Helmuth Bohnenkamp

Helmuth Bohnenkamp , in literature also often Helmut Bohnenkamp (born April 26, 1892 in Windischholzhausen , † April 27, 1973 in Oldenburg (Oldb) ) was a German internist and university professor .

Life

Helmuth Bohnenkamp was the son of pastor Heinrich Bohnenkamp and his wife Amanda, née Vahrenkamp. After graduating from high school in Erfurt , he studied medicine . He took part in the First World War and suffered a serious head injury. After the end of the war he married Hildegard, née Stübgen, in 1919. The couple had ten children. After completing his studies he was awarded a Dr. med. doctorate and he received his license to practice medicine in 1919 . At the University of Freiburg he became Ludwig Aschoff's assistant in the early 1920s and also worked for Johannes von Kries . He then moved to the University of Heidelberg , where he received his internistic and neurological specialist training under Ludolf von Krehl and Viktor von Weizsäcker . He completed his habilitation in internal medicine in Heidelberg in 1926. The private lecturer taught from the beginning of October 1926 as an associate professor for physical therapy and pathological physiology at the University of Würzburg . He also became senior physician at the Medical University Clinic in Würzburg.

In October 1933 he followed Fritz Voit to the internist chair at the University of Giessen and led the medical clinic there as director. At the beginning of October 1934, Bohnenkamp accepted the chair for internal medicine and neurology at the University of Freiburg. He demanded that the Freiburg Medical University Clinic, of which he became director, be renamed "Medical and Mental Clinic". This attempt ultimately failed due to the resistance of his faculty colleagues and led in particular to disputes over competence with Kurt Beringer , who headed the psychiatric and mental hospital of the university.

On May 1, 1937, Bohnenkamp became a member of the NSDAP ( membership number 4,353,772). It also belonged to the NSV , the NS Lecturer Association and the Reich Colonial Association .

At the time of National Socialism , his research and publication focus was on circulatory pathology, metabolism, neurology and tissue diseases. He also devoted himself to “performance medicine under extreme military conditions”. At Bohnenkamp's instigation, Dietrich Jahn, who had been working in Munich until then, came to the Medical University Clinic in Freiburg, where he worked as senior physician and associate professor. Jahn received from the Reich Aviation Ministry "a Zeuzem'sche vacuum chamber for the generation of artificial climates of any kind for the pilot investigations" worth 25,000 Reichsmarks , which was in the basement of the clinic and could also be used for civil research. According to contemporary witnesses, negative pressure tests were carried out with students and members of student companies on a voluntary basis.

During the Second World War he was a consultant internist in the army , most recently with the rank of senior staff doctor . In 1944 at the latest, he took over a medical research assignment at the Medical University Clinic Freiburg, which was subject to confidentiality (development of an alternating pressure chamber) for the high command of the Air Force , the chief of the Air Force's medical services and the research management of the Reich Aviation Ministry.

After the end of the war, Bohnenkamp was interned for several months in May 1945 and released from the university office. The background to Bohnenkamp's dismissal was not primarily his NSDAP membership, but rather his less than conciliatory appearance as a clinic director and consultant internist for the army. The French military administration ultimately saw Bohnenkamp as "politically bad repute", who was a "militarist" and a National Socialist. His erratic and irritable demeanor was attributed to the head injury he suffered in the First World War and the opinion formed in Freiburg that “his clinic was the strongest party exponent”. He is said to have examined war-injured or wounded soldiers "unbearably hard" for their suitability for war. The director of the Emmendingen Sanatorium, Artur Kuhn, also commented negatively on Bohnenkamp: “In 1944, - it may have been at the beginning of this year - Prof. Bohnenkamp came, who was then a consultant internist in the Emmendingen reserve hospital. He asked me to put some mentally ill people at his disposal for medical experiments. ”Bohnenkamp vehemently opposed the accusations and wrote counter-statements. There were numerous affidavits that either incriminated or exonerated him. Ultimately, he was unable to return to university, and in 1946 Ludwig Heilmeyer succeeded him to the internist professorship at the University of Freiburg before a final clarification . Until 1968 he argued with the Freiburg Medical Faculty about proper retirement , most recently in court. In March 1969 he was finally retired. According to Hans-Georg Hofer, “the most controversial, but in any case the longest case of a professor who was dismissed from the Medical Faculty in 1945 [...] was that of Helmuth Bohnenkamp”.

