Fritz Kümmerle

Grave of Fritz Kümmerle in the main cemetery in Mainz

Fritz Kümmerle (born February 14, 1917 in Göppingen ; † May 6, 2014 in Bretzenheim ) was a German surgeon and university professor .

Life

Fritz Kümmerle was the seventh and youngest child of the master butcher Friedrich Kümmerle and his wife Martha. Fritz graduated from high school in 1936 and was then called up first for the Reich Labor Service and then for military service. In 1938 he began studying medicine at the University of Tübingen . Other places of study were Königsberg, Vienna and Munich; his studies were interrupted by missions at the front in the Soviet Union. 1942 put Kümmerle the medical state examination in Tübingen, where he also with the work "The effect of histamine on blood composition" for Felix Haffner (1886-1953) doctorate was. Further war missions as a regimental doctor followed, including in Italy.

After returning from captivity in 1945, Kümmerle became an assistant doctor in the surgery department of the Göppingen district hospital, where Hermann Krauss (1899–1971) became chief physician in 1948 , who was previously senior physician with Ferdinand Sauerbruch . When Krauss took the chair for surgery at the Albert Ludwig University in Freiburg i.Br. received, he took Kümmerle with him. Fritz Kümmerle received the Venia legendi for surgery in 1954 . The title of the habilitation thesis was "The surgery of plastic replacement of the thoracic esophagus" . In 1959 he became an adjunct professor and in the same year gave the speech on Krauss's 60th birthday. Kümmerle was the first senior physician and was particularly active in the field of pancreatic surgery. In 1963 he received the chair for surgery at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz , which he held until his retirement in 1985.

Act

Kümmerle's main field of work was general surgery, he focused on visceral surgery and endocrine surgery , in particular surgery on the pancreas , the biliary tract and the small intestine . Kümmerle is considered to be one of the pioneers in heart surgery : he was one of the first to use the heart-lung machine . He also promoted surgical intensive care medicine , one of the first surgical intensive care units in Germany was established at the Mainz University Hospital.

During his time as full professor in Mainz, the former surgical disciplines of trauma surgery , urology , pediatric surgery and cardiac surgery were outsourced to separate departments. 40 later chief physicians and professors emerged from his school.

Kümmerle was a member of the expert and arbitration board for medical treatment errors and the ethics committee at the Medical Association of Rhineland-Palatinate. He was particularly interested in the ethics of surgical decision making and the ethics of intensive care medicine. Kümmerle was co-editor and editor of the German Medical Weekly for several years . In 1973 he was elected President of the German Society for Surgery .

Honors

• Ernst von Bergmann plaque from the German Medical Association for his services to advanced medical training
• Honorary member and senator for life of the German Society for Surgery and thus member of the presidium
• Honorary member of the Austrian Society for Surgery
• Honorary member of the German Society for Digestive and Metabolic Diseases
• Member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (since 1982)
• Member of the Académie de chirurgie in Paris.
• Paracelsus Medal of the German Medical Association (2009)

Works

• Surgical diseases of the small intestine. Stuttgart 1963.

Web links

• Literature by and about Fritz Kümmerle in the catalog of the German National Library
• Paracelsus Medal for Prof. Dr. med. Fritz Kümmerle

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ernst Kern : Seeing - Thinking - Acting of a surgeon in the 20th century. ecomed, Landsberg am Lech 2000, ISBN 3-609-20149-5 , pp. 312 and 314.