Ferdinand Flury

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Ferdinand Flury (born June 21, 1877 in Würzburg ; † April 6, 1947 there ) was a German pharmacologist, toxicologist and medical officer. His contributions to industrial hygiene and his research on chemical warfare agents made him internationally known.

Life

Flury completed an apprenticeship and practice in pharmacy from 1892 to 1898 in Erlangen. From 1898 to 1902 he studied chemistry, pharmacy and natural science at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen . In 1899 he became a member of the Onoldia Corps . He passed his state examination in 1900 and received his doctorate in pharmacy in 1902 . In 1901 he served as a one-year volunteer . From 1902 to 1905 he worked as an assistant in the chemical laboratory of the University of Erlangen and in 1904 passed his examination as a food chemist. In 1905 he returned to the military, where he worked as a pharmacist in a garrison hospital until 1910. In the same period he studied human medicine at the University of Würzburg from 1905 to 1909 . In 1910 he also received his doctorate in medicine and then worked as an assistant at the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Würzburg. 1912 habilitation Flury at Edwin Stanton Faust of Pharmacology and Toxicology. From 1915 he was an associate professor and from 1920 full professor for pharmacology at the University of Würzburg.

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute

During the First World War , Flury was initially employed as a pharmacist and then moved to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute (KWI) for Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry in Berlin-Dahlem , where he worked together with the director of the Fritz Haber Institute from 1916 to 1920 and above all studied the effects of war gases . Here he finally took over the management of Department E “Toxicology of Warfare Agents, Animal Experiments and Industrial Hygiene”. Research at the KWI made a significant contribution to the development of chemical warfare agents and the corresponding protective devices. In his department, the effects of new warfare agents were examined and the chronic damage to German gas victims of the First World War examined. His tasks included the systematic research into warfare agents with the aim of developing suitable and effective protective devices. Succeeded in his department through the cyclone method hydrocyanic acid by means of a support to stabilize. The bound hydrocyanic acid could thus be used as a rat control agent. Under the name Zyklon B , hydrogen cyanide bound to diatomaceous earth was used to eradicate vermin from everything from lice.

Pharmacology in Würzburg

In 1920 Flury returned to the University of Würzburg as a professor. From 1920 to 1945 he held the chair of pharmacology there and headed the small pharmacological institute located at the Juliusspital . His employees included Wilhelm Neumann (toxicologist) , Wolfgang Wirth (doctor, 1898) and, as a private scholar, the pharmacist Franz Zernik. Even during the Weimar Republic, Flury played a central role in the coordination of warfare agent research. He was of the opinion that no more new warfare agents could be found, so that the task of science is to improve the existing chemical weapons. Samples of the substances to be tested were tested for their physiological effects in large animal experiments at Flury's Pharmacological Institute. In 1926, 100 substances had already been tested in his institute. At a scientist's meeting on April 28, 1928, Flury took stock of the research work to date. After that, a total of 1000 different substances were tested; 200 at his institute and 600 at the KWI in the period from 1916 to 1918. The other 200 substances were already known. Flury formulated the task of warfare agent research: "We work on the offensive and in the protected area".

In 1929 Flury was involved in the production of a systematic compilation of all known and tested warfare agents on behalf of the Army Weapons Office . In 1931 he was able to find only five of the substances tested in his institute in 2000 as suitable for the use of warfare agents. From his point of view, only mustard gas (lost) and phosgene were considered . The research continued even after 1933. As a result of an order from the Wehrmacht High Command in the autumn of 1944, all documents on the development and production of chemical weapons were systematically destroyed, so that there is no reliable information about the role of the Würzburg Institute for Pharmacology either. Flury's successor as director of the institute, Wilhelm Neumann , commented on this in 1946 as follows:

“With regard to the work of the Pharmacological Institute in the field of warfare agents, which I became aware of in every detail, I explained: Most of the rumors circulating about this are unfounded, the rest inaccurate. Neither Prof. Flury nor myself or any other staff member of the institute has ever 'invented' a warfare agent; likewise, the institute never 'manufactured' warfare agents. The view that Prof. Flury and the institute were in the field of so-called During the chemical war. […] At the end of 1944, Prof. Flury and I were asked whether we believed that the use of chemical warfare agents would have a decisive effect on the war. For fundamental considerations, this question was immediately answered in the negative and emphasized that an overwhelming and unpredictable use of warfare agents by the opposing side could certainly be expected. Judging from the historical development, this argument seems to have got through to the crucial point. We were aware that with this document we were making an open commitment to what was then called defeatism. "

