Emmi Hagen

Emmi Auguste Katharina Hagen (born August 12, 1918 in Gräfrath , today Solingen , † August 22, 1968 in Bonn ) was a German doctor . In 1949 she was the first woman to complete her habilitation at the Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn and was the first woman in Germany to hold a full professorship in her subject . After the Slavist Margarete Woltner , she was the second full professor at Bonn University.

biography

Emmi Hagen was the only daughter of Anna Hagen, née Nettlenbusch, from Barmen and her husband Friedrich Hagen from Orsoy in the Moers district . The father had come to Gräfrath in 1902 to work as a teacher . Daughter Emmi visited in Solingen the Lyceum August Dicke School . When she initially refused to join the BDM , she was harassed at school and her father was forcibly transferred. She bowed to the pressure, but resigned in 1937, but became a member of the National Socialist German Student Union (NSDStB) and the National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV), which was probably a prerequisite for being able to start studying. She had a “remarkable talent for drawing”, “aesthetic sensibility”, ingenuity and practical skills and wanted to become an architect . However, her father - at that time the principal of the Gräfrath elementary school - gave her the choice of becoming a teacher or a doctor. Emmi Hagen decided to study medicine.

Emmi Hagen graduated from high school in February 1937 and began studying in Bonn in October. After her first dissecting course , she initially wanted to give up her studies, which she had only started due to “patriarchal guidance”, because she cut herself in the process. In the first years of her studies, Hagen commuted between Solingen and Bonn, and in 1941 she moved entirely to Bonn. In December 1942, she passed her exams and received his doctorate at the same time on About anatomic pathological findings in resected sympathetic cervical ganglia in bronchial asthma . In the following year she became a research assistant at the Bonn Anatomical Institute under Professor Stöhr , after the Ministry of the Interior had initially rejected her appointment. She herself later stated that there was resistance to her employment because she was not a member of the NSDAP . Another reason could have been that during the war the authorities tried to withdraw medical professionals from the universities to use them elsewhere. But because Stöhr, who valued her excellent drawings and had entrusted her with the illustration of scientific publications, insisted on Hagen as his assistant, another doctor finally had to leave the University of Bonn.

After the end of the war , the University of Bonn was temporarily closed, and Emmi Hagen worked for a few months in the Solingen hospitals and in a private practice. She then resumed her work in Bonn and completed her habilitation in 1949 on the subject of neurohistological examinations of the human pituitary gland . As a Rockefeller Fellow , she studied in Cambridge , Birmingham , Basel , Copenhagen and Lund . In 1953 she founded the Department of Experimental Biology at the Anatomical Institute in Bonn and became its director. In the same year she and her parents moved into a new house in Bad Godesberg .

In 1955 Emmi Hagen was appointed adjunct professor on the basis of three internal and five external reports. Her colleague Herwig Hamperl in Bonn wrote: "All of her work is impressive from the first to the last line with its cleanliness and conscientiousness." In 1957 she was appointed to the scientific council , in 1960 to an associate professor and in 1967 to a full professorship at the Anatomical Institute in Bonn. At the same time, she became one of two directors of the institute: “She was the only woman in Europe in such an exceptional position, a scientist of high standing.” In his obituary for Hagen, her colleague Wolfgang Bargmann emphasized that “these dry data on professional career” would also correspond to the résumés of male colleagues: "It should not be overlooked that a woman often faces greater obstacles than a man who is dedicated to science." He divided Emmi Hagen's scientific work into three sections: it had from 1941 to 1948 exclusively with the orthology and pathology of the sympathetic trunk of the sympathetic system is concerned, from 1949 to 1962 with the Zwischenhirnhypophysensystem and from then on studies of the innervation carried out the skin, "apparently a fruit of stay in Oxford."

