Dorothea Christiane Erxleben

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Dorothea Christiane Erxleben
Birthplace in Quedlinburg
House Kaplanei 10 in Quedlinburg, place of work and residence of Dorothea Christiane Erxleben

Dorothea Christiane Erxleben (born Leporin ; born November 13, 1715 in Quedlinburg ; † June 13, 1762 ibid) was (1754) the first German doctor to receive a doctorate and a pioneer in women's studies .

Life

Dorothea Leporin was born as the daughter of Christian Polykarp Leporin senior (1689–1747), a doctor in Aschersleben and later city physician in Quedlinburg , and Anna Sophia Leporin (1681–1757), daughter of the consistorial councilor Albert Meinecke. The house where she was born at Steinweg 51 is now a listed building. Tender and sickly from childhood, the gifted girl showed extraordinary intellectual abilities and an interest in scientific studies. The principal and vice principal of the Quedlinburg council school gave her private Latin lessons . Her father instructed her in natural sciences and - together with her brother Christian Polykarp Leporin junior (1717–1791) - in practical and theoretical medicine. Through this she got to know the medical writings of Georg Ernst Stahl , Michael Alberti , Johann Juncker and Lorenz Heister , among others . He also took her to his patients from the age of 16 and over time even let her represent him in his practice.

Dorothea went through the same training as her brother, and like him, she was aiming for an academic degree. The desire to study with her brother was made impossible by his conscription to the military. However, the brother took early leave from the military to study with his sister. Since he was considered a deserter at times, he fled to the nearby Landgraviate of Hessen-Kassel . He later became a doctor in Nienburg an der Weser .

Despite her broad medical knowledge, Dorothea Leporin was denied access to the university. She then turned to Frederick the Great , who in 1741 instructed the University of Halle to allow Dorothea Leporin to do a doctorate . In 1742 Dorothea married the widowed deacon Johann Christian Erxleben (1697–1759), who had a son and four daughters from her first marriage with her cousin. Since the oldest of the stepchildren was only nine years old, she did not take advantage of the royal privilege of doing a doctorate for the time being.

When she started practicing, she was criticized as a dilettante by the other doctors in her hometown for not having had formal university training . In 1742, under the name of Leporin, she defended herself against the allegations in the text Thorough investigation of the causes that keep women from studying:

“The contempt for learning is particularly evident in the fact that women are prevented from studying. If something is withheld from the greater part of humanity because it is not necessary and useful for all people, but could be detrimental to many, it deserves no appreciation, as it cannot be of general use. Thus the exclusion of many from scholarship leads to their contempt. This injustice is as great as that which happens to women who are robbed of this magnificent and precious object. "

In addition to the housewife work in her large family, she continued to practice. In 1747 she took over her late father's practice. After one of her patients died during treatment, other doctors reported her for "medicinischer botch-up". As a result, the now 39-year-old Dorothea decided to do her doctorate shortly after the birth of her fourth child. In January 1754 she submitted her dissertation with the title Quod nimis cito ac iucunde curare saepius fiat causa minus tutae curationis , 1755 in German under the title Academic treatise on the too quick and pleasant, but therefore often uncertain, healing of diseases , and on May 6th of the same year she entered the doctoral examination at the University of Halle, but only after the Prussian king had agreed to the examination and doctorate, which she passed with great success. On June 12, 1754, Professor Johann Juncker solemnly proclaimed her a "Doctor of Medicine". After completing her doctorate, she carried on with her life as before: she looked after her children, ran the household and treated her patients. In Quedlinburg she remained the respected pastor until her death in 1762. According to an obituary of her eldest son, Friedrich Georg Christian, she died of breast cancer.

family

Erxleben had four children. The first son, Johann Christian Polycarp (1744–1777), became a well-known natural scientist. The second son Christian Albert Christoph (1746–1755) died at the age of nine. The daughter Anna Dorothea (1750–1805) married Ludwig Christian Anton Wigand in 1777; the botanist Julius Wilhelm Albert Wigand (1821–1886) is her grandson. The youngest son Johann Heinrich Christian (1753-1811) became a legal scholar.

Aftermath, monuments and designations

On April 20, 1899, women in the German Reich were officially admitted to the state examinations in medicine, dentistry and pharmacy for the first time. At the universities of Prussia, medical students could enroll for the first time in the winter semester of 1908/1909. Nevertheless, there were exceptions in a few rare cases with Charlotte Heidenreich (1788-1859), who received her doctorate in Gießen, and a few others and the dentist Henriette Hirschfeld-Tiburtius (1834-1911), until in 1901 with Ida Democh-Maurmeier (1877- 1950) and Mathilde Wagner (1866–1940) were the first to be allowed to take the state examination according to a Federal Council resolution of 1900.

