Gerhardt Katsch

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Gerhardt Katsch, around 1955

Gerhardt Katsch (born May 14, 1887 in Berlin ; † March 7, 1961 in Greifswald ) was a German internist and from 1928 to 1957 professor of internal medicine at the University of Greifswald . Because of his initiative to set up a home for the clinical and social medical care of diabetics in 1930 in Garz on the Baltic Sea island of Rügen , the first facility of its kind in Germany , he is considered to be alongside Oskar Minkowski and Karl Stolteas one of the founders of diabetology in Germany.

As head of the Greifswald university clinics and senior medical officer in Greifswald during the Second World War , he was also involved in the end of April 1945 in the handover of the city to the Red Army without a fight . After the war, until his death, he headed the Institute for Diabetes Research and Treatment in Karlsburg near Greifswald, which grew out of the Garzer Heim , which was one of the most important clinical and scientific institutions in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) and after his death as an institute for diabetes "Gerhardt Katsch" bore his name. In addition, he played a key role in the reopening of the University of Greifswald in the post-war years and was its rector from 1954 to 1957 .

Due to his work as a doctor, scientist and university lecturer, Gerhardt Katsch was one of the most influential internists of his time in Germany and one of the most important personalities in Greifswald's city and university history in the 20th century. For his medical and scientific achievements, he was accepted into the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin and the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , and received various honors from the city and the university for his services to the rescue of Greifswald.

Life

Study and work as a doctor

An early publication by Gerhardt Katsch from 1913 from his time in Hamburg-Altona

Gerhardt Katsch was born in Berlin in 1887 as the oldest of four siblings . His father Hermann , son of the businessman Carl Wilhelm Alexander Katsch and Caroline Andrée from Nîmes, was a playwright and painter by profession. His mother Elisabeth (1864–1908), daughter of the government councilor Ferdinand Beutner and Olga Brachvogel, was a dramaturge . Gerhardt Katsch attended the French grammar school in Berlin, which he graduated on August 30, 1905 with the rarely awarded Matura certificate "with the highest grade". In the same year he began studying biology , physics and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris . From 1906 to 1911 he studied medicine , first at the University of Marburg and later in Berlin, the city of his birth, due to a serious illness of his mother, who died in 1908. After his medical examination on January 24, 1911, he received his license to practice medicine in 1912 and received his doctorate on January 22 of the same year at the Pathological Institute of the Berlin Charité , headed by Johannes Orth , with a thesis on gastric movement supervised by Adolf Bickel . Together with Bickel, he published several scientific publications on the results of his dissertation and the underlying methods . He then moved to Hamburg , where he worked for the internist Gustav von Bergmann , who later described him as his “best colleague” and “most important student”, from 1912 to 1914 as an assistant doctor and from 1914 to 1917 as a senior doctor in Altona . During this time he also met his wife Countess Irmgard von Holck (1893–1977). The marriage on September 3, 1917 was followed two years later by the birth of their only son Burchard (1919–1996).

During the First World War , he did military service from the beginning of August 1914 to the end of January 1917 and from the beginning of August to the end of November 1918 as a doctor in the 84th Reserve Infantry Regiment, including in a hospital in Lörrach , and was wounded during the Battle of the Somme . During his temporary exemption from military service he settled in 1917 on the basis of his previous releases and without prior habilitation at the University of Marburg habilitation . He followed Gustav von Bergmann again, who had moved to Marburg a year earlier, and was there, after he was appointed adjunct professor in 1918 , as a senior physician at the university clinic until 1920. In the same year he moved to Frankfurt am Main again together with Bergmann . Here he received an extraordinary professorship in 1921 and remained as a senior physician at the university clinic until 1926. He then took on his first self-employed position as head physician at the medical clinic of the Heilig-Geist-Hospital in Frankfurt. In Marburg and Frankfurt he dealt with studies of diseases and examination methods of the stomach , intestines and pancreas . His special medical and scientific interest was early on in diabetes mellitus . Just a year after the discovery of insulin by Frederick Banting and Charles Best in 1921, he began investigating the clinical use of insulin for the treatment of diabetics.

