Franz Christian Brunatti

Franz Christian Brunatti (born March 30, 1768 in Danzig ; † January 31, 1835 ) was a German gynecologist .

Life

Franz Christian Brunatti was the son of the businessman Jacob Brunatti and his wife Anna Dorothea, geb. Dalmer. His grandfather Francesco di Brunatti, who came from a family of counts, left his hometown of Albesio near Milan in 1723 and settled in Gdansk. Here he enlarged his family and founded a trading company.

From 1778 Franz Christian Brunatti attended the Latin Parish School at St. Marien and enrolled on September 9, 1784 as a student at the Academic Gymnasium in Danzig, where he continued his school career in April of the following year. From September 1790 to 1793 he studied medicine in Jena with Justus Christian Loder , Johann Christian Stark the Elder , Christian Gottfried Gruner , heard Carl Leonhard Reinhold (philosophy), Friedrich August Göttling (chemistry), August Batsch (botany), Schütz (literary history) and Friedrich Schiller (history). 1793–1794 he studied one semester in Würzburg near Siebold (surgery and maternity medicine), then again in Jena in 1794, where he received his doctorate from Gruner ( Historia cancri mammae notatu disignissimi per operationem feliciter curati ). Brunatti completed his studies at the Charité with Walter in Berlin . There he passed his second state examination, which was valid for Prussia, because Jena was part of Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach. He also took a course in anatomy with Walter, who was famous for making anatomical specimens.

He financed his studies partly himself, partly with the help of a scholarship from relatives. His father was impoverished after a bankruptcy and did not support him. In addition, Brunatti converted to Protestantism after graduating from high school without his parents' consent. At the beginning of 1796 Brunatti returned to his hometown.

From 1801 Brunatti was a member of the Natural Research Society (NFG) in Danzig. In 1802 he married Caroline Elisabeth Schmidt, who died on August 16, 1805 of "exhaustion", as noted in the church book. In 1809 he married Anna Constantia, b. Beyer, historical Thiel. During and after the Napoleonic occupation of Danzig, she was a great support in his voluntary work for the NFG. On the one hand, Brunatti rearranged the NFG's finances, which had been shattered by the chaos of war, and on the other hand, they both reorganized and cataloged the natural history archive so that it could find a place in the NFG's museum again.

Having remained childless after two marriages, Brunatti died on January 31, 1835, who never in his life made any communication or made use of the class to which he belonged.

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Brunatti had already made the humanistic ideals of the Enlightenment his own in Jena. There was a free spirit among the students - naturally influenced by the professors. At the end of 1794, Brunatti heard lectures from the physician Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland , who publicly advocated welfare for the poor in Jena. Hufeland's ideas caught Brunatti and so he did not begin his professional life as the personal physician of a prince or patrician, but decided to devote himself to the arduous task of public health care and the training of midwives. In Gdansk, more than 50% of all newborns - and their mothers - still died at birth. Already in 1796, requested and supported by his former teacher and friend, the city physician and member of the NFG Dr. E. Philipp Blech, he began to train midwives (at most 3 pupils at the same time) in a private environment and on a small scale and for a small fee, with the intention that this undertaking would eventually become a public institution. At the beginning there were many difficulties, be it that the students themselves did not pay the small contribution to the costs, that unwillingness had to be overcome, or that he had to be ready with them day and night, in wind and weather, to go to pregnant women or giving birth come and provide emergency aid or manage births.

With the support of the NFG and encouraged by the Danzig Senate not to let up in his efforts, he was finally able, after many attempts, to win over the Prussian authorities to set up a building in Danzig with associated midwifery training. This was intended to implement the necessity that he repeatedly emphasized that the purely theoretical training of midwives, as it already existed in Marienwerder, was not sufficient, but had to be linked to practice. As planned by the Prussian provincial government, the new institute was to replace the midwifery school in Marienwerder, which was already responsible for West Prussia, and was to become effective for the entire province of West Prussia and the Hanseatic city of Danzig.

