Hans Elias

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Hans Elias (born June 28, 1907 in Darmstadt ; † April 11, 1985 in San Francisco ) was a German-American scientist and artist who had to emigrate to Italy and then to the USA in 1935. The extremely versatile Elias, who has become known as an anatomist, morphologist, educator, mathematician, cameraman, painter and sculptor, is also considered one of the fathers of stereology and scientific cinematography .

Origin and education

Hans Elias is the son of the school principal Michael Elias (* 1867 in Gudensberg - † 1926 in Darmstadt) and his wife Anna (* April 17, 1876 in Darmstadt - † October 31, 1960 in Chicago ). Michael Elias was the founder and head of the Darmstadt Pedagogy , a higher private school in Darmstadt's Paulusviertel, which had existed since July 1, 1897 . The school was a preparatory institution for secondary school leaving certificate and Abitur . The target group of the pedagogy were “Pupils who cannot follow the lessons in large classes in the public schools, but who require detailed, individual treatment, or who have had to stay away from school for a long time due to illness. [..] It also offers young people who have left public school prematurely or who previously did not have the opportunity to attend a higher education institution, the opportunity to prepare for the one-year, primary, ensign or high school diploma in the shortest possible time. "

Anna Elias was the daughter of Heinrich Oppenheimer, the long-time lead singer of the liberal Jewish religious community in Darmstadt. She was a student of the painter Anna Beyer (1867–1922), the wife of Adolf Beyer , who later trained her son Hans. She herself was a teacher, painter and sculptor, from whom a sculpture of the Datterich comes, among other things . The ashes of Anna Elias, who died in Chicago, were buried on March 29, 1961 in the Darmstadt Jewish cemetery .

Hans Elias and his sister Magda grew up in a liberal-democratic family of largely assimilated Jews. Even as a young boy, Hans Elias had a great talent for drawing, which prompted his parents to send him to the Werkkunstschule Darmstadt at the age of 15 , where he learned drawing and modeling as a student of Adolf Beyer .

After three years of art school, his parents urged him to make up for his Abitur. He then applied for an art teacher training course at the state art college in Berlin in 1926, but was not given a place at university. Due to this rejection, he starts studying mathematics, zoology and physics at the Technical University in Darmstadt . In 1931 he passed the state examination and received his doctorate shortly afterwards in Giessen . His dissertation is entitled The Development of the Colored Dress of the Water Frog (Rana esculenta) and contains many illustrations that he himself has drawn. Hildebrandt even sees an expanded spectrum of his subjects (major subjects biology and mathematics, minor subjects physics and educational sciences) and also mentions Berlin as a further study location. From all this, she concludes: "The course selection reflects the wide range of Elias' interests, just as he saw himself throughout his life primarily as a teacher and then as a scientist and artist."

The years before the first emigration

There are slightly different representations about the activities of Hans Elias that followed immediately. Baron speaks of intermediate positions as a teacher at his parents' school in Darmstadt and in Frankfurt am Main, Hildebrandt speaks of a teacher training that he has started at a higher school in Frankfurt, which he had to break off due to financial problems in the family. Both agree, however, that Elias then found a job at the Israelite Deaf-Mute Asylum in Berlin-Weißensee . In his memoirs, Elias described the move to Berlin as an "expatriation", which made him feel on the way to Siberia. That he had to leave Darmstadt at that time was the hardest step in his emigration history.

Hildebrandt describes the end of his activity in Berlin-Weißensee:

“ Felix Reich , the director of this school, was of Jewish descent himself, but also of strong nationalistic convictions, and after Hitler's rise to power demanded that his employees give their students a raised right arm and the word 'Heil', but without it welcomed the addition of 'Hitler'. Elias was the only teacher who defied the order and was fired. That was the first, but not the last time that Hans Elias refused to comply with instructions from superiors if they went against his principles, refusals that led to the loss of his respective jobs. "

April 1, 1933, the day of the Jewish boycott initiated by the National Socialists , prompted Hans Elias to urge his mother and sister to emigrate. The two traveled to Milan , where they found a job in child care. E himself wanted to stay in Germany because he felt morally obliged to support young Jews in Germany. He found a job as a teacher at the Jüdisches Landschulheim Herrlingen, where he taught mathematics, natural sciences, drawing, handicrafts and geography. Jenny Heymann , a Herrlinger colleague, describes him as a talented young "teacher with excellent scientific knowledge, but who emigrated to America very soon after joining the Herrlinger teaching staff". Heymann is wrong about the emigration destination chosen by Elias in 1934, and she says nothing about the reasons that prompted him to leave school after just under a year in Herrlingen. After Hildebrandt, he resigned himself after criticizing the pedagogical methods of his superior, Hugo Rosenthal , which were, in his opinion, too liberal . In 1934 he came to the conclusion that he would not be able to pursue his dream of educating Jewish students in Germany any further. This was due to his "unemployability" within the public service in Germany and his lack of finances for his own private institution.