Appointment to Greifswald

Memorial plaque for Gerhardt Katsch at the old surgical clinic in Greifswald
The beginning of the "Garz Theses" published in 1937

In 1928 Gerhardt Katsch was appointed director of the medical clinic and professor of internal medicine at the University of Greifswald . The treatment and research of diabetes mellitus became the determining topic of his work until the end of his life and thus a research focus of his clinic. On March 30, 1930, the "Arndt Foundation Garz - Diabetikerheim" was founded with his participation and in the same year the German Diabetic Association . On September 1 of the same year, the diabetic home in Garz on the island of Rügen, the first facility for social medical care for diabetics in Germany and Europe, started operations. When it opened, the home had 30 places and was a model for comparable facilities such as in Copenhagen from 1938 . 1937 appeared with the " Garzer Thesen ", one of the most famous publications of Gerhardt Katsch, one of the most important German language program publications in the early history of diabetology. In this paper, with which he presented his principles for the treatment of diabetes mellitus for the first time, he postulated the principle of “productive care” for diabetics and rejected their classification as “incurable metabolic cripples”. His views were based on the principle that a diabetic with optimal therapy consisting of diet, insulin intake, physical activity and training can be “fully able to work and enjoy life” and should therefore not be regarded as sick, but as “partially healthy”.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis Gerhardt Katsch was established in March 1933 member of the paramilitary veterans organization Stahlhelm and their insertion into the SA about a year later Oberscharführer the SA Reserve. Under pressure from speculation about Jewish ancestors in his grandparent generation, he joined the SS in August 1934 as a supporting member , but as such was not involved in its command structures. In addition, he lost a number of senior physicians of Jewish origin in his clinic over the course of the next few years due to the increasing persecution of Jews due to the law to restore the civil service . For Alfred Lublin , who had been working at the clinic since 1929 , a pupil of the internist Oskar Minkowski , who worked in Greifswald until 1909 and later in Breslau , he had only obtained his appointment as senior physician on April 1, 1933. After the University of Greifswald Lublin struck off the teaching staff on October 1, 1935, Katsch, who was closely associated with Lublin, supported his application for a professorship in Ankara . When this was unsuccessful, Lublin emigrated to Lithuania and later to Bolivia , from where he remained in contact with Katsch until his death in 1956.

In 1938 Gerhardt Katsch supported his son's emigration to Mexico . In the same year he became a candidate retroactively to May 1937 and a member of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) in 1943 . In addition, he also joined the National Socialist Teachers' Association , but avoided membership in the National Socialist German Medical Association . In political terms, he successfully opposed efforts to extend National Socialist racial hygiene to diabetes patients. During the Second World War , he was temporarily a consultant internist in the military medical service for Military District II ( Stettin ) and, from 1940/1941, he was also responsible for all Greifswald hospitals. He served at the front from late November 1941 to late March 1942 in the Balkans and from early May to early November 1943 in the Ukraine .

Life after World War II

The castle in Karlsburg, seat of the institute founded by Katsch from 1947

On the night of April 29-30, 1945 belonged to Gerhardt Katsch, at that time head of the Greifswald university clinics and the longest-serving medical officer in the city, together with the then rector of the University of Carl Engel and the deputy city ​​commander Colonel Max Otto Wurmbach (1885-1946 ) to a group of three parliamentarians who brought the advancing Red Army an offer to surrender and surrender the city of Greifswald without a fight. In mid-October 1946 Katsch received a call to a planned chair for internal medicine at the University of Mainz , which he turned down around two weeks later. An appointment to the Charité as the successor to his former teacher Gustav von Bergmann , who moved to Munich in 1946 , was also planned by the University of Berlin in early 1947 . In May 1947, however, Katsch said he received a rejection from the dean of the medical faculty there. Two years after the end of the Second World War, the second diabetic home under his responsibility was set up in Karlsburg Castle in Karlsburg near Greifswald . The home in Garz, which had become too small in the meantime, was retained as a branch, especially for looking after diabetic children during the summer holidays. In 1950 the facility in Karlsburg was named "Institute for Diabetes Research and Treatment", two years later the activities were also expanded to include experimental diabetes research. The world's first school specifically for diabetic children was set up in Sellin on the island of Rügen in 1955, and a corresponding holiday camp was set up a year later.

