Heinrich Pette

Heinrich Pette (born November 23, 1887 in Eickel ; † October 2, 1964 in Meran ) was a German doctor, pioneering neurologist and founder of the Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology , in Hamburg, which was later named after him .

childhood and education

Heinrich Pette was born on November 23, 1887. After school in Gelsenkirchen (school leaving certificate 1907), he studied medicine in Marburg, Munich, Berlin and Kiel. During his studies he became a member of AMV Fridericiana Marburg and AMV Nordmark Hamburg . In Kiel he was in 1912 with a recording made in the Institute of Pathology Dissertation "About aneurysms of the cerebellar arteries" doctorate . In 1913 he received his license to practice medicine . He was called up as a marine assistant physician (MAssA) in 1914 shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. On December 31, 1918, he was released from the reserve as a naval staff doctor (MStA).

job

In 1919 Pette worked as a visiting doctor, from 1920 as the first assistant in the neurological clinic of Professor Max Nonne in the Hamburg-Eppendorf hospital . In 1922 he became a lecturer in neurology and in 1927 a professor. In 1929, Pette moved to the newly founded municipal mental hospital in Magdeburg as director. A year and a half later he returned to Hamburg as head of the neurological department at the St. Georg General Hospital .

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , he joined the NSDAP on May 1, 1933 . Pette also joined the NS-Ärztebund and the NS-Lehrerbund . On November 11, 1933, he was one of the signatories of the professors' commitment to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist state at German universities . In July 1934 he took over from his teacher Max Nonne as a scheduled professor for neurology in Hamburg . In 1935 he emphasized in his inaugural lecture: “One of the most urgent tasks of a neurological clinic is the further development of a social hygiene aimed at selection”. On October 23, 1939, Pette was called up for military service as a marine medical officer in the reserve. In addition to his work as director of the Neurological University Clinic in Eppendorfer Hospital, he worked as a consulting neurologist for the Navy until the end of the war. From 1941 he was also deputy chairman of the Society of German Psychologists and Psychiatrists .

In 1947 he was given another chair . In 1953 he became chairman of the German Society for Neurology, which he re-founded . However, he was also connected to internal medicine , so that in 1955 he was also elected President of the German Society for Internal Medicine . He headed the neurological clinic at Eppendorfer Hospital until his retirement in 1958.

Heinrich Pette died on October 2, 1964 while traveling to give a lecture at a European symposium in Warsaw.

Act

Even in his habilitation thesis , Pette dealt with encephalitis , a topic that he took up again and again, paying special attention to multiple sclerosis and demyelinating encephalomyeltitis . At almost 70 years of age, he set up a poliomyelitis research institute in Hamburg that bears his name today: the Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology .

In his commemorative publication “Heinrich Pette - a model”, his student Robert Charles Behrend wrote (1982): “Pette's creative period spanned almost 40 years. These are precisely the four decades in which neurology developed from a science originally based only on clinical and histological findings with the help of other disciplines into a more or less tight network of neurological sciences. During these four decades, Pette has contributed like no other neurologist before him to the control of this development with all available registers of his humanistic personality. "

The scientific work of Heinrich Pette is documented in approx. 245 publications in scientific journals, book and manual articles, conference reports and a monograph "The acute inflammatory diseases of the nervous system" (Georg Thieme, Leipzig 1942). It covers almost all branches of neurology with a focus on work on the inflammatory and infectious diseases of the nervous system, in particular multiple sclerosis and neuroviral diseases. A detailed appraisal of this work can be found in Bauer (1965) and Behrend (1982).

Edith Pette

His future wife Edith Graetz (wedding on March 25, 1926 in Berlin) met Pette in 1924 as a volunteer assistant at Nonnes Klinik in Hamburg.

Edith Graetz, born on July 3, 1897 in Berlin, studied medicine in Berlin, Jena, Heidelberg and Munich with a license to practice medicine and doctorate in 1924. After moving to Hamburg and the birth of her four children, she became a specialist in nerve disorders in 1931. Since 1947 Heinrich and Edith Pette have also worked closely together scientifically, as a number of joint publications show. From 1950 Edith Pette was involved in the management of the "Institute for Research into Spinal Polio", from 1955 until her retirement in 1970 as a managing director. In 1966 she received an honorary professorship from the University of Hamburg. Edith Pette died on June 2, 1972.

Heinrich Pette Institute

The founding of "his" research institute was made possible by a donation from the Hamburg businessman Philipp F. Reemtsma . After the death of his son, who was suffering from polio, he bequeathed one million RM to Pette, who had treated the son, in 1943 for research in the field of spinal palsy. Work began in 1948. In 1951, part of the Reemtsmaschen donation was used to build an animal house on the UKE site for experimental virological studies on monkeys. In 1952, a laboratory building financed by the Hamburg state with departments for neuropathology , virology , immunology and biochemistry was built next to the animal house . A special concern was the collaboration between the employees of the clinic and the scientists of the institute, who are mainly involved in basic research. The institute was named "Foundation for Research into Spinal Polio and Multiple Sclerosis". After his death, it was renamed the "Heinrich Pette Institute for Experimental Virology and Immunology". Since 2011 the institute has been called the "Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology".

Awards

Heinrich Pette was awarded the Great Federal Cross of Merit in 1957 , the Wilhelm Erb Memorial Coin (1939), the Max Nun Memorial Coin (1961) and the Medal for Art and Science of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg (1963). From 1940 he was a member and for many years a senator of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina in Halle, honorary member and honorary president of the German Society for Neurology and the German Society for Neurosurgery as well as an honorary member of the German Society for Internal Medicine and the American Neurological Association. In 1943 Pette was made an honorary member of the Society of Bulgarian Neurologists and Psychiatrists in Sofia.

The German Society for Neurology awards the Heinrich Pette Prize endowed with 10,000 euros (as of 2017).

The Heinrich Pette Institute, Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology, annually honors an outstanding scientist of high international standing for research achievements with the "Heinrich Pette Lecture".

literature

• H. Bauer: Heinrich Pette in memory. In: German journal for neurology . 187, 1965, pp. 97-121.
• H. Bauer: Heinrich Pette - pioneer of a modern concept of research on encephalomyelitis. In: Journal of Neuroimmunology. 20, 1988, pp. 317-321.
• R. Ch. Behrend: Heinrich Pette - a model. In: 75 Years of the German Society for Neurology, 1907–1982. Hansisches Verlagkontor H. Scheffler, Lübeck 1982.

Web links

• Literature by and about Heinrich Pette in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f} Ernst Klee : The personal dictionary for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. 2nd, updated edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-596-16048-0 , p. 457.
2. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book and Vademecum. Ludwigshafen am Rhein 1959, p. 95.
3. ^ Quotation from Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich . Fischer Paperback, 2005, p. 457.
4. ↑ A. Sturm: Opening address by the chairman: Monday, April 26, 1965. In: B. Schlegel (Ed.): Negotiations of the German Society for Internal Medicine: Seventy-first Congress held in Wiesbaden from April 26th to April 29th, 1965. Volume 71, Springer, Berlin 1965, p. 3.
5. ↑ Newsletter of the German Science and Technology, organ of the Reich Research Council (Hrsg.): Research and progress . Staff news. German science and abroad. tape 19, 23/24 , 1943, pp. 252 .