Felix Pinkus

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Felix Pinkus. Business card from Berlin. 1916-1935

Felix Pinkus (born April 4, 1868 in Berlin , † November 19, 1947 in Monroe, Michigan, USA ) was a German dermatologist .

life and work

Felix Pinkus was born on April 4, 1868 in Berlin as the son of the entrepreneur Benjamin Pinkus and his wife Rosalie Franckel. He had three brothers: Paul, Georg and Eugen. In Berlin he attended the Friedrichwerder grammar school until 1885 . He then studied medicine at the universities of Berlin and Freiburg im Breisgau. His special interests were in comparative anatomy and dermatology. In 1893 he received his license to practice medicine , in 1894 he wrote his doctoral thesis on the cranial nerves of Protopterus annectens at the Robert Wiedersheim Institute in Freiburg . As part of this work, he discovered a "not yet described cranial nerve" in the lung fish - a thin nerve similar to that found by Gustav Fritsch in a shark - the terminal nerve (preopticus) , which was later described in humans.

After working in the laboratory of his relative Paul Ehrlich in Frankfurt and at the Robert Koch Institute in Berlin , he became Albert Neisser's assistant at the Dermatology Clinic in Breslau . There he received his specialist training as a dermatologist . After research stays with Josef Jadassohn in Bern and with Jean Alfred Fournier at the Hôpital Saint-Louis in Paris , he established himself as a dermatologist in Berlin in 1898. In addition, he was involved in the University Dermatology Clinic of the Charité under Edmund Lesser . He completed his habilitation in 1908 and became associate professor in 1916 .

For several years he ran a polyclinic for skin diseases together with Rudolf Isaac on Alexanderplatz , as well as a second polyclinic for the poor on Potsdamerstrasse. On April 1, 1908, the city of Berlin appointed him the head doctor of the sex clinic in the municipal shelter . After the opening of the women's hospital in Reinickendorf , he became director of this hospital. On his recommendation, the dermatologist and Salvarsan critic Heinrich Dreuw was dismissed as an advisory police doctor in May 1914 . Pinkus was a member of the Reich Health Council and General Secretary of the German Society for Combating Venereal Diseases (DGBG) . On the initiative of the DGBG, the Reichstag passed a law to combat venereal diseases , which came into force on October 1, 1927. According to this law, barracked prostitution should be prohibited. Both men and women should be punished if they knowingly spread an STD. According to this law, men and women were treated equally for the first time and young men should be deprived of the illusion that intercourse with "controlled" prostitutes was safe.

In 1890, while studying in Freiburg, Felix Pinkus met Elise Etzdorf. They married in 1900 and had two children, Luise (Pinkus-Grab) (* 1902) and Hermann (1905–1985). The daughter Luise became an orthopedist. In 1932 she married the pharmacologist Werner Grab (1903–1965). The son Hermann became a dermatologist. In 1909 the family moved to Berlin-Lützowstrasse 64/65, where they lived until 1935.

Felix Pinkus. Passport with the compulsory name "Israel"
Passport with Jewish stamp

After the seizure of power by the National Socialists Felix Pinkus was due to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service as a Jew dismissed from the post of Director of the Women's Clinic. His wife Elise died in January 1934. His son Hermann emigrated to the USA . In the course of 1935, Felix Pinkus was forced to leave his apartment on Berlin's Lützowstrasse. For a short time he lived and worked with his Hungarian colleague Ladislau Balog. Finally, in August 1939, he accepted the invitation of his colleague Inga Saeves and emigrated to Oslo . He waited in Oslo for over a year while his son Hermann tried to get him an entry visa for the USA. When the German Wehrmacht invaded Oslo in April 1940 , he was still there. He no longer had a chance to get to the USA via England. In the spring of 1940 he was given the opportunity to flee to Moscow via Copenhagen , from where he took the trans-Siberian railway to Vladivostok . From Vladivostok he went by ship to Tokyo , boarded a Japanese passenger steamer in Yokohama and arrived in San Francisco on January 10, 1941 .

For the next six years, Felix Pinkus lived in the family of his son Hermann in Monroe . During this time he took part in his son's office hours and routinely examined histological specimens in the practice laboratory. Father and son Pinkus planned to publish a "textbook on skin diseases," for which Felix had already made a number of drawings. Felix Pinkus also attended the monthly meetings of the Detroit Dermatological Society. He became an honorary member of the Detroit Dermatological Society and the Society for Investigative Dermatology. In 1947 he gave a series of six lectures in Minneapolis at the invitation of Henry E. Michelson . He died on November 29, 1947 at his son's home in Monroe .