Italy-Switzerland-Italy 1934–1935

In the spring of 1934 (Baron means 1935) Hans Elias followed his family to Milan, where they stayed with Italian relatives. But he soon moved to Turin because he had found a job as a tutor for a wealthy family there. Since he had the mornings free in this job, this enabled him to continue his frog research at the university's anatomical institute in collaboration with Giuseppe Levi . He had to break off these studies because his educational ideas offended the family whose children he was supposed to raise in the afternoons. He lost that job and returned to Milan. In Milan he started work on a film project about the embryonic development of the European tree frog . He followed up on earlier cinematographic work that he had tried out together with Michael Evenari (Walter Schwarz) in Darmstadt and with Richard Weissenberg in Berlin. He perfected his techniques and in 1935 received a grant from the Swiss Aid Organization for German Scholars . Thanks to this scholarship, he was able to work in Zurich with Ernst Rust , professor at the Photography Institute of the ETH Zurich , and produce an educational film about the development of amphibious egg cells. In addition, there was also a collaboration with the anatomists Wilhelm von Möllendorff and Wolfgang Bargmann .

In 1936 Hans Elias traveled to Venice , where Anneliese Blumenthal (* 1904 in the Ennepe-Ruhr district ) , who emigrated from Germany in 1933, worked as a physiotherapist. Both had known each other since 1933 and were married on October 11, 1936 in Venice. Elias meanwhile worked as an unpaid researcher with Tullio Terni at the anatomical institute of the University of Padua and earned money as a portrait painter. A picture of him was shown at the 1936 Biennale di Venezia .

The Elias couple moved to Rome in 1937, where Hans Elias had two jobs waiting for him: he became director of the Laboratory for Scientific Cinematography and Histology of the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche and advisor at the International Institute for Educational Film of the United Nations . Baron suggests that these engagements were a result of his successful collaboration with Ernst Rüst.

The positive professional development was offset by a political development that made it increasingly difficult for Jews in Italy to live free from repression. In the summer of 1938, his mother, sister and wife Hans Elias therefore urged them to apply for visas to emigrate to the USA. Hans Elias was opposed to this request for a long time, as he was afraid of further emigration and the possible unemployment associated with it. It was only after the “Law for the Protection of the Italian Race” was passed in September 1938, which threatened to expel all Jews who immigrated to Italy after 1919 and only allowed them a half-year transition period to leave the country voluntarily, was he convinced of the need to emigrate. At that time he was working on the mediation of his friend Hans Bytinski-Salz with Giuseppe Reverberi at the biological laboratory of the "Athenaeum Pontificum Lateranense" in the Vatican and also had the offer to come to the University of Istanbul . He and his family decided to go to America and left Italy on April 1, 1939. How difficult it was for him is shown by a diary entry from the beginning of 1939 quoted by Hildebrandt:

"Per aspera ad astra. [..] Emigration is disgusting to me. I've seen enough already. And Darmstadt, the Odenwald and the Black Forest are completely enough for me. "

As an emigrant in the USA

As a professor at Middlesex University

Hans Elias' fear of unemployment after another emigration was not unfounded, because after the arrival of the family on April 13, 1939 in New York began a long search for an adequate job, in which he was in competition with many other academics. who, like him, were looking for a job in the American scientific system. Baron reports that Elias initially found accommodation at Harvard Biological Laboratories. However, he was lucky and in 1939 found a job as professor of biology and veterinary histology at Middlesex University in Waltham, Massachusetts . This university, on whose premises and with its facilities the Brandeis University was established after its closure in 1948 , was known for its veterinary medicine , but its status was not comparable with that of the universities from the Ivy League . However, it was more progressive than many other American universities of the time in that it did not impose any restrictions on the race, skin color or religion of its students and, in particular, gave Jews free access. And it had become the home of many European emigrants, including the aforementioned Richard Weissenberg from Berlin, Elias' former teacher, and the former Viennese anatomist Louis L. Bergmann (1907–1992)

In this environment, Hans Elias developed a broad journalistic activity. He wrote about education issues and was in correspondence with many emigrants living in the USA. He was mainly active as a university lecturer and researcher, and his family situation changed during this time: two sons were born, and he and his wife Anneliese became US citizens on November 27, 1944.