After his denazification he headed the internal department at the Evangelical Hospital in Oldenburg from 1950 to 1961. Then he settled down as a general practitioner in internal medicine. In addition, he temporarily carried out research assignments for the German Navy at the Submarine and Diving Physiological Institute in Kronshagen . Bohnenkamp was a member of various medical societies and author of numerous specialist publications. According to the entry in the Brockhaus , he examined in particular "the energetics and thermodynamics of the heart, especially the mode of action of the heart nerves, and the basic laws of energy metabolism".

literature

• Eduard Seidler : The medical faculty of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg im Breisgau: Basics and developments , Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg 1993, ISBN 978-3-662-06666-9 .
• Hans-Georg Hofer : Between cleaning and reintegration: Freiburg University Medicine after 1945 . In: Sigrid Oehler-Klein / Volker Roelcke (ed.) With the collaboration of Kornelia Grundmann and Sabine Schleiermacher: Politics of the past in university medicine after 1945. Institutional and individual strategies in dealing with National Socialism , Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3 -515-09015-5 , p. 264ff.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Who is who? Volume 17, Schmidt-Römhild, 1971, p. 102
2. ↑ Eduard Seidler: The Medical Faculty of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau: Fundamentals and developments , Berlin-Heidelberg 1993, p. 341
3. ↑ Die Umschau , Volume 30, H. Bechhold., 1926, p. 751
4. ^ German Society for Circulatory Research: Negotiations of the German Society for Circulatory Research , Volumes 5–6, T. Steinkopff, 1932, p. 193
5. ↑ Sigrid Oehler-Klein (Ed.): The Medical Faculty of the University of Gießen during National Socialism and in the post-war period. People and institutions, upheavals and continuities (= The Medical Faculty of the University of Giessen , Volume 2). Steiner, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-515-09043-8 , p. 614
6. ^ Eduard Seidler: The Medical Faculty of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau: Fundamentals and Developments , Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg 1993, p. 362
7. ↑ ^{a b c} indexing volume for the microfiche edition: With an introduction by Angelika Ebbinghaus on the history of the process and short biographies of those involved in the process . S. 82. Karsten Linne (Ed.): The Nuremberg Medical Process 1946/47. Verbal transcripts, prosecution and defense material, sources on the environment. Published by Klaus Dörner , German edition, microfiche edition, Munich 1999 on behalf of the Hamburg Foundation for Social History of the 20th Century
8. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 62
9. ^ ^{A b} Eduard Seidler: The Medical Faculty of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau: Fundamentals and Developments , Berlin-Heidelberg 1993, p. 357
10. ↑ Timo Baumann: The German Society for Circulatory Research in National Socialism 1933–1945 , Springer, 2017, s. 214
11. ↑ ^{a b c d} Eduard Seidler : The Medical Faculty of the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau: Fundamentals and Developments , Springer, Berlin-Heidelberg 1993, p. 394
12. ↑ Quoted from: Ernst Klee : Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 62
13. ^ Hans-Georg Hofer: Between cleaning and reintegration: The Freiburg University Medicine after 1945 . In: Sigrid Oehler-Klein / Volker Roelcke (ed.) With the collaboration of Kornelia Grundmann and Sabine Schleiermacher: Politics of the past in university medicine after 1945. Institutional and individual strategies in dealing with National Socialism , Franz Steiner Verlag Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3 -515-09015-5 , p. 264
14. ↑ Brockhaus: the encyclopedia in twenty-four volumes , FA Brockhaus 1996, p. 515