Gerhard Lowenstein

Gerhard Löwenstein (born March 25, 1915 in Berlin ; † February 9, 2000 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German general practitioner and obstetrician and professional medical officer .

Live and act

Löwenstein attended the Reform Realgymnasium in Berlin and graduated from high school in 1933. After studying human medicine at the universities of Berlin , Halle and Leipzig , he passed his medical state examination on January 13, 1940 in Leipzig . However, he was initially not allowed to work as a doctor.

He found employment in the pharmaceutical industry, partly in production. From November 1944, the Secret State Police ( Gestapo ) assigned him as a so-called B-member of the Todt Organization (OT), for which he worked as an assistant doctor. At the end of December 1944 he was transferred to the OT hospital Heilfürsorge Leutenberg in Thuringia , from which various camps for foreign and forced laborers were supplied. After the end of the Second World War , the facility was rededicated as a civilian hospital; Löwenstein was employed there until June 16, 1945.

Just a week later he was able to begin his compulsory assistant year in Frankfurt am Main, which he completed from June 22 to December 17, 1945 as a trainee intern at the gynecological clinic there. Immediately afterwards, Löwenstein settled down as a general practitioner and obstetrician in the Frankfurt district of Seckbach . On November 22, 1948, he received his doctorate at the Medical Faculty of the Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main with the dissertation topic forceps births in the Frankfurt University Women's Clinic under Hans Naujoks .

Immediately after taking up his professional activity, Löwenstein was involved in various bodies of statutory health insurance physicians, and from 1948 he was a member of the substitute health insurance examination committee. In 1953 he was elected for the first time as a member of the State Medical Association of Hesse, he became speaker of the Assembly of Representatives in 1965. From 1969 he was Deputy Chairman, from 1973 to 1987 he was Chairman of the State Medical Association of Hesse, then its Honorary Chairman.

He was particularly committed to establishing a foundation to establish an institute for general medicine at the Medical Faculty of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main as an institution jointly supported by the Hessen Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians and the Hessen State Medical Association.

As chairman of the KV Hessen, Löwenstein campaigned, among other things, for modern outpatient medicine in practice and for the further development of scientific general medicine. He set the focus of his work in a needs analysis, which could serve as the basis for medical care in Hesse. The structure of today's state-wide emergency service as well as the establishment of medical centers in previously underserved regions of Hesse go back to his initiative.

Awards

Löwenstein was honored with the Federal Cross of Merit 1st Class (1980), the Great Federal Cross of Merit (1987), the plaque of honor of the City of Frankfurt am Main (1987), the Friedrich Voges Medal of the National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians (1987), the Paracelsus Medal of the German Medical Association (1999) and the gold medal of honor from the State Medical Association of Hesse. The medical center of the Hessen Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians in Frankfurt am Main was named after him in 2001.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Karsten Vilmar : Award of the Paracelsus Medal of the German medical profession on the occasion of the German Medical Association 1999 , Federal Medical Association
2. ↑ Monja Laschet: The medical center is now called Dr. Gerhard Löwenstein-Haus  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 406 kB), Hessisches Ärzteblatt 5/2001