From 1955 until it was closed in 1990, the Quedlinburg Medical School or Medical College was called "Dorothea Christiane Erxleben". From 1962 the medical school made a name for itself as a training center for “foreign citizens of young nation states”. At this facility, which is unique in the GDR , medical personnel from more than thirty countries and four continents were trained or qualified. The Harz Clinic Dorothea Christiane Erxleben in Quedlinburg bears the name of the doctor.

A barracks in the north of Halle (Saale), in which the 13th medical regiment was stationed after 1990, was called Dr. Dorothea Erxleben barracks until the Halle garrison was dissolved in summer 2007 . Several schools also bear her name.

In 1970, the Halle painter Hannes H. Wagner painted a mural on the life of Dorothea Erxleben in what was then the polyclinic in district 2 of Halle-Neustadt. Stephanie Dannenfeldt has had a thesis on the restoration of the picture since 2007 at the Hornemann Institute in Bielefeld .

The Dorothea-Erxleben-Lernzentrum at the University Hospital Halle (Saale) is also named after her.

In 1994 the bronze bust designed by Marianne Traub was erected in the University Hospital Halle (Saale) in memory of Dorothea Erxleben.

In Quedlinburg, the depiction of Dorothea Erxleben has been part of the ensemble of fountain figures on Kornmarkt created by Bernd Göbel since 1990.

The Dorothea Erxleben program of the state of Lower Saxony to qualify women artists for a professorship at universities and technical colleges as well as the Quedlinburg Clinic and the Clinic in Wernigerode are named after her.

The musical theater piece Kein Ort. Erxleben by Katrin Schinköth-Haase is an artistic appreciation of their lives.

Numerous streets are named after Dorothea Erxleben, including in Berlin-Altglienicke, Bonn (Vilich-Müldorf), Braunschweig, Dresden, Elmshorn, Halle, Heide, Hettstedt, Hilden, Kiel, Langenfeld, Lübeck and Quedlinburg. On the occasion of her 300th birthday, Google dedicated a doodle to her .

Fonts

  • Dorothea Christiane Leporin: Thorough investigation of the causes that prevent the female sex from studying. In this, their irrelevance is shown, and as possible, necessary and useful it is that this generation is indebted to truth, is elaborately explained by Dorotheen Christianen Leporinin. In addition to a preface by her father D. Christiani Polycarpi Leporin, Med. Pract, in Quedlinburg. Berlin 1742 ( digitized on Wikimedia Commons ); 4. Reprint Olms, Hildesheim 2013, ISBN 978-3-487-30114-3 .
  • Dorothea Christiana Erxlebia: Quod nimis cito ac iucunde curare saepius fiat causa minus tutae curationis. Dissertation . 1754 ( digitized version of the Bavarian State Library ).
    • Academic treatise on the too quick and pleasant, but therefore often uncertain, healing of diseases. German edition of the dissertation, Halle 1755; Reprint: Verlag Janos Stekovics , Dößel 2004, ISBN 3-89923-056-6 .

Movies

  • Dorothea Erxleben . Film by Anne Dessau, GDR 1963.

