Georg Urdang

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George Urdang about 1919

Georg Urdang  (born June 13, 1882 in Tilsit , East Prussia , † May 8, 1960 in Madison ) was an East Prussian pharmacist, pharmacy historian, editor and writer. He emigrated to the USA, where he became a professor at the  University of Wisconsin-Madison and founded the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy .

Life

Urdang's parents were the merchant and rabbi Isidor Urdang (1832–1882) and his wife Emma Marie b. Alban (1851–1928) born. First he attended the grammar school in Tilsit, switched to the Tilsiter Realgymnasium , which he graduated in 1898 with upper secondary school leaving certificate. In the same year he began his apprenticeship as a pharmacist's assistant in the Reichsadler pharmacy in Insterburg . He continued it in Wächter's Green Pharmacy in Tilsit, where he passed his journeyman's examination in 1901. On April 25, 1904, he began his pharmacy studies at the University of Leipzig , which he completed in November 1905 with the state examination. His first job was the Westend pharmacy in Frankfurt am Main . But in 1906 he returned to his homeland to work there as the first prescriptionist in Wächter's Green Pharmacy until 1910. On March 30, 1909, he married Gertrude Preuss from Tilsit. From 1910 to 1919 Urdang was the owner of the Adler pharmacy in the West Prussian town of Rosenberg . Here he said he was a small country pharmacist who worked alone and only had time at night to research the history of pharmacy. In Rosenberg, the couple had three children, two daughters and a son, who died in childhood.

Work as an editor

Even during his time as a pharmacy manager, he was commenting on specialist political issues in the pharmaceutical newspaper . In 1919 the Pharmazeutische Zeitung offered him to work as an editor in Berlin . Until 1936 he published articles there on the professional psyche of the pharmacist and the representation of the pharmacist profession in the literature. In 1923 his first article on pharmaceutical history appeared, "The Pharmaceutical History in Germany". While working as an editor , he did his doctorate in pharmacy history under Professors Edmund Oskar von Lippmann (Berlin) and Carl August Jacob Rojahn ( Halle ). His doctoral thesis on “The history of metals in German pharmacopoeias” was published in 1933. In 1934 Urdang was banned from working by the National Socialists. But the Pharmazeutische Zeitung allowed him to keep the position and he was able to publish under a pseudonym until 1936 .

Foundation of the Society for the History of Pharmacy

In 1926 Urdang founded together with Ludwig Winkler , Walther Zimmermann , Fritz Ferchl and Otto Raubenheimer in Hall near Innsbruck the " Society for the History of Pharmacy ", of which he was treasurer in 1929.

emigration

In 1938 Urdang emigrated to the USA. There he studied pharmacy again at the Brooklyn College of Pharmacy, Long Island University and passed the state examination in 1939. In June 1939, Urdang went to Madison , Wisconsin , in order to use Dr. Edward Kremers to write the first American textbook on the history of pharmacy. In 1941 he founded the American Institute of the History of Pharmacy, also in Madison (Wisconsin), of which he was first director until 1956. This newly founded professional association also offered written curricula, courses and conferences to other universities in Urdang. Urdang turned down the offer of a professorship for the history of medicine in Madison because he wanted to remain loyal to the history of pharmacy and campaigned for the establishment of a chair in this subject. His efforts were successful in 1947 when he was appointed professor of pharmaceutical history there at the age of 65. Together with his assistant Hans Dieckmann, a post-doc from Bielefeld , he wrote the textbook Introduction to the History of German Pharmacy in 1954 .

post war period

When people in Germany learned in 1947 that Urdang had meanwhile become a professor of the history of pharmacy, his former colleagues saw in him a valuable helper in rebuilding German pharmacy history. But it was only the freedom of establishment for pharmacists introduced in the American zone of occupation that made it possible for Urdang to travel to Berlin on the occasion of the General German Pharmacists' Day on July 10, 1950 and appear there as a guest speaker. He stayed in contact with European pharmaceutical historians until his death. Urdang died of a heart attack in Madison in 1960.

Awards

Works

  • The pharmacist in the mirror of literature
  • The pharmacist as the subject and object of literature
  • Nature and meaning of the history of pharmacy
  • On the history of metals in the official German pharmacopoeias
  • Outline of the history of German pharmacy (in collaboration with Alfred Adlung )
  • Hermann Gelder -Berlin, golden professional anniversary .
  • The Squibb Ancient Pharmacy
  • Dr. Edward Kremers / George Urdang: History of Pharmacy
  • Introduction to the history of German pharmacy (in collaboration with Hans Dieckmann)
  • Goethe and Pharmacy

literature

  • Andrea Ludwig:   Georg Urdang: (1882-1960); a pharmacy historian as a mediator between the “old” and “new” world (= sources and studies on the history of pharmacy, vol. 91). Knowledge Verl.-Ges, Stuttgart 2009,  ISBN 978-3-8047-2583-6
  • Frank Leimkugel: On the 30th anniversary of Georg (e) Urdang's death; on the 20th anniversary of the death of Georg (e) Heinz Wolfe , in: Geschichte der Pharmazie 42nd Volume (1990) No. 3, pp. 29–31
  • The pharmaceutical historians Schelenz and Urdang . In: Deutsche Apotherkerzeitung . No. 39 , September 30, 2010, p. 100 ( deutsche-apotheker-zeitung.de [accessed on May 20, 2020]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Winkler, Ludwig: F. Winkler's Stadtapotheke zu Innsbruck; Copyright "Society for the History of Pharmacy in Berlin" 1929; Typesetting and printing: “Kinderfreund-Anstalt” in Innsbruck, p. 35 and the composition of the board on the inside of the cover of the brochure.
  2. ↑ Pharmaceutical Newspaper , Volume 79, No. 87/1934, p. 1102
personal data
SURNAME Urdang, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Urdang, George
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American pharmacist, pharmacy historian, editor and writer
DATE OF BIRTH June 13, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Tilsit , East Prussia
DATE OF DEATH May 8, 1960
Place of death Madison