In the German Democratic Republic (GDR), Katsch was one of the best-known and most influential doctors and scientists. In 1950, due to his reputation, he received a so-called individual contract with extensive competencies and privileges. Among other things, this concerned a salary for teaching after retirement, freedom of movement when traveling to congresses abroad, easier entry for his son, who was living in Mexico at the time , preferential provision of literature and the management of his institute for life. Despite this exceptional position, he remained independent in the GDR. From 1954 to 1957 he was rector of the University of Greifswald. On the occasion of the 500th anniversary of the university's founding, he campaigned, in some cases with success, in two letters to the then GDR President Wilhelm Pieck on behalf of Greifswald students who had been convicted for political reasons. In 1957 Gerhardt Katsch retired as a university professor . He remained director of the institute in Karlsburg, which had become the leading institution in the GDR for the medical care of diabetics and one of the most renowned research institutes in the country, until his death. During a stay in his hunting lodge in old towns in the Allgäu , he suffered a heart attack , as a result of which he died in Greifswald in March 1961. His successor was Gerhard Mohnike , who had been one of Katsch's students since completing his studies in 1942, first in Garz and later in Karlsburg.

Reception and aftermath

Scientific and medical work

Diet plan of a diabetes patient by Gerhardt Katsch.jpg

Gerhardt Katsch published around 220 scientific publications in the course of his career . He supervised more than 300 graduate students and 14 postdoctoral , most of whom were appointed to internal medicine departments or took other positions of influence. As a scientist and university professor, he was one of the most important internists of his time in Germany. The main focus of his scientific work was gastroenterology , diseases of the pancreas and especially diabetes mellitus. In the area of ​​diabetes research, in addition to clinical issues such as the effect of various insulin preparations and the effects of muscle work , he mainly focused on metabolic aspects such as diabetes-related disorders of lipid metabolism . In addition to his “Garzer Theses”, the controversy over the optimal coordination of insulin administration and nutrition, which between the doctrine represented by him and other diabetologists, had effects on the treatment of diabetes both in his time and on the later development of insulin therapy the views of the pediatrician Karl Stolte . Stolte had been director of the children's clinic at the University of Breslau until 1945 , before he worked in the same position at the Greifswald children's clinic until 1948 after the end of the Second World War and then moved to the University of Rostock , where he stayed until his death in 1951.

Katsch represented the opinion, derived from the treatment of adult diabetes patients, that the diet should be adapted to the action of the insulin and should therefore be subject to certain restrictions. He rejected the concept pursued by Stolte since 1929 of adapting the insulin dosage to a variable diet ("free food"). The treatment principles advocated by Katsch and the great majority of diabetologists, based on an individual medical diet plan with a medically determined constant daily insulin dose, were dominant in diabetes therapy until the early 1970s. Stolte's point of view, which at that time could not prevail against the doctrine represented by Katsch, mainly due to the restrictions caused by the war and the later lack of suitable analytical options for precise and simple metabolic control, became the basis of the currently practiced basic bolus therapy .