Educational film producer in Atlanta

Hildebrandt says that Hans Elias would have sought a more profitable and secure position in 1945, but does not mention that this was probably due to the difficult situation in which Middlesex University found itself . In 1944 a law had been passed requiring all medical schools to be accredited by the American Medical Association (AMA). Middlesex was one of the few universities that was denied this accreditation, which subsequently led to their closure due to a lack of support and funding. In this context, Hans Elias decided to work outside the university and became an employee of the Center for Communicable Diseases (CDC) in Atlanta . His job here was to produce medical educational films, including a film about the worm disease schistosomiasis (also known as schistosomiasis), which is common in tropical countries . In the course of his work there, he became aware of discrepancies in liver research and began to publish scientifically about them. This was precisely what his superior forbade him in 1948, but Hans Elias ignored it. A colleague described the consequences: “The papers made him famous, but they made sure that he was fired.” The four-year stay in Atlanta confronted Hans Elias and his family with the racism against African Americans . They were appalled by the way their white neighbors treated their African American neighbors. Hans Elias later tried very hard to help minorities and disadvantaged people among his students.

1949 to 1972: Chicago Medical School

Hans Popper (1903–1988), a liver specialist , who originally came from Austria and worked at the Chicago Medical School , had become aware of Hans Elias' publications and in 1949 ensured his appointment as assistant professor for microscopic anatomy. In 1953 he was appointed associate professor of anatomy and in 1960 full professor.

In his early years at the Medical School , Hans Elias developed the basics of stereology , which he first published in 1951: A mathematical approach to microscopic anatomy . Günter Baron describes very clearly how much his diverse experiences and talents in different scientific and artistic fields benefited him:

“His most important scientific and didactic field of work will be the visual representation of liver tissue, and he is breaking new ground: As a trained draftsman, mathematician and film specialist, he begins to transition from two-dimensional images to three-dimensional structures with the help of stereology (spatial interpretation of sections) To display blood supply and the fine structures of the liver tissue for diagnostics and didactic purposes in a clarity never achieved before. "

The first essay on what would later be called stereology was followed by more on this topic, and in 1961 he finally organized a conference with scientists from the fields of biology, geology, engineering and materials science on the Feldberg in the Black Forest . The purpose of this meeting was to find common approaches for the quantification of 3D objects that were based on 2D sections. At that meeting Elias suggested using the term stereology to describe the problem. A year later, in 1962, which was in Vienna International Society for stereology (ISS) ( International Society for Stereology (ISS) ) was founded. Hans Elias was elected founding president. After Mouton, the ISS is now by far the largest multidisciplinary organization of international scientists that does not pursue a warlike purpose.

However, Hans Elias by no means limited himself to stereology . He published on human microanatomy, continued to work with the liver specialist Popper, volunteered to teach at a primary school and began a career as a painter and sculptor. He also worked as an illustrator for pharmaceutical companies to improve his income. His attempt to establish Latin as the language of science met with little approval, and his own theory about multicentre carcinogenesis and cancer cell recruitment did not gain acceptance in the scientific community, which embittered him and led him to conspiracy theories against himself. In August 1969, Hans Elias wrote a letter to Richard Nixon directly calling on him to reform the education system and to end the Vietnam War . He did not do so under his real name or under his real address because he feared that he would be fired from the medical school for his anti-government attitude . He then retired in the regular manner in 1972.

Late work

After his retirement, Hans and Anneliese Elias moved to California, where their two sons lived. In 1973, however, Hans Elias received an invitation from the University of Heidelberg for a one-year research stay, during which he was able to continue his cancer research. This year-long move to Germany was difficult for his wife, unlike him, because she had had many anti-Semitic experiences before her early emigration . Hans Elias later reported that through her new contacts with young people in Germany and with old friends, his wife had learned from him that Germany in the 1970s was different from the one she had left in 1933.

In 1975 the couple returned to California. Hans Elias received a research assignment on stereology at the Medical Center of the University of California in San Francisco. He also became a senior lecturer at the City College of San Francisco , teaching anatomy to younger students. He carried out both activities until his death on April 11, 1985.