In the preliminary judicial investigations for his trial at the beginning of the 1960s, the medical director of Aktion T4 (i.e. the organized killing of the mentally ill and disabled in the National Socialist German Reich ), the professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Würzburg Werner Heyde, stated that Flury was the expert to have suggested for the most appropriate method of killing:

“ We were asked by Bouhler and Brack which killing agent was best to use. It was expressed that it had to work quickly, infallibly and painlessly. We then declared that we did not know of any such remedy from common pharmacology and made the suggestion that pharmacologists should be asked about it. I admit without further ado that I suggested this to Professor Flury, full professor in Wiirzburg and at the same time teacher at the Military Medical Academy in Berlin. In addition to this, however, two other pharmacologists have been asked to comment. I don't know if these two are still alive, so I don't want to give their names. All three pharmacologists came to the conclusion that there was only one possible agent that would meet these requirements, namely carbon dioxide . "

In World War II Flury was in the medical corps as a colonel doctor used and in April 1943 the Surgeon General have been promoted. In 1945, Flury was dismissed from the position of director of the Pharmacological Institute and imprisoned in a prisoner of war camp. After a transition period in 1949, his successor was his former private assistant and later lecturer Wilhelm Neumann. Ferdinand Flury died of a stroke on April 6, 1947 . He is considered an important toxicologist and the scientist who delivered tested limit values ​​for potentially harmful substances, below which exogenous substances do not cause organism damage. His contribution to a scientifically based, experimental commercial toxicology is undisputed.

Honors

Fonts

  • with Franz Zernik: Harmful gases, vapors, mist, types of smoke and dust. Berlin 1931.
  • Animal poisons and their effects. In: Manual of normal and pathological physiology. Volume 13, Berlin 1929.
  • with Heinrich Zangger , Max Cloetta , Erich Hübener : Textbook of Toxicology. Berlin: Springer 1928.

literature

  • Flury, Ferdinand. In: Empire Manual of German society , Volume 1: A-K . Berlin 1930, DNB 453960286 , p. 460.
  • Peter Fasel: Contributions to Nazi history in Lower Franconia . Wuerzburg 1996.
  • Olaf Groehler : The silent death. Use and development of German poison gases from 1914-1945. Reinbek 1989.
  • Dietrich Henschler : On the development of pharmacology and toxicology , in: Peter Baumgart (Hrsg.): Four hundred years University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 1030-1047; here: 1031 f. and 1035-1034.
  • Ernst Klee : "Ferdinand Flury" entry in ders .: The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Updated edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 .
  • Robert Kehoe: Ferdinand Flury. 1877-1947 . The Journal of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology 30 (1948).
  • Wilhelm Neumann:  Flury, Ferdinand. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 264 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Holger Münzel: Max von Frey. Life and work with special consideration of his sensory-physiological research. Würzburg 1992 (= Würzburg medical historical research, 53), p. 181 ( Ferdinand Flury. ).

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1930, 28/799.
  2. ↑ Zyklon B became known as a means of gassing European Jews, including in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp .
  3. ↑ Minutes of the annual meeting of the scientific staff for gas combat and gas protection in the Heereswaffenamt, April 28, 1928, Federal Archives, RH 12-4 / v37, quoted from the dissertation "Wilhelm Neumann - Leben und Werk", p. 44, see web link.
  4. ^ Declaration by Wilhelm Neuman regarding the work of the Pharmacological Institute in the field of warfare agents, April 4, 1946, State Archive Würzburg, Spruchkammer 7361, quoted from the dissertation "Wilhelm Neumann - Leben und Werk" page 46/47, see web link.
  5. ↑ Heydes interrogation of October 26, 1961, quoted in: Ernst Klee : What they did - What they became. Doctors, lawyers and others involved in the murder of the sick or Jews . 12th edition. Frankfurt / M. 2004, ISBN 3-596-24364-5 , p. 279
  6. ↑ a b Ernst Wilhelm Baader (Ed.): Handbuch der Gesamt Arbeitsmedizin, Vol. 2: Arbeitsspathologie: Berufskrankheiten , Teilband 1. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin 1961, p. 56.
personal data
SURNAME Flury, Ferdinand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacologist and toxicologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Wurzburg
DATE OF DEATH April 6, 1947
Place of death Wurzburg