Franz Büchner (physician)

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Franz Büchner (born January 20, 1895 in Boppard ; † March 9, 1991 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German pathologist and university professor .

Life

Franz Büchner was the son of the elementary school teacher Michael Büchner (1865-1928) and his wife Anna, née Pagés (1861-1943). He had four siblings. He finished his school career at the humanistic high school in Boppard and began studying philology at the University of Strasbourg in 1914/15 , which he broke off soon after the beginning of the First World War . From the spring of 1915, he last served as a sergeant on the Western Front and suffered a serious war wound in the late summer of 1916. Characterized by war damage and life-saving medical services, he first studied medicine at the University of Münster from the winter semester 1917/18. After that he moved to the University of Heidelberg until he passed the Physikum, where his interest in pathology was aroused by attending lectures with Paul Ernst. He then continued his studies at the University of Giessen, where he graduated with the state examination in January 1921 and obtained a doctorate with a dissertation on the conditions for biliary secretion. med. received his doctorate . In October 1922 he became Ludwig Aschoff's assistant at the Institute of Pathology at the University of Freiburg, where he completed his specialist training and completed his habilitation in pathology in 1927 . The private lecturer finally worked under Aschoff as senior physician and was appointed associate professor in 1931.

At the beginning of the National Socialist era , Büchner succeeded Ludwig Pick in 1933 as director of the Pathological Institute at the Berlin Hospital in Friedrichshain , which was renamed the Horst Wessel Hospital that year . From 1934 he was also an associate professor at Berlin University . In 1936 he followed a call to the University of Freiburg , where he also worked as director of the Pathological Institute of the Medical Faculty until his retirement in 1963, succeeding his teacher Aschoff. Here he was primarily concerned with coronary insufficiency, coronary infarction and the effects of pulmonary embolism on the heart muscle .

The strictly Catholic Büchner did not belong to the NSDAP after the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , but from 1934 to the National Socialist organizations National Socialist German Medical Association (NSDÄB), National Socialist War Victims Care (NSKOV), Reich Association of German Civil Servants (RDB), and National Socialist People's Welfare (NSV) from 1937 to the Reichsbund der Kinderreich (RdK). In 1938 he was appointed advisory pathologist in the Air Force Medical Inspectorate.

During the Second World War , from the beginning of January 1940 Büchner headed the Institute for Aviation Medical Pathology of the Reich Aviation Ministry , which was attached to the Pathological Institute in Freiburg , where he devoted himself to air force research. Büchner held the rank of senior field doctor (1943) and special leader and, after Oskar Schröder, doctor general, was considered the "supreme doctor for pathological research". In addition, Büchner became known for his clear criticism of the National Socialist euthanasia practice , which he formulated in a highly acclaimed public lecture entitled "The Oath of Hippocrates" in November 1941. This is the only known protest by a prominent medical professional against these crimes. Nevertheless, Büchner was able to keep his position and did not resign from his position as an adviser to the Air Force , which was criticized by critics after the war. Büchner participated in the conference on medical issues in distress and winter death on October 26th and 27th, 1942, where he gave a lecture on the pathology of hypothermia on October 26th . At this conference there was also a lecture on the "attempts at hypothermia" in the Dachau concentration camp , against which Büchner is said to have protested.

After his institute was largely destroyed by the bomb attack on Freiburg in November 1944, scientific operations could initially only be resumed under tight spatial and financial conditions. In spite of this, Büchner and his team were able to demonstrate the importance of hypoxia for the development of malformations during this early period.

A few days after the end of the war, on May 11, 1945, he met Archbishop Conrad Gröber , where he spoke out in favor of establishing new democratic parties beyond denomination. Furthermore, he operated the publication of the series of publications " Das Christian Deutschland 1933–1945 ", which was to be adopted by Christians of both denominations. Both Büchner's concerns met with approval from Gröber. On July 17, 1945 he and Constantin von Dietze founded the Christian Working Group, a forerunner organization of the Baden Christian Social People's Party (BCSV) and the CDU . Büchner was a representative of the Catholic wing of this organization.

In the post-war period he devoted himself to rebuilding the Pathological Institute. Classified as politically unaffected by the French military administration, in 1945 he was a member of the cleaning committee of the medical faculty. In the course of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial , he made affidavits for the defense of Hermann Becker-Freyseng , Gerhard Rose and Oskar Schröder. Büchner later led a legal battle against Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke because of his naming in the work Medicine Without Humanity . Documents of the Nuremberg Doctors' Trial . Finally he devoted himself again intensively to research and publication activities. In 1958/59 he was dean of the medical faculty. After his retirement in 1963, he headed a research center for pathology of cellular respiration.