Appreciation and memory

Bust of Gerhardt Katsch in the Medical Clinic of the University Hospital Greifswald

Gerhardt Katsch's work was recognized in many ways, especially in the GDR. In 1953 he became a full member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin and in 1955 a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina . His state awards include the award of the honorary title of Honored Doctor of the People (1951) and Outstanding Scientist of the People (1956) as well as the National Prize of the GDR (1952). He also acted several times as chairman of the German Congress of Internal Medicine , which usually took place in Wiesbaden , as well as chairman of the German Society for Gastroenterology and Metabolic Diseases in 1952 and of the German Society for Internal Medicine in 1953 . An expression of his international reputation was, for example, his membership in more than ten renowned international internist societies, including in Belgium , Spain , France , Switzerland and Mexico . The Association Diabetes UK , the largest organization in the field of diabetes in Great Britain , presented him with the Banting Memorial Lecture Award in 1958, and he gave the corresponding lecture during the congress of the International Diabetes Federation in Düsseldorf under the title "On the conditional health of the diabetic" .

In recognition of his services to the rescue of the city of Greifswald, he was made an honorary citizen in 1952. In 1953 the University of Greifswald awarded him an honorary senator and four years later an honorary doctorate and the golden honorary chain. After his death, the institute in Karlsburg bore his name from 1961 when it was renamed the Institute for Diabetes “Gerhardt Katsch” ; from 1972 it was called the Central Institute for Diabetes “Gerhardt Katsch” . As part of the structural changes in the scientific landscape of the former GDR after German reunification , the clinical part of the institute was privatized as the Karlsburg Clinic . The research area came to the University of Greifswald in 1992, before a sub-area was outsourced in 1996, which has existed since then as the Institute for Diabetes "Gerhardt Katsch" as a non-university research facility. Streets in Wiesbaden and Greifswald are also named after Gerhardt Katsch . The German Diabetes Society has been awarding a Gerhardt Katsch Medal every year since 1979 to people “who have made a special contribution to the welfare of diabetics” .

Katsch family grave, Alter St. Matthäus-Kirchhof, Berlin

So far, three medical-historical dissertations and habilitation theses have been written about his life and work . His diary from the years 1946 and 1947, which was particularly relevant for research on contemporary and milieu history as well as university history , which was transferred to the Greifswald University Archives after the death of his wife in 1977 , was first published in 2007 and one year later on the basis of newly emerged documents from the Published in an extended new edition from September 1946 to January 1949. In 2008, further diary entries from 1914 and 1949 appeared, which had been found in the old library holdings of the Greifswald University Clinic for Internal Medicine.

The last resting place of Gerhardt Katsch is in the hereditary funeral of his family in the old St.-Matthäus-Kirchhof Berlin . It was purchased by his grandmother in 1873 and is adorned with a grave figure of Rudolf Pohle . In addition to Gerhardt Katsch and his wife, the entrepreneur Carl, among others, is buried here. W. Katsch (1813–1873), Antoinette Katsch (1832–1916), the painter Hermann Katsch (1853–1924) and the sculptor Arnold Katsch (1861–1928).

Works (selection)

  • Charles Darwin. Series: Hillger's Illustrated Folk Books. Volume 125. Hillger, Berlin and Leipzig 1909
  • Garz theses. For the nutritional guidance of the diabetic. In: Clinical weekly. 16/1937. Pp. 399-403
  • The work therapy of the diabetic. T. Steinkopff, Darmstadt 1939
  • The mind-body problem from a medical point of view. Wichern-Verlag, Berlin 1951
  • About the vital tendency to reactive excessive performance. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1954
  • The doctor's therapeutic imperative. JF Lehmanns, Munich 1958
  • Brief diagnosis of pancreatic diseases. Enke, Stuttgart 1958
  • Consideration of the function of the cotyledons. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1959
  • Acetone to sugar. Reference book for diabetics. Sixth edition. VEB Georg Thieme, Leipzig 1970 (as co-editor)

