Berta Ottenstein

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Berta Ottenstein (born March 27, 1891 in Nuremberg ; † June 17, 1956 near Concord (Massachusetts) ) was a German dermatologist who was the first woman to obtain a habilitation at the University of Freiburg im Breisgau , and the first woman in Germany who completed her habilitation in dermatology.

Life

Ottenstein, who was born into a Nuremberg merchant family as the youngest of six children, studied at the University of Erlangen , where she received her doctorate in chemistry in 1914 . After a position at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem (1927), she moved to the University of Freiburg in 1928 , where she received an assistant position. As early as 1930, her superior, clinic director Georg Alexander Rost , expressed his intention to propose her for a habilitation in the foreseeable future . The habilitation was approved by the Senate on June 3, 1931 and confirmed by the responsible ministry in Karlsruhe on June 11. Ottenstein had already been awarded the degree three weeks earlier at the medical faculty, so that she could take up a position as a private lecturer in the winter semester of 1931/32 . The title of her habilitation thesis was investigations into the content of diastatic ferment in the skin and blood and its biochemical significance in skin diseases .

In 1932 Ottenstein's contract at the University of Freiburg was extended for the last time, but before it expired in autumn 1934, the Nazis took her “leave” because of her Jewish descent. Together with many other lecturers, she had to leave the university on April 12, 1933.

From 1933-35 she held an assistant position at the dermatological clinic in Budapest before moving to the University of Istanbul in 1935 , where she worked until 1945 as a lecturer and head of the dermatological clinic. She then emigrated to the USA, where she received a position as a research fellow at Harvard University and worked at the New England Medical Center in Boston.

In 1951, Ottenstein was awarded an extraordinary professorship by the University of Freiburg and she was granted American citizenship.

Appreciation

The Women's Advancement Prize of the University of Freiburg has been called the Bertha Ottenstein Prize since 2005 . According to the university website, the award is given to excellent scientific achievements in the field of women and gender research, teaching concepts and seminars, training and further education offers that integrate the aspect of equality across the board and stimulate gender-oriented awareness-raising processes, network building, event or exhibition organization on gender issues, Above-average commitment in the implementation of the faculty equality plans and / or the central equality plan, recruitment and personnel development measures that are suitable for increasing the proportion of women at the individual qualification levels at which they have so far been underrepresented, as well as innovative measures to improve life, study and Working conditions of student and employed parents at the university. In Freiburg, a street in the Brühl-Beurendung district on the former freight yard was named after Berta Ottenstein.

literature

  • Ute Scherb: I stand in the sun and feel my wings grow. Students and scientists at the Freiburg University from 1900 to the present. Ulrike Helmer Verlag, Königstein / Taunus 2002, ISBN 3-89741-117-2

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Information on the Bertha Ottenstein Prize on the University of Freiburg website ( Memento from July 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b Berta Ottenstein in the encyclopedia of the Jewish Women's Archive (English)
  3. ↑ Ute Scherb: I stand in the sun and feel my wings grow . Ulrike Helmer Verlag, 2002, pages 133-134
personal data
SURNAME Ottenstein, Berta
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ottenstein, Bertha
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dermatologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH June 17, 1956
Place of death at Concord (Massachusetts)