The artist Hans Elias

As mentioned above, Hans Elias' first training took place at the Werkkunstschule in Darmstadt, where he learned to draw and model. He later used his artistic talent several times, be it directly for his scientific work, which he illustrated himself, or for earning a living when he was able to be scientifically active but received little or no remuneration. How intensely this has happened over the years cannot be said, but Günter Baron is certain: “In any case, an era of artistic creation is apparently beginning in Chicago: paintings, sculptures, reliefs that were made in the small town of Lake Forest in the early 1970s near Chicago under the title 'The expressionistic NeoRenaissance of Hans Elias'. ”The exhibition in Lake Forest took place around 1970, and in it the sculpture“ Prometheus brings people fire ”, which is now in the Berlin State Library is hanging. It is known that Hans Elias created many works of art, including during his time in Heidelberg, where he left the works there to the university, or a Georg Büchner sculpture that he sent to the German Academy for Language and Poetry in Darmstadt her fiftieth anniversary. All of these works, whether in the USA or in Europe, have not been found. The Berlin Prometheus in the State Library is the only surviving work of art by Hans Elias. According to Baron, the fact that Prometheus and a large part of Hans Elias's estate are in the State Library is based on a close friendship between Elias and their former general director Ludwig Borngässer . Both were born in Darmstadt in the same year, and both also studied mathematics here. It can be assumed that the friendship between the two stems from this early childhood and youth.

Hans Elias and Germany

Hans Elias only came into contact with German anatomists after his emigration. He met some of them during his stay in Switzerland, others at the international anatomist congress in Milan in September 1936. Here he came into close and friendly contact with Hermann Stieve , Max Clara and Heinrich von Hayek and, as a Jewish emigrant, felt benevolent of them treated and accepted.

After the Second World War I knew of the involvement of many anatomists, namely the three previously mentioned, in the Nazi system and described them as "anatomical murderers". He kept in touch with Stieve, however; in the case of Hayeks, he successfully intervened against the fact that the international association of anatomists held its congress at the invitation of von Hayek in 1965 in Vienna, his place of work. Instead, the congress met in Wiesbaden.

Hans Elias, the two-time emigrant, has retained his great affection for Germany and many people there all his life. Unlike his wife, he was spared anti-Semitic experiences. He felt connected to liberal democratic traditions, and his Jewish identity was something that only the National Socialists made a central element of his being. German literature and art and above all the landscape in which he grew up remained important to him. Hildebrandt quotes him with the words:

“Even though I live in the most beautiful city in the northern hemisphere (San Francisco), in a house on a mountain with an incredibly magnificent view, I feel drawn to home all the time. I have an interesting job here, dear colleagues, co-workers and students. Still, this is the stranger. Only the Odenwald and the Black Forest are home. "

In terms of language, too, he had always remained connected to his old homeland, he had never lost his Hessian accent, which was clearly noticeable even in his use of the English language. And he felt homesick, homesick in a very comprehensive sense, as a feeling of being excluded and misunderstood and of insurmountable barriers. He survived, but his life as a German was forever destroyed.