literature

  • Heinz Böhm: Dorothea Christiane Erxleben. Your life and work. On her 270th birthday on November 13, 1985 . Municipal museums, Quedlinburg 1985.
  • Julia von Brencken: doctoral hat and women's cap. Dorothea Erxleben - the first female doctor. Biographical novel . Kaufmann, 1997, ISBN 3-7936-0306-7 .
  • Eva Brinkschulte, Eva Labouvie (Ed.): Dorothea Christiana Erxleben: Female learning and medical profession since the 18th century . Mitteldeutscher Verlag, Halle (Saale) 2006, ISBN 3-89812-364-2 (anthology of scientific essays).
  • Liselotte Buchheim:  Erxleben, Dorothea. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 637 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Renate Feyl: The silent departure. Women in science . Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-462-02388-8 (Kiwi paperback).
  • Holger Friedrich: Features of Enlightenment Reason in German Medicine of the 18th Century. Stahl's organism model, the Latin dissertation Erxleben and the speech by Mederer and Wuthwehr on the integration of surgery as reflected in historical discourse analysis . Master's thesis, University of Düsseldorf, 2010 ( bibliothek.uni-halle.de ).
  • August Hirsch:  Erxleben, Dorothea . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 6, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1877, p. 334 f.
  • Emmy Kraetke-Rumpf: The doctor from Quedlinburg. The life of Dorothea Christiane von Erxleben . 2003, ISBN 3-86122-006-7 .
  • Hans Ludwig : Dorothea Christiana Erxleben (1715–1762). First doctorate in Germany. In: The gynecologist . 45 (2012), pp. 732-734, doi: 10.1007 / s00129-012-3031-8
  • Kornelia Steffi Gabriele Markau: Dorothea Christiana Erxleben (1715–1762): Germany's first female doctor with a doctorate. An analysis of your Latin doctoral thesis and the first German translation . Dissertation, University of Halle-Wittenberg, 2006 ( full text ).
  • Eike Pies : Dorothea Christiane Erxleben née Leporin (1715–1762), the first doctor in Germany . Dommershausen-Sprockhövel 2011, ISBN 978-3-928441-80-3 .
  • Werner Quednau: The doctor Dorothea Christiana . Altberliner Verlag Groszer, Berlin 1958, DNB 453882722
  • Florian Steger: Dorothea Christiana Erxleben. The first doctorate in Germany. In: Achim Lipp, Jürgen Lasch (Ed.): Hallesche Heroes der Heilkunst. Important doctors and scientists of the medical faculty (= Edition Templerkapelle. Volume 2). 2nd Edition. Freund Templerhof Gut Müuellen eV, 2015, ISBN 978-3-86977-062-8 , pp. 64–79.
  • Gisela Stockmann: Dorothea Erxleben. Doctorate . In: Gisela Stockmann (ed.): Steps out of the shadow. Women in Saxony-Anhalt . Dingsda-Verlag, Querfurt 1993, ISBN 3-928498-12-6 .
  • Hubertus Averbeck: From cold water therapy to physical therapy. Reflections on people and at the time of the most important developments in the 19th century . Europäische Hochschulverlag, Bremen 2012, ISBN 978-3-86741-782-2 , p. 692.
  • Dorothea Christiane Erxleben. For the 300th birthday of Germany's first female doctor with a doctorate. Harzklinikum Dorothea Christiane Erxleben GmbH, Wernigerode 2015, ISBN 978-3-936185-96-6 .

Web links

Commons : Dorothea Christiane Erxleben  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Dorothea Christiane Erxleben  - sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Christoph Schweikardt: Erxleben, Dorothea Christiane. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 369.
  2. ↑ a b c d Kornelia Steffi Gabriele Markau: Dorothea Christiana Erxleben (1715–1762): Germany's first female doctor with a doctorate. An analysis of your Latin doctoral thesis and the first German translation. Dissertation, Halle 2006, accessed September 23, 2015.
  3. ^ DLF , wording of the letter
  4. ↑ genealogy.net ( Memento from December 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Investigation of why women do not study. on Commons
  6. ^ Francisca Loetz: Dorothea Christiane Erxleben, b. Leporin. In: Wolfgang U. Eckart , Christoph Gradmann : Doctors Lexicon. From antiquity to the present. 3. Edition. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2006, ISBN 978-3-540-29584-6 (print), ISBN 978-3-540-29585-3 (online), p. 110.
  7. ^ Norbert Conrads: Anna Würster, the first privileged medicin Silesia (1657) . In: Konrad Goehl , Johannes Gottfried Mayer (Hrsg.): Editions and studies on Latin and German specialist prose of the Middle Ages. Ceremony for Gundolf Keil on his 65th birthday (=  texts and knowledge , 3). Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2000, pp. 1–15; here: p. 13 f.
  8. ↑ See Erxleben, Friedrich (1789), p. 356.
  9. ↑ Stefan Wolter: The best is just good enough for the sick. Clinic Dorothea Christinane Erxleben gGmbH, 100 years of history. Quedlinburg 2007, pp. 264-268.
  10. ↑ http://193.175.110.9/hornemann/english/epubl_ha_ausgabe.php?haid=1128&l=o&th=D&spra=alle&sort=ea_name&ref=/hornemann/german/epubl_ha_autoren.php#daten
  11. ^ Dorothea-Erxleben-Lernzentrum Halle , website of the University Hospital Halle (Saale), accessed on September 27, 2014.
  12. ↑ https://www.halle-im-bild.de/fotos/denkmaeler/dorothea-erxleben
  13. ↑ http://www.quedlinburg.de/de/denkmaeler/denkmal-persoenitäten-der-quedlinburger-geschichte-20004960.html
  14. ↑ mwk.niedersachsen.de
  15. ↑ keinorterxleben.de ( Memento of 31 October 2011 at the Internet Archive )
  16. ↑ http://www.google.com/doodles/dorothea-christiane-erxlebens-300th-birthday
personal data
SURNAME Erxleben, Dorothea Christiane
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leporin, Dorothea Christiane (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION first doctorate German doctor
DATE OF BIRTH November 13, 1715
PLACE OF BIRTH Quedlinburg
DATE OF DEATH June 13, 1762
Place of death Quedlinburg