In the period after 1945 he was mainly known for studies on congenital malformations in children. From 1958, conspicuous malformations in newborns were first discussed in the Bundestag. At first the nuclear weapons tests were suspected as a possible cause . Since there were no reporting obligations for malformations in West Germany after the National Socialist past, especially due to the experience in connection with the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring , this hypothesis was questioned. Büchner wanted to prove his teratological theory that unhealthy diet and the behavior of mothers contributed to deformities. It was not until the end of 1961 that the drug Contergan was recognized as the trigger for the malformations and the manufacturer, Grünenthal GmbH , took it off the market. Büchner was a member of the commission that was used together with the German Research Foundation to investigate the Contergan scandal .

Büchner was the founding editor of the Handbuch der Allgemeine Pathologie , the last volume of which appeared in 1977, with Erich Letterer and Frédéric Roulet in 1955 .

Honors and memberships

Büchner's resting place in the main cemetery in Freiburg im Breisgau

Fonts (selection)

  • Hippocrates' oath. The basic laws of medical ethics. (= Christian Germany 1933 to 1945. Lecture of the Catholic series). Herder, Freiburg i. Br. 1945
  • as ed. with W. Fischer : Contributions to pathological anatomy and general pathology. Jena
  • as ed. with Erich Letterer and Frédéric Roulet: Handbuch der Allgemeine Pathologie. Springer, 1955 ff.
  • Plans and fortunes. Memoirs of a German university professor , Verl. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Munich / Berlin 1965

literature

  • Freiburg and Japanese Medicine: Travel Reports by Ludwig Aschoff, Theodor Axenfeld, Franz Büchner . Freiburg i. Br .: Falk Foundation, 1986.
  • Franz Büchner , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 19/1991 of April 29, 1991, in the Munzinger Archive ( beginning of article freely available)
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .
  • Michael Kitzing: Büchner, Franz: pathologist, main initiator of the Christian working group in Freiburg . In: Baden-Württembergische Biographien, Volume 4, Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-17-019951-4 , pp. 35-38.
  • Bernd Martin : The Freiburg pathology in war and post-war times (1906-1963). Constitutional pathology, military pathology and human experiments. "Pathology" of repression. Regional culture publishing house, Ubstadt-Weiher, Heidelberg 2018, ISBN 978-3-955-05067-2 .
  • Eduard Seidler : The medical faculty of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau: Basics and developments , Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg 1993, ISBN 978-3-662-06666-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e Michael Kitzing: Büchner, Franz: Pathologist, main initiator of the Christian working group in Freiburg . In: Baden-Württembergische Biographien, Volume 4, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 35ff.
  2. ^ Eduard Seidler: The Medical Faculty of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau: Fundamentals and Developments , Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg 1993, p. 343
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 81
  4. ↑ a b c indexing volume for the microfiche edition: With an introduction by Angelika Ebbinghaus on the history of the process and short biographies of those involved in the process . P. 85. Karsten Linne (Ed.): The Nuremberg Medical Process 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. Published by Klaus Dörner , German edition, microfiche edition, Munich 1999 on behalf of the Hamburg Foundation for Social History of the 20th Century
  5. ↑ Wolfgang Thoenes: “An artist in eliciting”. Laudation for Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Hans-Werner Altmann on his 70th birthday. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 5, 1987, pp. 347-355, here: p. 350.
  6. ↑ Timo Baumann: The German Society for Circulatory Research in National Socialism 1933-1945 , Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg 2017, p. 232
  7. ^ Ludwig Zichner, Michael A. Rauschmann, Klaus-Dieter Thomann: The Contergankatastrophe: A balance sheet after 40 years. Gabler Wissenschaftsverlage, 2005, 190 pages.
  8. ↑ Götze: Springer-Verlag. Volume 2. Springer 1994, p. 301.
  9. ↑ Heinz E. Missling (Ed.): Boppard. History of a City on the Middle Rhine, Volume Three . Boppard 2001, ISBN 3-930051-02-8 , pp. 477 .
  10. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Franz Büchner. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed on July 19, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Büchner, Franz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pathologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH January 20, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Boppard
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1991
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau