Ernst Wollheim

Ernst Wollheim (born March 24, 1900 in Libau ; † August 2, 1981 in Würzburg ) was a German physician ( internal medicine , cardiology ) and professor at the Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg .

Wollheim was the son of the merchant and Prussian commercial judge Arthur Wollheim and Marie Levy. He passed his Abitur in 1917 at the Friedrich-Werderschen Gymnasium in Berlin, was a soldier in World War I from June to November 1918 and then studied in Berlin with Friedrich Kraus and Gustav von Bergmann, among others, as well as in Heidelberg and Freiburg. In 1922 he passed the state examination, received his license to practice medicine in 1923 and received his doctorate in 1924. From 1920 to 1922 he received a scholarship from the Rockefeller Foundation in the USA and from 1923 he was assistant at the 2nd Medical Clinic of the Charité in Berlin, where, after his habilitation in 1929, he was a private lecturer under the clinic director Gustav von Bergmann. Originally from a Jewish family, he converted to Catholicism with his wife and children. He was friends with Joseph Roth , whose mentally ill wife Friedl, murdered in 1940 by the Nazis in the euthanasia program, was his patient.

Wolheim had to leave Germany after the National Socialists came to power. In 1933 he was dismissed by Gustav von Bergmann, who played an active role in this, as well as other Jewish assistants and went to Sweden in 1934, where he was full professor at the Medical Faculty of Lund University from 1934 to 1948. He was helped by the fact that he had previously looked after the director of the Clinic for Internal Medicine in Lund Sven Ingvar during stays at the Charité. From 1937 to 1942 he headed a laboratory for circulatory research there. During the time of National Socialism and the war he also traveled through Germany on his way back from vacation in Switzerland with a special ID that he received from a diplomat friend at the German embassy and visited Berlin regularly. He also had other connections to Switzerland, as he and Kurt Lange had developed a drug against high blood pressure for Ciba in Basel, for which he received royalties. He had contacts with both emigrants such as Siegfried Thannhauser in Boston and with medical professionals in the German Reich such as Hermann Rein in Göttingen, whom he admired and whose photo was on his desk. After the war he received an offer to succeed Bergmann as full professor for internal medicine at the Charité (he could move freely in all occupation zones with a Swedish visa), but he felt comfortable with Theodor Brugsch , who was on the other side of the negotiations led, treated rudely. From 1948 to 1970 he was Erich Grafe's full professor of internal medicine at the University of Würzburg and director of the medical clinic at the Luitpold Hospital. 1963/64 he was rector of the university. From 1968 he was one of the professors whose authoritarian leadership style was criticized by students and assistants. In 1968 he retired.

Wollheim was the only internist who emigrated during the National Socialist era and who took over a chair in the Federal Republic of Germany after the Second World War. At the University of Würzburg, he was actively involved in filling the medical chairs. In this way he prevented the appointment of Robert Herrlinger , who had been prejudiced by the National Socialists and whom he dismissed as the anatomist of the spleen , as an extraordinary professor of anatomy - but then he found a job as an extraordinary professor in the history of medicine.

He was involved in the manual of internal medicine (4th edition, volume 6). In addition to the cardiovascular system, he dealt with nephrology and high blood pressure. In 1968 he set up one of the first cardiac catheterization laboratories in Bavaria and promoted computer technology in medicine at an early age.

In 1964, as rector at the university's 382nd foundation festival, he caused a scandal when he stayed away from all student associations. He had been given an ultimatum to either agree to the singing of the first verse of the Deutschlandlied or to declare before the beginning of the event that the singing would not be done at his request.

In 1962 he was chairman of the congress of the International Society for Internal Medicine in Munich. In 1966 he received the Golden City Seal of Würzburg. In 1971 he became an honorary member of the German Society for Internal Medicine (DGIM) and in 1970 a delegate of the DGIM at the International Congress for Internal Medicine in New Delhi.

In 1922 he married Hedda Kuhn. In 1970, he and his wife founded the Ernst and Hedda Wolheim Foundation for research into high blood pressure. It awards the Ernst Wolheim Prize for the best dissertation at the University of Würzburg in the field of heart and circulation.

Web links

• Entry in Würzburg Wiki
• Biography , Helen B. Taussig
• Biography at the German Society for Internal Medicine

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Der Spiegel, May 27, 1964