literature

  • Friedrich Müller: Festschrift for the 65th birthday of Gerhardt Katsch. Thieme, Leipzig 1952
  • H. Bartelheimer: In memory of Gerhardt Katsch. In: German Medical Weekly. 86/1961. Georg Thieme Verlag, pp. 1404/1405, ISSN  0012-0472 .
  • Horst Zoske:  Katsch, Gerhardt. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 328 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Ernst Zumpf: Social and scientific achievements by Gerhardt Katsch. Dissertation A at the Medical Faculty of the Ernst Moritz Arndt University, Greifswald 1985
  • Michael Dittrich: The role of the scientific school by Gerhardt Katsch (1887–1961) for the development of diabetes research. Two volumes. Dissertation B (habilitation thesis) at the Medical Faculty of the Ernst Moritz Arndt University, Greifswald 1986
  • Dagmar Schüssler: The importance of Gerhardt Katsch for the development of diabetology and diabetic care in Germany. Dissertation at the Medical Faculty of the Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf 1992
  • Gerhardt Katsch: Greifswalder Tagebuch 1946-47 . Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2007, ISBN 978-3-937719-70-2 ; Published by Dirk Alvermann ; annotated with contributions by Manfred Herling ( Das Dokument. pp. 8–12), Dirk Alvermann ( Die Zeit. pp. 13–28) and Irmfried Garbe ( Der Mensch. pp. 29–49); Diary pp. 55–131 (second, extended new edition, also published by Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2008)
  • Günter Ewert, Ralf Ewert: Gerhardt Katsch. Diary entries 1914 and 1949. Biographical sketches. Sardellus Verlagsgesellschaft, Greifswald 2008, ISBN 978-3-9810686-4-1
  • Mathias Niendorf (Ed.): Gerhardt Katsch Greifswalder Tagebuch 1945–46. Verlag Ludwig, Kiel 2015, ISBN 978-3-86935-242-8
  • Short biography for:  Katsch, Gerhardt . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Gerhardt Katsch  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Most of the biographical information comes from the edition of Gerhardt Katsch's diary from 1946/1947 published in 2007 by Dirk Alvermann , director of the Greifswald University Archives. The life of Katsch is presented in the chapter Der Mensch (p. 29–49, 70 references to external sources), written by Irmfried Garbe, research assistant at the Chair for Church History at the University of Greifswald. Some of the information comes from the obituary published in the German Medical Weekly in 1961; see bibliography
  2. ↑ Further biographical information from: Peter Schneck:  Katsch, Gerhardt . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
  3. ↑ Contribution to the study of gastric motility. Dissertation at the Medical Faculty of the University of Berlin, 1912
  4. ↑ Biographical sketch I. In: Günter Ewert, Ralf Ewert: Gerhardt Katsch. Diary entries 1914 and 1949. Biographical sketches. Greifswald 2008, p. 17
  5. ↑ Biographical sketch I. In: Günter Ewert, Ralf Ewert: Gerhardt Katsch. Diary entries 1914 and 1949. Biographical sketches. Greifswald 2008, p. 18
  6. ↑ Biographical sketch I. In: Günter Ewert, Ralf Ewert: Gerhardt Katsch. Diary entries 1914 and 1949. Biographical sketches. Greifswald 2008, p. 22
  7. ↑ All information on memberships in National Socialist organizations according to Irmfried Garbe, Kiel 2007, p. 37/38; The author refers to the personal file 1276 in the University Archives Greifswald and to the NSDAP central file in the German Federal Archives in Berlin as external sources
  8. ↑ Information on the relationship between Katsch and Lublin according to Irmfried Garbe, Kiel 2007, p. 36/37
  9. ↑ a b Biographical sketch II. In: Günter Ewert, Ralf Ewert: Gerhardt Katsch. Diary entries 1914 and 1949. Biographical sketches. Greifswald 2008, p. 48
  10. ↑ Irmfried Garbe, Kiel 2007, p. 36; As an example, the author cites two articles by Katsch in the magazine “Gesundheitsfürsorge” from 1938 and in the “Negotiations of the German Society for Internal Medicine” from 1940
  11. ↑ The information on the appointment to Mainz is based on his diary entries from October 12 and October 29, 1946. Katsch does not give any reasons for the rejection.