In 1803 a suitable building was acquired by the Prussian provincial administration in the Second Neugarten, a suburb in the west of Danzig. On December 1, 1804, Brunatti took up his work as a teacher and doctor there. The new institute was Dr. Müller - appointed by the Prussian authorities - as director, after having been contracted as the second teacher for the school in Marienwerder years earlier by the province of West Prussia. His willingness to move to Gdansk had made the province a prerequisite for his appointment. From the large number of applications - including from the existing midwifery school in Marienwerder - the Collegium Medicum of the Province of West Prussia employed a midwife privately trained by F. Ch. Brunatti as the house midwife of the new institute - which confirmed his training method. It also encouraged him, in spite of the reluctance shown by the Prussian provincial government to not give up and to put the achievement above his personal ambitions.

Unfortunately, the time of the new institute only lasted two years and eleven months. The Napoleonic War also reached Danzig in 1806 and until the city surrendered in 1807 the entire institute had to move several times - and was finally closed. Only after a reopening in Elbing, which remained in Prussia, was it possible to teach there on April 10, 1809, to a considerably limited extent - this time without Dr. Brunatti and only with Dr. Müller - to be resumed. A participation of Danzig was not possible, because the city had become a free city according to Napoleonic dictates, burdened with high taxes to France and bankrupt.

Brunatti remained in Danzig until the end of the war, where he practiced as a freelance doctor and served in the hospitals. On April 1, 1816, after the death of Dr. Müller, offered him, on the initiative and suggestion of the royal court in Berlin, the Prussian provincial government the direction of the institute. Brunatti accepted and moved to Elbing. He reorganized the school, had it restored, expanded and the hygiene improved. The institute got a new face.

At the end of 1816, after Prussia regained influence in Danzig, the authorities decided to relocate the institute to Danzig and reopened it on June 1, 1819 as the Royal Provincial Midwifery and Maternity Institute in Langgarten 33.

The establishment developed undisturbed until 1835. It flourished and became known throughout Germany. After his death, Brunatti, who had remained childless, left his fortune to a foundation for the provision of food and education for needy children who were born at the institute by mothers in Gdańsk. In the years 1825-1830 he published a number of medical articles and annual reports in the journal Journal for Obstetrics, Women and Teething , edited by his friend and fellow student in Würzburg, Adam Elias von Siebold, through the Danzig Midwife Training Institute . His successor was his son Carl Theodor von Siebold.

The head of the midwifery training institute (until 1929) Dr. Rudolf Köstlin wrote in 1906 in a publication by NFG Danzig about the founder of the institute: One of his legacies, which is still beneficial in the present, is the Brunatti Foundation: The interest on a capital of 129,800 Mk is used for children who are born in the midwifery school and whose mothers come from Gdansk or its territory. The prerequisite is the need for help of the parents or mothers or their inability to pay school and teaching fees as well as the costs of learning a trade.

In 1920 the institute moved to the Danzig suburb (now part of the town) Langfuhr , where it is still in operation today.

Literature (selection)

• The maternity school of West Prussia until 1825, a report by Dr. Franz Christian Brunatti. (Based on his original handwriting, published by Dr. Rudolf Köstlin)
• Matthias Gotthilf Löschin : Danzig and its surroundings , 1853
• Medicinal Writer Lexicon, ACP Callisen, Addendum, 1838
• New Nekrolog der Deutschen, 13/1835, Weimar 1837, Bernh. Ms. Voigt
• Hugo Conventz, Otto Völkel: Danzig in a scientific and medical relationship , 2009
• Leopold von Zedlitz-Neukirch : New Prussian Adelslexicon . Volume 1, Leipzig 1836, pp. 317-318

Main character in the historical novel:

• Rainer F. Brunath: The Obstetrician of Danzig. Südwestbuch: Stuttgart 2013.

Web links

• Life dates at google books.