von Skopnik (1840–1878) and his wife Auguste, nee. Fritsch (1847–1880), born. She had a sister, Elsa (* 1876), and a brother, Ernst Albrecht Leopold Emil (* 1878). In her childhood she attended the Royal Luisenstift in Potsdam.

After the early death of her parents, von Skopnik moved from Silesia to Berlin with her uncle's family in 1897. From 1898 onwards, at the encouragement of her aunt Regula Frisch, who was close to the women's movement, she attended the high school courses offered by the women's rights activist Helene Lange for young women in preparation for the Abitur. She ended these four-year courses early in 1900 after two years in order to shorten the time to graduation and instead enrolled in a press. Finally she passed the Abitur on September 6, 1901 at the grammar school in Schweidnitz in Silesia .

Due to a serious illness that resulted in an operation, von Skopnik was unable to start studying immediately and had to take a longer break. After her recovery, she decided to emulate the doctor Franziska Tiburtius , who was very well known in Berlin at the time, and study medicine. She did this in Bonn, Heidelberg, Berlin, Freiburg and Munich.

On April 3, 1904, von Skopnik completed his pre-clinical studies with the Physikum in Bonn. In the summer semester of 1906 she moved to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich, where she attended lectures with Ottmar von Angerer , Hans Schmaus and Emil Kraepelin . She passed the state examination - as the third woman at this institution - on January 18, 1907. Von Skopnik completed her medical internship at the children's outpatient clinic in Munich (January 28 to April 1, 1907) and in the hospital of the orphanage of the city of Berlin in Rummelsburg (from April 1, 1907).

1907 of Skopnik at the Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich, one of Otto Bollinger supervised work on Epithelcysten the esophagus to Dr. med. PhD. She was the fourth woman to receive a doctorate in medicine at this institution. She received her medical license on January 27, 1908.

In 1909 von Skopnik settled down as a doctor in Berlin, where she ran a practice on Pestalozzistraße. Here she met Francois Du Vinage (born November 10, 1863, † October 21, 1927), a consul from a Berlin Huguenot family, whose first wife Beatrice Wolfssohn had died in childbirth in 1907. Both married on May 28, 1910 in Berlin. The marriage resulted in four daughters between 1911 and 1921. After she briefly worked as an assistant doctor at the Marienkrankenhaus in Frankfurt in 1911, Du Vinage, as she was now called, gave up her job in 1912 to become a housewife.

Due to inflation in the early 1920s, the family lost a large part of their wealth. After the death of her husband, who died of a stroke on October 21, 1927, Du Vinage was forced to resume her professional activity to look after the four children. In 1927 she opened a general practice in Berlin-Neukölln. This was initially at Joachim-Friedrich-Strasse 52, later (from 1931) at Rothenburgstrasse 36, Roonstrasse 31, at Hegewinkel 30 (1933) and most recently at Hermannstrasse 55 (1935 to 1940). She was also in charge of childcare in this district. Also in 1927 she became a member of the Association of German Doctors. From 1913 to 1919 she was also a member of the Berlin Medical Society.

Du Vinage lost further assets in 1930 and 1931 through embezzlement and dubious risky business of her lover Heinrich Pfeifer , whom she had also appointed as her asset manager. Pfeifer received several months' imprisonment due to his offenses in this context, which were a subject of the extensive Heynau trial before the Ludwigsburg district court.

During the Second World War, Du Vina's family was bombed out. She spent the last months of the war in the Harz Mountains, where she was required to do emergency service. She then moved to the North Sea with her daughters, where she looked after three refugee camps. She then practiced in Schleswig-Holstein, from where she returned to Berlin in 1947. Here she settled in Lübars in Zehntweg (later Zehntwerderweg) 141a. Afterwards she worked as a doctor in Berlin for twenty years (until 1967), most recently from 1957 to 1967 with a practice at Altonaer Strasse 4 in the Hansaviertel. On March 31, 1967, now almost ninety years old, she gave up her practice because of a serious bowel operation. She died shortly before her 91st birthday in 1968.

family

Amelie Du Vinage's marriage resulted in four daughters: the painter Béatrice Amélie (born August 14, 1911 in Berlin-Schöneberg), the fashion studio owner Ruthe Renée Du Vinage (born February 28, 1913 in Berlin-Schöneberg), the photographer Gabriele du Vinage (born February 9, 1920 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf) and the physiotherapist Marguerite Lilli Du Vinage (born December 14, 1921).

Fonts

• About epithelial cysts of the esophagus with two images , 1907.

literature

Biographical sketches :

• Johanna Bleker / Sabine Schleiermacher: Doctors from the Empire. Résumés of a Generation , 2000, p. 56.
• Eva Brinkschulte: Female doctors. The implementation of the professional profile in Germany , Free University of Berlin, Institute for the History of Medicine, 1994, p. 173.
• Monika Ebert: Between recognition and ostracism. Doctors at the Ludwig Maxilians University in the first half of the 20th century , 2003, pp. 83–86.

Obituaries :

• Ingeborg Falck: "Dr. Amelie du Vinage-von Skopnik", in: Berliner Ärzteblatt 81 (1968), issue 2, p. 707.
• Berliner Ärztekammer 6 (1969) issue 1, p. 8.
• Bulletin of the German Medical Association 15 (1968), No. 6, p. 17.

Honors :

• Ärzteblatt für Berlin 70 (1957), pp. 247 and 437; 71 (1958), pp. 38 and 215; 79: 732 (1966); 81 (1968), p. 707.
• I. Sch .: "She studied medicine 50 years ago", in: Zeitschrift unbekannt, from approx. 1953, p. 194 (Landesarchiv Berlin, DÄB vol. 2, B Rep 235 (HLA))

Web link

• Short biography on the website of the Berlin Charité