  12. ↑ The information on the appointment to Berlin is based on his diary entries from January 19, February 9 and 19 and May 5, 1947. According to his own notes, Katsch himself had moved to Berlin with regard to the working and living conditions there compared to Greifswald rated rather skeptical. As a reason for the rejection on the part of the Medical Faculty of the University of Berlin, he quotes from a letter from the dean: "... Obviously, the people in charge of the commanding authority of the occupying power have some inhibitions that I do not quite understand, you from Greifswald to Berlin allow; in any case, our efforts have made no progress. ... "
  13. ↑ Information from Irmfried Garbe, Kiel 2007, p. 44; The author names a copy of the contract dated September 1, 1950 in Katsch's personal file in the Greifswald University Archives as an external source
  14. ↑ Irmfried Garbe, Kiel 2007, p. 45
  15. ↑ Information from Irmfried Garbe, Kiel 2007, p. 47; Reference of the author to an external source: Irmfried Garbe: The state power and the right of grace: Two requests for grace for Greifswald students in the 1956 anniversary year by University Rector Prof. Dr. Gerhardt Katsch to President Wilhelm Pieck. In: Contemporary history regional. Messages from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. 7 (2) / 2003. History workshop Rostock, pp. 56–62, ISSN  1434-1794
  16. ↑ a b c d Michael Berger: Gerhardt Katsch. May 14, 1887 to March 7, 1961. In: German Medical Weekly. 112 (33) / 1987. Georg-Thieme-Verlag, pp. 1271-1273, ISSN  0012-0472
  17. ↑ Irmfried Garbe, Kiel 2007, p. 35 and p. 47
  18. ↑ See: History of insulin treatment in children and adolescents. In: Diabetes in Children and Adolescents. 6th edition. Springer, Berlin and Heidelberg 2005, ISBN 978-3-540-21186-0 , pp. 153-171
  19. ↑ K. Stolte, J. Wolff: The treatment of childhood diabetes with freely chosen diet . In: Results of internal medicine and paediatrics . tape 56 , 1939, pp. 155-193 .
  20. ↑ “Child diabetes, which has not yet found a separate treatment in spite of the relatively large amount of material (more than 500 children have been treated in Garz so far), is now devoted to special interest by Katsch. At the Pediatric Congress in Berlin in 1947, he gave advice on the treatment of diabetes in children, with a special focus on current nutritional options. Katsch rejects Stolte's free diet, which for pedagogical and metabolic reasons is not acceptable, ”says a report written with Katsch's personal participation and presented to the Soviet military administration in Berlin in April 1948. Section 5.6.11 Childhood diabetes . Diabetes treatment and diabetes research. Report on the work of the diabetic home Garz (Rügen) from 1930 to 1947. By Dr.Wulf Lübken, assistant at the Medical Clinic of the University of Greifswald. In: Günter Ewert, Ralf Ewert (Eds.): Gerhardt Katsch - founder of the first German diabetic home and diabetic care. Report from Wulf Lübken as a scientific reparation payment to the Soviet Military Administration Germany (SMAD) . 1st edition. Pro BUSINESS, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86805-665-5 , p. 80-81 .
  21. ↑ "1, A free diet is not possible, a regular diet -diet- is required." In: FAGries, M.Töller. Basics of the diabetes diet. Current nutritional medicine in clinic and practice 1977; 4: 120-127
  22. ↑ Diabetes UK: Named lectures 2011: call for nominations ( Memento of December 27, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  23. ↑ Biographical sketch III. In: Günter Ewert, Ralf Ewert: Gerhardt Katsch. Diary entries 1914 and 1949. Biographical sketches. Greifswald 2008, p. 110
predecessor Office successor
Hans Beyer Rector of the University of Greifswald
1954/57 		Heinrich Borriss


This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on February 11, 2008 .
personal data
SURNAME Katsch, Gerhardt
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medic
DATE OF BIRTH May 14, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH March 7, 1961
Place of death Greifswald