Hans Ziemann

Hans Ziemann

Hans (Johannes) Ziemann (born July 5, 1865 in Berlin ; † December 3, 1939 there ) was a German tropical medicine specialist and head of the medical administration of the Cameroon colony .

Life

After graduating from high school in Celle, Ziemann studied at the Kaiser-Wilhelms-Akademie for military medical education in Berlin, where he was a member of the Corps Franconia , and received his doctorate in 1889 as Dr. med. and passed his medical state examination in July 1891.

As early as 1885 he did his service as a one-year volunteer in Infantry Regiment No. 77 . In 1890 he became a junior physician in the infantry regiment "Duke Friedrich Wilhelm von Braunschweig" (East Frisian) No. 78 . In 1890 he joined the medical officer corps of the Navy , became a naval senior assistant doctor in 1894, naval staff doctor in 1897, and in 1904 senior naval officer. In 1908 he joined the Imperial Protection Force for Cameroon as senior staff physician and received his retirement on December 20, 1912 with the statutory pension and permission to wear the previous uniform.

Hans Ziemann turned to tropical medicine studies early on. He gained his first experience as an assistant doctor on the gunboat SMS Hyäne at the West African station and in 1896 as a scholarship holder of the Medical Faculty of the University of Berlin on a six-month malaria expedition to Italy. In 1898/99 he was temporarily assigned to the Institute for Infectious Diseases at the University of Berlin, where he was able to deepen his studies. In 1899 he went to Duala as Albert Plehn's representative and took over the management of medical affairs in the Cameroon government. In 1903 he followed Plehn as medical advisor for the protected area. When he joined the Schutztruppe in 1908, Ziemann was also head of the civil and military medical services in Cameroon. His interest was not only in the field of human medicine. During an excursion to the Cameroon hinterland in November and December 1904, he researched the population and livestock issues in the region visited. In 1908 he submitted proposals to the administration to raise cattle breeding in Bakossi, which is important for supplying the coast . It achieved lasting significance in connection with the expropriation of the Duala and their displacement from their traditional living spaces on the Wouri . As early as 1900, Ziemann advocated racial segregation and the separation of residential areas into a European and an African settlement for reasons of hygiene, especially in view of the high malaria rate among the indigenous population. In 1910 he wrote a detailed report to justify the expropriation. Otherwise he also paid particular attention to the fight against malaria . Ziemann set new standards for malaria prophylaxis, organized the formation of medical columns for the renovation of residential areas in the heavily affected regions of the inland and campaigned for the establishment of a tropical institute in Duala under the direction of the medical officer.

After leaving colonial service, Ziemann returned to Berlin in 1912 and worked on his habilitation thesis . As early as 1906 he had been appointed adjunct professor . The Habilitation took place in 1913. He has been a lecturer at the University of Berlin and took over as General senior physician and consultant hygienist in Asia Minor, Syria and Palestine at the First World War in part. After the war he was a specialist at the main supply offices in Berlin and Brandenburg, in 1923 Associate Professor for Tropical Pathology and Hematology at the University of Berlin and co-founder of the Institute for Tropical Medicine there. His research focus was on parasitology and infectious diseases (malaria, blackwater fever) and tropical pathology and hygiene. Among other things, Ziemann discovered the malaria pathogen Plasmodium vivax and was the first to describe filarial muscle abscesses in 1905.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933, he received a teaching position as a part-time lecturer at the Department of Oriental Languages . In 1938 he became head of the tropical medicine-parasitological department of the Military Medical Academy in Berlin, which he co-founded. At that time he found recognition not only in Germany, but also in other European countries. He used his connections to campaign emphatically for the lifting of the restrictions on the work of German doctors in the former colonies.

Awards

Ziemann was the recipient of the Bernhard Nocht Medal for services to tropical hygiene, an honorary member of the German, English, French and Italian tropical medicine societies and an honorary member of the Société de Pathologie Exotique (1937).

Fonts

• Fish processing and meat supply on the west coast of Africa . In: Koloniale Monatsblätter , Vol. 15, 1913, pp. 113–121.
• About the importance of tuberculosis among primitive peoples . In: Koloniale Monatsblätter , Vol. 15, 1913, pp. 546–556.

literature

• Florian Hoffmann: The imperial protection force and their officer corps . Cuvillier, Göttingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-86727-473-9 , ( Occupation and military administration in Cameroon. Establishment and institutionalization of the colonial monopoly of violence . 2), pp. 248–252.

Web links

Wikisource: Hans Ziemann  - Sources and full texts