Works (selection)

  • Via a form of rudimentary sebum glands. In: Archives for Dermatology and Syphilis. 41 (1897) issue 1, pp. 347–356 (Springer preview)
  • Lymphatic leukemia. In: Hermann Nothnagel (Ed.) Special Pathology and Therapy. Volume VIII, Part 1, Issue 3:: P. Ehrlich , A. Lazarus and F. Pinkus. Leukemia. Pseudoleukemia, hemoglobinemia. Hölder, Vienna 1901. In it: F. Pinkus. Lymphocytic Leukemia , pp. 3–102
    • English: Diseases of the blood. Saunders, Philadelphia and London 1905, pp. 539-642: F. Pinkus. Lymphatic leukemia. (Digitized version)
  • About a new nodular skin eruption: lichen nitidus. In: Archives for Dermatology and Syphilis 85 (1907), pp. 11–36 (digitized version )
  • Skin-and venereal diseases. Practical Medicine Guide. Klinkhardt, Leipzig 1910
  • The normal anatomy of the skin. In: Josef Jadassohn (ed.). Handbook of the skin and venereal diseases , vol. 1, p. 368ff. Springer, Berlin 1927

Detailed catalog of works and list of his collection of reprints

  • List of publications from the estate (approx. 1934) (digitized version )
  • Danny Bading. The collection of reprints from Felix Pinkus (1868-1947) in the library of the Dermatological Clinic of the Charité. Diss. Med. Berlin 2007, pp. 73–82 (digitized version )

literature

  • Stephan Leibfried and Florian Tennstedt (eds.). Georg Loewenstein . Municipal health care and socialist medical policy between the German Empire and National Socialism. Autobiographical, Biographical, and Health Policy Notes. (Working reports on buried alternatives in health policy 3) Univ. Bremen, Bremen 1980, p. 4, 50-51
  • The online encyclopedia of dermatology, venereology, allergology and environmental medicine. (Digitized version)
  • Leo Baeck Institute . Guide to the Papers of the Felix Pinkus Family (digitized version)
  • Amir H. Mehregan. Felix Pinkus (1868-1947). In: Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology. 18 (1988) No. 5, pp. 1158–1164 (digitized version )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ License to practice medicine from the estate (digital copy )
  2. ↑ Certificate for the award of the doctorate (digital copy )
  3. ↑ Felix Pinkus: The cranial nerves of Protopterus annectens. In: Gustav Schwalbe (Ed.): Morphological work. G. Fischer, Jena 1895, p. 279, (digitized version) .
  4. ↑ see preliminary communication, 1894 .
  5. ↑ Florian G. Mildenberger : No salvation through arsenic? The salvarsand debate and its consequences. In: Fachprosaforschung - Grenzüberreitungen 8/9, 2012/2013, pp. 327–390, here: p. 342.
  6. ↑ The effect of diseases on the hair of the human head. Karger, Berlin 1917
  7. ↑ Florian G. Mildenberger (2012/2013), p. 342.
  8. ^ Chair of the DGBG: 1916–1922 Alfred Blaschko (assistant: Georg Loewenstein ); 1922–1933 Josef Jadassohn .
  9. ^ Text of the law
  10. ↑ Georg Loewenstein . The Act to Fight Venereal Diseases. In: The socialist doctor , 1st year (1925), issue 2–3 (July), p. 24 (digitized version)
  11. ^ Georg Loewenstein and Franz E. Rosenthal . The new law to combat sexually transmitted diseases. In: The socialist doctor, 2nd year (1927), issue 4 (March), pp. 22-23 (digitized version)
  12. ↑ Andreas Knack . The fight against sexually transmitted diseases and prostitution. In: The Socialist Doctor, 3rd vol. (1927), Issue 3 (December), pp. 10-18 (digitized version)
  13. ↑ Max Frimmer. In memoriam Werner Grab. Justus-Liebig university of Giessen
  14. ^ Correspondence from Luise Grab-Pinkus with the Pinkus family in Monroe (1941) estate in the Leo Baeck Institute
  15. ↑ On the entry form that Felix Pinkus filled out in San Francisco in January 1941, he stated (under point 7e) that he had already been in the USA for 6 weeks from April to June 1937. (Digitized version)
  16. ^ Passport in the name of Felix Israel Pinkus with the red J [uden] stamp . Estate in the Leo Baeck Institute (digitized version)
personal data
SURNAME Pinkus, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dermatologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 4, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1947
Place of death Monroe