Georg Gottschewski

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Georg Hermann Martin Gottschewski (born September 29, 1906 in Rapatten , East Prussia , † March 18, 1975 in Hanover ) was a German geneticist and zoologist .

Life

Georg Gottschewski was the son of the teacher Hermann Gottschewski and his wife Margarethe, née Masuhr. After completing his school career, he completed his studies at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Biology, received his doctorate in Königsberg in 1934 and then worked at the University of Budapest and, with the support of the Rockefeller Foundation , at various universities in the United States and was finally led by Lothar Loeffler appointed head of the department for experimental genetics at the Institute of Racial Biology in Vienna . The purpose of the appointment was, among other things, to advance cancer research, which was greatly promoted by the Nazi regime .

At that time Gottschewski brought the first Drosophila strains to the "Ostmark" as experimental animals. In addition to the drosophiles, he also used mice for his studies of the development of cancerous ulcers and the biochemical structure of the genetic material , which he had irradiated in the Lainz hospital . Until 1945, his research was considered important to the war effort and financed. Otmar von Verschuer expressed a certain skepticism towards Loeffler in a letter to Bernhard de Rudder in 1944 - “Then he slipped completely into political waters, scientifically sterile since 1932, but thoroughly successful in his career. He has now been granted approval for a mammoth institute in Vienna. ”In the same letter, however, Verschuer described Loeffler's subordinate Gottschewski as a“ capable experimental geneticist ”.

In addition to cancer, the structure of genes and the storage of genetic information were important research areas for Gottschewski. In 1944, American scientists recognized that DNA , not proteins , did this job. What results Gottschewski achieved during his time in Vienna is still unknown. The liberation of Vienna by the Red Army put an end to his research at the Racial Biology Institute; Oliver Paget , whom he had brought to the Institute of Breed Biology as a research assistant and doctoral student , rescued the experimental animals from the closed institute and later transferred them to other research facilities in Austria, whereas Gottschewski returned to Germany.

In his later genetic experiments at the Max Planck Institutes in Hanover and Freiburg, he again used drosophiles and house mice. Later, in the 1960s, Gottschewski worked as a toxicologist for the WHO . The focus of his scientific research was the influence of toxins on the organism.

Gottschewski was one of the main reviewers in the 1968 thalidomide trial.

He was a member of the student union Turnerschaft Markomannia Königsberg (today: Alte Turnerschaft Eberhardina-Markomannia Tübingen).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Page in the birth register , registry office in Grasnitz, website of the Olsztyn State Archives, accessed on September 3, 2014.
  2. ↑ According to GND. Query date: April 30, 2012.
  3. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl : Crossing borders. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics 1927–1945 (= History of the Kaiser Wilhelm Society under National Socialism. 9). Wallstein-Verlag, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-89244-799-3 , p. 520 note 656, ( limited preview in the Google book search9.
personal data
SURNAME Gottschewski, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gottschewski, Georg Hermann Martin
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geneticist and zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Rapatten
DATE OF DEATH March 18, 1975
Place of death Hanover