Ferdinand Hoff (physician)

Ferdinand Hoff (born April 19, 1896 in Kiel , † March 23, 1988 in Neukirchen , Schwalm-Eder-Kreis ) was a German internist and university professor .

Live and act

After studying at Kiel University in 1927, Hoff became an assistant at the Medical University Clinic in Erlangen, where he completed his habilitation in internal medicine in 1928. In 1931 he followed a call as professor and senior physician to Königsberg, where he also joined the Sturmabteilung (SA) in 1933 . From 1936 he was appointed professor and director of the Medical University Polyclinic in Würzburg and from 1941 to 1945 as professor at the Karl-Franzens University in Graz .

While still in Würzburg, he finally joined the NSDAP in 1937 , but later attempted to portray these admissions in his memoirs published in 1971 as a picture of a doctor who had been adapted for material reasons and who had been pushed to join. However, recent research has shown that Hoff had demonstrably applied for his membership himself and that he had an extremely positive relationship with Würzburg Nazi leaders. This is also supported by his voluntary work in the Nazi student councils, his other memberships in the Nazi doctors 'association and in the Nazi lecturers' association, as well as the rumor of his participation in the Würzburg Reichskristallnacht , which is why the Würzburg police department initiated criminal proceedings against him in July 1948 . No exact results are available about the course of these criminal proceedings, but Hoff was able to justify himself to the denazification committee for his behavior during the Nazi rule.

In the course of the ongoing criminal and denazification proceedings against Hoff, the Aachen city director Albert Servais took him on as director of the medical clinic of the city hospital in Aachen in 1948 , well aware of his unexplained past. Finally, in 1951, despite an objection from Max Horkheimer to the responsible minister , Hoff was appointed to the chair of internal medicine at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and became head of the first medical clinic at the university.

Ferdinand Hoff worked in the fields of vegetative regulation, internal secretion and blood diseases.

From 1955 Hoff was a corresponding member of the Vienna Society for Internal Medicine and was admitted to the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in 1959 and was awarded the Paracelsus Medal in 1963 . He is also an honorary member of the Medical Society for Upper Austria of the Luis Razetti Hospital and the Barinas Medical Society in Venezuela.

Works (selection)

• Non-specific therapy and natural defense processes . Berlin: J. Springer, 1930
• Fever, unspecific defense processes, unspecific therapy , Stuttgart: Thieme, 1957
• Treatment of internal diseases: guidelines & guidelines Advice f. Students and Doctors , Stuttgart: Thieme, 1962. 10., revised. and extended ed.
• Clinical Physiology and Pathology . Stuttgart: G. Thieme, 1962. 6., completely reworked. Ed.
• Of sickness and healing and of dying . Stuttgart; New York: Schattauer, 1978. ISBN 3-7945-0507-7
• Experience and reflection: memories of a doctor . unabridged edition, Berlin: Ullstein, 1980. ISBN 3-548-27507-9
• Hoff, Ferdinand; Daniello, Leon; Dragomir, Teofil: Tratamentul bolilor internal , Sibiu: Welther, 1943
• Hoff, Ferdinand; Lloret Barber, N .: Modernos aspectos de la medicina clínica , Barcelona; Madrid; Lisboa: Ed. científico-médica, 1953
• Hoff, Ferdinand; Pla Janini, José María: Tratamiento de las enfermedades internas , Barcelona [etc.]: Ed. Laboratory, 1958
• Hoff, Ferdinand; Miori, Renato; Zerbini, Ennio: Fisiopatologia clinica , Padova: Piccin, 1960

literature

• Richard Kühl: Leading Aachen clinicians and their role in the Third Reich , Studies of the Competence Center for the History of Science, Vol. 11, Ed .: Dominik Groß, Dissertation Aachen, 2010 ISBN 978-3-86219-014-0 , pp. 99-104 pdf
• Ferdinand Hoff , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 43/1963 of October 14, 1963, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely available)

Web links

• Literature by and about Ferdinand Hoff in the catalog of the German National Library
• "Fever - unspecific defense processes - unspecific therapy" with a biography of Hoff at the end of the text

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Michael Kater: Doctors as Hitler's Helpers , Hamburg, Vienna, 2000, pp. 229/230