Felix Stern (neurologist)

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Felix Stern (born April 5, 1884 in Groß Glogau , Province of Silesia , † August 30, 1942 in Berlin-Halensee ) was a German neurologist and the leading German expert on encephalitis lethargica . He committed because of the Nazi persecution of Jews suicide .

Life

Felix Stern attended until 1902, the Wilhelm High School in Berlin and then studied at the University of Medicine . In 1909 he received his doctorate from the University of Freiburg . From 1910 he worked as an assistant at the University of Kiel , where he completed his habilitation in neurology in 1913. From 1920 he taught as a non-civil servant associate professor at the University of Göttingen and was senior physician at the Göttingen Psychiatric Clinic until 1928. Then he took over the management of the nerve department of the medical examination center in Kassel.

In 1933 he had to give up his position in Kassel, and on September 22nd, according to Section 3 of the Professional Civil Service Act, his license to teach was withdrawn because of his “Jewish descent”. Stern moved to Berlin and opened a private practice there. At the same time he turned to the Academic Assistance Council (from 1935 the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning , SPSL), which, however, could not find him a new position abroad. Later inquiries by the SPSL were unsuccessful. After the war it turned out that Stern had committed suicide when he was threatened with deportation.

plant

Felix Stern was the leading German specialist in encephalitis lethargica . Due to the circumstances of the time, no national statistics were kept in Germany for this disease, which was first described in Vienna in 1916. That is why the data collected by Stern at the University Psychiatric Clinic in Göttingen are important to be able to follow the course of this epidemic, which ended around 1926, in Germany. Stern has estimated that at least 60,000 people have it here.

In his early writings, Stern advocated a central role for influenza in the development of lethargic encephalitis, either as a direct cause or as an activator of another pathogenic factor. In 1936 he was allowed to write the article on encephalitis lethargica in the handbook of neurology . Here he denied any connection between influenza encephalitis and encephalitis lethargica. He did not want to speculate about the possible cause - at that time a number of new pathogens were under discussion. Stern advised later researchers that one could learn more from what the various encephalitis lethargica cases have in common than let oneself be frustrated by the great variability of this disease. The manual article was his last academic paper.

Fonts (selection)

  • Contributions to the question of the course and outcome of the catatonia. 1909 (dissertation, University of Freiburg, 1909).
  • The mental disorders associated with brain tumors and their relationship to the diffuse brain changes caused by tumor effects. In: Archives for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases . Vol. 54 (1914), H. 2, pp. 565-657, DOI: 10.1007 / BF01837826 (habilitation thesis, University of Kiel, 1914).
  • The pathology of the so-called "lethargic encephalitis". In: Archives for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases. Vol. 61 (1920), H. 3, pp. 621-692, DOI: 10.1007 / BF01910029 .
  • The epidemic encephalitis (= monographs from the entire field of neurology and psychiatry. Vol. 30). Springer, Berlin 1922, DOI: 10.1007 / 978-3-662-35278-6 ; 2nd edition 1928, DOI: 10.1007 / 978-3-642-90811-8 .
  • Neurological Assessment. Springer, Berlin 1933.
  • Epidemic encephalitis (Economo's disease). In: Oswald Bumke , Otfrid Foerster (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Neurologie. Volume 13: Special Neurology V, Diseases of the Spinal Cord and Brain III. Infections and intoxications II . Springer, Berlin 1936, pp. 307-500.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Anikó Szabó: Expulsion, Return, Reparation: Göttingen University Lecturers in the Shadow of National Socialism . Wallstein, Göttingen 2000, p. 63 f.
personal data
SURNAME Star, Felix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neurologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 5, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Groß Glogau , Province of Silesia
DATE OF DEATH August 30, 1942
Place of death Berlin