Hagen pursued her goals with “those means of leading people”, which “got their drive not only from the intellect, but above all from the heart”, which is why the students showed her not only respect but also love, wrote Bargmann in his obituary. In addition to her academic activities, Hagen was involved in the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and in the student union ; she organized meetings and took on editorial responsibilities. She also looked after her sick mother. From 1966 Emmi Hagen was president of the traditional Lower Rhine Society for Natural and Medicinal Science .

Emmi Hagen died in 1968 a few days after her 50th birthday after a brief illness on cancer . In his obituary, Alexander Graham McDonnell (AGM) Weddell, professor of anatomy at the University of Oxford , wrote that Hagen's courageous approaches to research in experimental biology would be "sorely missed," and he emphasized her sense of humor alongside her professional qualifications. “Many saw in her the spirit of all that is best in the German approach to science together with a sense of humor which so few dedicated persons possess.” (“Many saw in her the spirit of all that is best about the German approach is in science, coupled with a sense of humor that is rare among committed people. ")

Publications (selection)

• Neurohistological investigations on the human pituitary gland . In: Journal of Anatomy and History of Development . No. 114 , 1949, pp. 640-679 .
• Microscopic observations on the innervation of the vessels in the substance of the diencephalon and the pia mater . In: Journal of Anatomy and History of Development . No. 118 , 1954, pp. 223-236 .
• Morphological observations in the human hypothalamus in diabetes mellitus . In: Journal of Neurology . No. 177 , 1957, pp. 73-91 .
• Via the nerve supply to the skin . In: Studium Generale. Journal for the unity of the sciences in the context of their conceptual formation and research methods . No. 17 . Berlin 1964, p. 513-526 .
• with Werner Wittkowski: Light and electron microscopic examinations of the innervation of the piage vessels . In: Cell Research . No. 95 , 1969, pp. 429-444 .

Werner Bargmann lists a total of 42 publications in his obituary for Emmi Hagen, and Gerhard Wolf-Heidegger again 66 publications.

literature

• Wolfgang Bargmann : In memoriam of the anatomist Emmi Hagen (1918–1968) . In: Anatomischer Anzeiger . No. 125 , 1969, pp. 552-562 . (Wording of a commemorative speech given on June 14, 1969 at the University of Bonn.)
• Beate Battenfeld: 75 women - Solingen personalities . Ed .: Bergischer Geschichtsverein . Solingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-925626-36-4 , p. 140-141 .
• Gerhard Wolf-Heidegger: In memory of Emmi Hagen . In: Acta Anatomica . No. 71 , 1968, p. 481-491 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Pioneers of Science. In: University of Bonn. May 2003, accessed January 10, 2019 . 
2. ↑ Christian George: The women's studies at the University of Bonn in the post-war period . In: Andrea Stieldorf / Ursula Mättig / Ines Neffgen (eds.): But suddenly now emancipated, science wants to drive it. Women at the University of Cologne (1918–2018) (=  Bonn writings on the history of universities and science . No. 9 ). V&R unipress, Göttingen 2018, ISBN 978-3-8471-0894-8 , p. 210 f .
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Battenfeld, 75 women , p. 140.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Ralf Forsbach : The Medical Faculty of the University of Bonn in the "Third Reich". Walter de Gruyter, 2014, ISBN 978-3-486-84020-9 , p. 84 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
5. ↑ ^{a b c d} Bargmann, In memoriam , p. 553.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Thomas Becker: The natural and life sciences. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2018, ISBN 978-3-847-00842-2 , p. 90 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Bargmann, In memoriam , p. 554.
8. ↑ ^{a b} Battenfeld, 75 women , p. 141.
9. ^ Bargmann, In memoriam , p. 555.
10. ^ Bargmann, In memoriam , p. 555.
11. ^ Association of former pupils Lyzeum August-Dicke-Schule Solingen . tape 2.8 , 1971.
12. ^ Bargmann, In memoriam , p. 552.
13. ↑ Journal of Anatomy (1969), 105.3, p. 585. (pdf)