Erwin Liek

Erwin Liek

Erwin Liek (born May 13, 1878 in Löbau in West Prussia , † February 12, 1935 in Berlin ) was a German doctor and publicist.

Life

Liek studied medicine from 1896 to 1902 at the Universities of Freiburg im Breisgau and Königsberg , where he received his doctorate in 1902. After a year as a ship's doctor , which took him to Togo, Cameroon, South and North America, he was an assistant doctor in Wiesbaden , Greifswald and Danzig , where he opened his own surgical and gynecological private clinic in 1909 .

During the First World War he worked as a surgeon on the Eastern and Western Fronts and resumed his practice in Danzig after the war. In 1931 he sold this clinic.

From 1925 Liek also emerged as a publicist, his subjects were above all the relationship between naturopathy and " conventional medicine " ( The miracle in medicine , Lehmann, Munich) and medical ethics ( The doctor and his broadcast , Lehmann, Munich 1926; 9 . Edition ibid. 1933).

Here he writes:

“ The state examination , we have to be clear about that, does the doctor, but never the doctor. You are born to be a doctor or you never are. Kind gods put gifts in his cradle that can only be given, but never acquired. What clouds our view, not only in the field of medicine, is the excessive overestimation of formal knowledge, the disregard or even contempt for spiritual and spiritual influences on the part of exact researchers. Let's have a look around history. We will find many great doctors who have not studied medicine for a semester. Read the Gospels once, just as a mature man. Wasn't Christ a doctor of a very high degree, a psychotherapist to whom our bloated analysts appear very, very tiny. And how did Christ work? Just like every true doctor today, through compelling humanity. [...] Do you seriously believe that Émile Coué was a swindler, that he did not bring help to countless sick people for whom conventional medicine failed? Didn't laypeople like Prießnitz and Hessing have a very good ability to observe physicians? Didn't they know how to translate their thoughts into helping deeds? And hand on heart - we are among ourselves - isn't there a good deal of quackery in every one of us state-licensed doctors? "

- Liek : The doctor and his broadcast , 1926

Liek was strongly opposed to statutory health insurance :

“ A walk through the streets of a big city shows us the magnificent administration buildings of the cash registers. The unforgivable luxury that is practiced in these matters has only recently been shown to us by compilations in the Medical Bulletin [...]. One must speak of unforgivable luxury because the costs come from the pockets of poorly paid workers and the tortured economy. […] But even in places where splendid furnishings, where there are no club chairs, Maybach cars and princely salaries, such as in most state health insurances, the device costs a lot of money. Just think of the immense heap of written and printed paper that rains down on the unfortunate health insurance doctors every day ... "

- Liek : The damages of social insurance and ways to mend , 1927

Liek welcomed eugenics and euthanasia as early as 1926. Idiots and epileptics do not need to be cared for in model institutions, while healthy national comrades find neither shelter nor work.

In 1928, Leach founded in general medicine, at that time in the sense of unity efforts initially physicians, medical historian, homeopaths, psychologists and parapsychologists unifying magazine Hippocrates , the homeopathy and healthy eating receptive to stand and the doctors like Bernhard Aschner , Eugen Bircher and medical historian Henry E. Sigerist collaborated. From 1932 Liek lived as a freelance writer in Berlin. Liek and his reform efforts were seen by the National Socialists after 1933 as fundamental for a renewal of the medical profession, although Liek had never been a member of the NSDAP. From April 9, 1936, the journal Hippokrates became the official organ of the Reich Working Group for a New German Medicine . Liek turned down the management of the Rudolf Hess Hospital in Dresden for health reasons.

Erwin Liek's gravestone in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

Erwin Liek died in Berlin in February 1935 at the age of 56. His grave is in the state-owned cemetery Heerstraße in Berlin-Westend .

After his death, the Humboldt Hospital in Berlin-Reinickendorf was named after him, which was given its old name again after 1945.

Works

• Literature by and about Erwin Liek in the catalog of the German National Library

literature

Commons : Erwin Liek  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Alfred Brauchle : Dr. med Erwin Liek. In: the same: history of naturopathy in life pictures . 2nd ext. Ed. By Große Naturärzte . Reclam-Verlag, Stuttgart 1951, pp. 327-330
• Michael Kater: Medicine in National Socialist Germany and Erwin Liek , in: History and Society (GG) 16, 1990, p. 440
• Michael Jehs: Erwin Liek. Weltanschauung and political attitude in the mirror of his writings. Mabuse, Frankfurt 1994, ISBN 978-3-925499-89-0
• Herbert Broghammer: The Danzig doctor Erwin Liek (1878-1935). Surgeon and media journalist in the medical crisis before 1933 . Centaurus-Verlag, Herbolzheim 2000, ISBN 3-8255-0276-7
• Robert N. Proctor : Blitzkrieg Against Cancer . Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-608-91031-X - Cf. Erwin Liek: The fight against cancer. Lehmann, Munich 1934.
• Hans-Peter Kröner: Liek, Erwin. 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 , pp. 854 f.

source

1. ↑ Erwin Liek: At the fireplace. From the sand pit and other memories , Lehmann, Munich 1935.
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Wolfgang U. Eckart : Erwin Link, in: Wolfgang U. Eckart and Christoph Gradmann (eds.): Ärztelexikon. From antiquity to the present , 3rd edition Springer Heidelberg, 2006, p. 210. Ärztelexikon 2006 , doi: 10.1007 / 978-3-540-29585-3 .
3. ^ Alfred Haug: The Reich Working Group for a New German Medicine (1935-1936). In: Würzburger medical historical reports 2, 1984, pp. 117–130; here: p. 118 f.