Department of Forensic Medicine Vienna
The Center for Forensic Medicine or earlier the Department of Forensic Medicine or earlier Institute for Forensic Medicine of the Medical University of Vienna was founded in 1805 and is the oldest forensic medicine institute in the German-speaking area. It is one of the oldest relevant institutes in the world.
predecessor
The Embarrassing Neck Court Ordinance ( Constitutio Criminalis Carolina ) of Emperor Charles V , issued in 1532, already contains provisions according to which doctors should be consulted with medical questions within the jurisdiction. This was made binding for all Austrian hereditary lands in 1768 in the Constitutio Criminalis Theresiana . Autopsy as it is today was introduced in 1770. The lecturers had to already have degrees from the medical faculty. The General Hospital (AKH) (Vienna-Alsergrund) was opened in 1784 . The official opening of the corpse now fell into the range of tasks of the hospital surgeons. The city surgeon continued to carry out the actual dissection .
history
Emerging is the Department like other forensic institutions (for example, in Berlin) from the so-called Staatsarzneykunde . This subject was founded in Vienna by the director of the General Hospital, Johann Peter Frank . Emperor Franz I of Austria (reigned 1804–1835) had his own chair for state medical science set up in 1804 , from which on February 24, 1805 the chair for forensic medicine emerged . Ferdinand Eberhard Vietz became the first member of the board . Vietz gave both medical and legal lectures. The new course of study became an examination subject at the Faculties of Medicine and Law. From 1808 the respective professor for forensic medicine took over the supervision of the autopsies. Students were also allowed to be present. From 1812 onwards, all judicial autopsies in Vienna and its suburbs were carried out in the General Hospital.
Josef Bernt became the second professor for forensic medicine , during whose tenure the medical and forensic teaching institution with dissection room and amphitheater for opening corpses was set up. This laid the foundation stone for the Vienna Institute for Forensic Medicine. Bernt was sworn in as inspector by the city authorities in 1815 and thus an expert in today's sense. His successors were Jakob Kolletschka (1843–1847) and Johann Dlauhy (until 1875). In 1862 Dlauhy and Carl Freiherr von Rokitansky moved into the newly constructed one-story institute building. The work rooms with a chemical laboratory and a museum were on the first floor, while the judicial section room, the judicial burial chamber and a commission room were on the ground floor.
Dlauhy's successor was Eduard Ritter von Hofmann , who took over the chair in 1875 and headed it until his death in 1897. During his tenure, forensic medicine and hygiene were separated. Hofmann, for his part, integrated the judicial and medical police opening of corpses into the forensic medicine area. During his tenure, the Forensic Medicine Institute was expanded in 1883. In addition, the Pathological Institute was given a second floor, and an additional lecture hall was built. The work rooms were moved to the first floor and the museum to the second floor. Hofmann was also the author of the most important textbook for forensic medicine of his time , which first appeared in 1878. It has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish and Russian.
The most important events in Hofmann's tenure were the ring theater fire on December 8, 1881, which claimed more than 400 victims, and the unsolved suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf on January 30, 1889. Due to the tragic events of 1881, the Vienna Voluntary Rescue Society was founded. The accident led to important new discoveries in forensic medicine, such as the fatal consequences of smoke inhalation . During the examination of the many corpses, the determination of the dental status was carried out, which is still an effective means of establishing the identity of mutilated corpses.
The next professor was the pathological anatomist Alexander Kolisko . His specialty was sudden death pathology. He left the criminalistic side of the subject, the work at court and the lectures for lawyers to his assistant Albin Haberda . When the chair for pathological anatomy became vacant in 1916, Kolisko returned there and Haberda was appointed full professor for forensic medicine.
After the end of the First World War, the former military pathological institute of the garrison hospital adjacent to the north was vacated in 1922. It was integrated into the institute through another structural expansion. Since then, the institute has been based at Sensengasse 2.
Haberda was temporarily followed by Anton Werkgartner at the beginning of December 1933 and officially Fritz Reuter at the beginning of 1935, who after the annexation of Austria was retired at the end of May 1938 by the new Nazi rulers and officially removed from office in September 1938. From autumn 1938 to May 1945 Philipp Schneider held the chair for forensic medicine. Reuter was only able to return to the university after liberation from National Socialism in 1945. Reuter set up the institute's own chemistry laboratory. Reuter's successor in 1946 was his former assistant Walter Schwarzacher , founding professor of the Heidelberg Institute for Forensic Medicine. Leopold Breitenecker held the chair from 1958 to 1973. During his tenure, the old building stock was completely renovated, the side wings were raised by one floor, and a modern laboratory building was added. Breitenecker had two new departments set up: Serology and Anthropology . Breitenecker was followed by his student Wilhelm Holczabek , who headed the chair from 1973 to 1989. From 1989 to 2003 Georg Bauer served as the institute's provisional director. Molecular biology has now been opened as a new department . In 2004 Manfred Hochmeister became the new head of the Department of Forensic Medicine at the Medical University of Vienna . Since then, a central DNA laboratory has been set up in Vienna and another new building is planned to expand the institute. In 2005, Hans Goldenberg , head of the Institute for Medicinal Chemistry, followed as provisional director, and Daniele U. Risser has been in charge of the department since 2010.
After a two-year break, with some renovation work on the first floor, corpses have been dissected again in the department since 2010. However, these are only autopsies ordered by the public prosecutor. In order to (re) set up a real full operation, larger and modern premises would be needed, but to date there has been no agreement between the City of Vienna and the Republic of Austria on possible financing. Specialists are no longer trained in Vienna either.
The Forensic Museum
The establishment of the forensic medicine museum in the listed central wing of the main building goes back to J. Frank. In 1796, on Frank's initiative, an ordinance was issued that the doctors of the AKH should deliver every specimen to the Pathology-Anatomical Museum of today's Institute for Pathology. Forensic medicine professor Hofmann managed to get the forensic medicine specimens from the pathological collection for his institute and thus founded an independent museum, which has been located in the forensic medicine institute building (Sensengasse 2) since 1922 and comprises more than 2000 specimens, mainly from the medical police and judicial openings of the dead. The extensive collection of instruments of crime, from primitive instruments from earlier centuries to the latest weapons, brings the criminal history of the recent past to life. These include, for example, the file with which Empress Elisabeth (Sisi) was murdered in Geneva on September 10, 1898.
literature
- Ernst Hausner: The historical collection of the Institute for Forensic Medicine in Vienna. Edition Hausner, ISBN 978-3-901141-39-3
Web links
Footnotes
- ^ Forensic Medicine Museum in the Vienna History Wiki of the City of Vienna
Coordinates: 48 ° 13 '9.2 " N , 16 ° 21' 10.1" E