Works

  • The development of the colored dress of the water frog (Rana esculenta) , Philosophical dissertation, Giessen, 1931.
  • After his dissertation, Hans Elias published an almost unmanageable number of publications on anatomical topics, on stereology, cinematography and morphology as an author or editor, which can be researched primarily in WorldCat . Special mention should be made of his work, with which he founded stereology :
  • A mathematical approach to microscopic anatomy , Chicago Medical School Quarterly 12, pp. 98-103 (1951).
  • He was also known as a visual artist. His work Prometheus (90 × 185 cm - cement with acrylic on a wooden panel) hangs in the Berlin State Library .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ This school should not be confused with the as Pädagogium designated educators , which later became the Ludwig George High School emerged.
  2. ^ Advertisement of the Darmstadt pedagogy from 1911, printed by Hans Karl Stürz: Anna Elias geb. Oppenheimer (1876-1960) , in: Eckhart G. Franz (ed.): Juden als Darmstädter Bürger , Eduard Roether Verlag, Darmstadt, 1994, ISBN 3-7929-0139-0 , pp. 261-264
  3. ↑ a b c d Karl Stürz: Anna Elias b. Oppenheimer (1876-1960) , in: Eckhart G. Franz (ed.): Juden als Darmstädter Bürger , Eduard Roether Verlag, Darmstadt, 1994, ISBN 3-7929-0139-0 , pp. 261-264
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r On the basis of the archive documents (bequests) listed below, Sabine Hildebrandt has worked up the life story of Hans Elias in great detail. Since her article The Anatomist Hans Elias: A Jewish German in Exile is used again and again in the following, she is to be briefly presented here using her brief portrait on the Harvard Medical School website . Hildebrandt is doing her doctorate in medicine at the Philipps University of Marburg and completed training in immunology and experimental rheumatology. She later began studying anatomy and taught it at the University of Michigan Medical School for 11 years before joining Harvard Medical School in 2013 . In addition to her main field, anatomy, she began researching archives in Berlin. She wanted to deepen knowledge about the biographies of some victims of Nazi experiments and at the same time expand knowledge about the post-war history of anatomy in Germany. In this way she became an expert on the history and ethics of anatomy in the Third Reich. Her work on Hans Elias is also located in this background. ( About Sabine Hildebrandt )
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Günter Baron: THE PROMETHEUS SCULPTURE BY HANS ELIAS IN THE STATE LIBRARY OF BERLIN , in: Bibliotheksmagazin. Messages from the Berlin and Munich State Libraries, Issue 1/2011, pp. 35–38
  6. ↑ It can be assumed that Baron meant the State University of Fine Arts in Berlin with this "state art college" .
  7. ↑ “The choice of studies mirrors the wide range of Elias' interests, as he saw himself throughout his life as foremost a teacher, and then also as a scientist and artist.” (Sabine Hildebrandt: The Anatomist Hans Elias )
  8. ↑ Felix Reich, the headmaster of this school was himself of Jewish descent but also of strong nationalistic conviction, and after Hitler's ascent to power demanded from his employees that they greet their students with a raised right arm and the word `` Heil '' without the``Hitler. '' Elias was the only teacher to refuse the command and was fired. This was the first but not the last time that Hans Elias denied compliance with directions from superiors that ran counter to his principles, denials that led to the loss of his respective jobs. (Sabine Hildebrandt: The Anatomist Hans Elias )
  9. ↑ Jenny Heymnann: Contributions to the design of the country school home , in: Lucie Schachne: Education for spiritual resistance: The Jewish country school home in Herrlingen 1933–1939 , dipa-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1986, ISBN 3-7638-0509-5 , p. 123
  10. ↑ On the history of Swiss aid organizations
  11. ↑ Anita Gertiser: Domestication of the moving image. From documentary film to teaching medium
  12. ↑ Anneliese Buchthal on ancestry.it
  13. ↑ Tullio Terni (1888-1946) was a brilliant anatomist in the School of Medicine of Padova, Italy
  14. ^ History of the International Educational Cinematographic Institute (IECI)
  15. ↑ About Hanan (Hans) Bytinski-Salz ( Memento of the original from December 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. and Hans Bytinski-Salz in the German biography @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / smnh.tau.ac.il
  16. ↑ Giuseppe Reverberi (* 1901 in Cannara - † 1988 in Rome) was a priest and biologist who was Professor of Biology at the Pontifical Lateran University at the time of Elias' stay in Rome . For his research, see: Fiorenza De Bernardi: Professor Giuseppe Reverberi and the ascidian school in Palermo
  17. ^ "Per aspera ad astra. […] Migration is disagreeable to me. I have seen enough already. And Darmstadt, the Odenwald and the Black Forest are entirely enough for me. "
  18. ↑ Today you belong to the Department of Organismic & Evolutionary Biology
  19. ↑ a b FROM THE BRANDEIS ARCHIVES: What was Middlesex University?
  20. ^ Obituary of the American Alpine Club for its longtime member Louis L. Bergmann
  21. ^ CDC History and Timeline
  22. ↑ "The papers made him famous, but they got him fired." Quoted from Sabine Hildebrandt: The Anatomist Hans Elias
  23. ↑ It does not belong to the University of Chicago , but is part of the private, non-profit Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science .
  24. ↑ a b Peter R. Mouton: History of Modern Stereology ( Memento of the original from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / ibro.info
  25. ↑ Homepage of the UCSF Medical Center
  26. ^ Homepage of the City College of San Francisco
  27. ^ Heinrich von Hayek (1900–1969), Austrian anatomist and university professor.
  28. ^ "And even though I live in the most beautiful town of the Northern hemisphere (San Francisco) in a house on a mountain with an unbelievably grandiose view, I feel drawn towards the home country [original: Heimat] all the time." I have interesting work here, dear colleagues, co-workers and students. Even so, this here is exile [original: the stranger]. Only Odenwald and Black Forest are home country. ”This quote was in German, it was translated into English by Sabine Hildebrandt. The inserts in square brackets also come from her. (Sabine Hildebrandt: The Anatomist Hans Elias )
personal data
SURNAME Elias, Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American scientist and artist
DATE OF BIRTH June 28, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH April 11, 1985
Place of death San Francisco