Helmut Vester

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Helmut Vester (born March 3, 1913 in Hanau ; † December 13, 2001 ) was a German pharmacist , pharmacy historian and founder and head of the Vesters archive for the history of the German pharmacy.

Life

childhood and education

Hans Helmut Bruno Vester was born in Hanau as the son of Otto (1878–1946) and Maria Susanne Vester (1888–1974).

Helmut Vester lived with his family in Hanau until 1919 , where his father owned the Engel pharmacy from 1911 to 1919 . Since he then acquired the Löwen pharmacy in Düsseldorf , he moved there. In 1932 Helmut Vester graduated from the Rethel-Reform-Real-Gymnasium.

After his school days he actually wanted to become a sculptor, but his father did not consider the artist profession to be serious enough and so he began studying botany in Munich . After six months, however, he returned to Düsseldorf to begin the pharmaceutical internship in his father's pharmacy, which he successfully completed in 1934 with the pre-examination. He then studied pharmacy for two years in Bonn , where he passed the state examination on November 12, 1936. He received his license to practice medicine and the associated professional license on July 21, 1938. In 1937 he married Gisela Breuckmann, whose family was also firmly interwoven in the pharmacy business.

In the winter semester of 1936 he resumed the aborted study of botany in Munich and also worked there at the university's state botanical institutes. He did his doctorate with Karl Suessenguth on the subject of "The areas and area types of angiosperm families".

working time

During the Second World War Vester served in the army and achieved the rank of pharmacist . In August 1945 Vester was released after a short English-Canadian imprisonment and returned to Düsseldorf, where he found the Löwen-Apotheke completely destroyed.

He took over the pharmacy on January 1, 1946 on lease from his father and brought it back to the market with over 20 employees. He led her as a “reconstruction leaseholder” for his mother, who through the death of her husband became the heir to the property and was entitled to use the pharmacy license. The British military government approved the Löwen-Apotheke as the first pharmacy in Düsseldorf on September 12, 1946 to reopen. In 1948 he received permission in the form of a personal license to continue running the pharmacy in his own name. The Löwen-Apotheke then also received a homeopathic department and a medical metabolism testing laboratory.

He also managed to revive the Herbaletta production “Pharmaceutical Products Pharmacist Carl Wilberz”. This was an amalgamation of several pharmacists with a larger production of medicines, which had been founded by his father and the pharmacist Carl Wilberz in order to prove a stronger position in relation to the industry. He also opened the wholesale "Sanitaria. Health center for mother and child ”, which sold sanitary, hygienic, dietetic, medical and other pharmaceutical articles.

In 1949 he was awarded the Urban Medal of the Hamburg Regional Group of the Society for the History of Pharmacy.

In 1951 Gisela Breuckmann and Helmut Vester's daughter Swantje was born.

In 1988 Vester was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon for his services to the history of pharmacy .

Vester's son Svenjörg took over the Düssel pharmacy on Karlplatz in 1974. The Löwen-Apotheke, which Helmut Vester leased on when he retired in 1981, was sold in 1984. It no longer exists.

power

Vester's interest in pharmaceutical history was awakened by Fritz Ferchl (1892–1953). In 1937 he founded the “Vesters Archive ”, in which he collected and organized archives and documents relating to the history of pharmaceuticals. In the beginning it was a question of image material, later writings and objects were added.

In a bombing raid on Düsseldorf the things he had collected up to that point were lost and he began to replace them in 1946, bringing together numerous cimillaries , old tools and utensils, a collection of medals and a pharmacognostic cabinet. To this end, he created the “Central Pharmaceutical Register” as a reference work for all key words relevant to the history of pharmacy . For this purpose, Vester went through reference works and journal volumes in order to then note the relevant keywords on index cards. Initially this was done by hand, but later he photocopied the texts accordingly on the index cards.

He also conducted a questionnaire campaign to document the history of all German pharmacists and pharmacies. The Leipzig pharmacist Güntzel-Lingner began such a survey as early as 1923/25, but was unable to evaluate the answers sent to him and left them to Vester. To complete this, he hired a photographer who traveled across the country to take photos of pharmacies.

In addition, Vester collected literature on the history of pharmacy and founded the “Natural Science Buchantiquariat Dr. Helmut Vester ”, whose rooms became too small for the large inventory, so that some of the books were then auctioned off again. However, this did not happen without Vester having them filmed in full so that the content was saved for his archive. During this time, his archive moved into Kalkum Castle , a branch of the North Rhine-Westphalian Main State Archive in Düsseldorf . He conducted his collecting activities without official means. In 1956, the project had reached such proportions that it could no longer be housed in the Löwen pharmacy, but was moved to the family's private home in Pappelhof in Neuss. In 1957, the patent registration of the “Vesters Archive, Institute for the History of Pharmacy (Pharmacy History Institute Dr. Helmut Vester)” followed, which was now protected by name. In 1986 the “Museum pharmaceuticum. Pharmaceutical Museum Dr. Helmut Vester ”, in which the present collection was located, is registered as a trademark.

At the beginning of the 1990s, the main state archive needed the rooms of the Vesters archive itself, so that the Museum of Pharmacy and History of the University of Basel took over the collection on loan in 1991, initially limited to ten years. The pharmacognostic cabinet went to Bochum in the same year in the collection of the Ruhr University .

Until his death, Vester not only continued to deal with the central pharmacy index, but also with a new collection, his “ natural history cabinet ” and the medicines obtained from them . This collection then also went to Bochum.

literature

  • Steingiesser, Bastian: In memory of Dr. Helmut Vester, Düsseldorf. Obituary. In: Deutsche Apotheker Zeitung 142 (2002), no. 7, pp. 801-802.
  • Lischka, Marion: Vesters Archive: A universal documentation and collection on the history of pharmacy. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 1997. ISBN 3-88474-591-3

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Marion Lischka: Vesters archive: a universal documentation and collection on the history of pharmacy (=  medicine in the museum: [...], supplement . No. 1 ). 1st edition Klartext-Verl, Essen 1997, ISBN 978-3-88474-591-5 , p. 10 .
personal data
SURNAME Vester, Helmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacist, pharmacy historian
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Hanau
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 2001