Henry Heinemann

The house at Große Bäckerstraße 23 in Lüneburg - this is where Heinemann grew up. Today (2019) there is a Rossmann branch there on the ground floor .

Henry Joseph Heinemann (born November 2, 1883 in Lüneburg , † December 24, 1958 in Amsterdam ) was a German - Dutch human medicine specialist . He made great contributions to tropical medicine in the colony of the Dutch East Indies and did research in the field of serology on diseases such as syphilis , tuberculosis and malaria . At the end of his life he was still working for the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen .

Life

Origin, education and private life

He was born as the youngest child into a wealthy extended family of Jewish faith with a total of 17 children, 15 of whom survived early childhood. His father, Marcus Heinemann (1819–1908) ran a bank and a cloth trade in Lüneburg with his brothers . In addition, he was head of the city's Jewish community and co-founder and important financier of the museum association . The mother Henriette Heinemann (nee Lindenberg ; 1836–1883) died of an infection just ten days after Henry was born. In the years that followed, his sister Martha Gella acted as a substitute mother and played a key role in raising the younger siblings. Right in the center of the old town, the family lived in a patrician house built in 1550 with the address Große Bäckerstraße 23. However, due to the large age difference of the children, not all family members lived there at the same time.

After being at the Johanneum Lüneburg his high school had taken off, he moved in April 1902 to Munich in order starting from the summer semester at the Ludwig-Maximilians University , a medical school record. He was a member of a beating corps and was not included in the matriculation lists during the summer semester of 1905. After his return he was able to complete his studies after the winter semester of 1906/1907. In June 1907, he put his thesis The spontaneous rupture of the heart before and was finally on August 20, 1908 doctorate .

On October 21, 1911, Henry Heinemann was baptized as a Protestant in Strasbourg . On Ceylon he met Dorothea "Dora" Betty Masemann (1890–1955), who worked there as a nurse. Born in Wöpse , Lower Saxony , she was the daughter of a Berlin doctor. Both got engaged at Easter 1915 in a prisoner of war camp on Ceylon and married on July 20 of the same year in the Wiesbach district of the Upper Bavarian community of Ainring . The couple had two children together, Martha Maria Louise (1916–1976) and Heinz Otto (1920–1977). There lay the center of life of the married couple - due to Henry's work - nearly 30 years on Sumatra , but their children they left teaching because of better education infrastructure in Central Europe, in the Netherlands and at the Institut auf dem Rosenberg in Swiss St. Gallen .

His family included, for example, his brother Otto Karl Erich, who founded the music label Okeh Records in the United States , as well as the philosopher Fritz Heinemann and the linguist Hermann Jacobsohn as his nephews. The unmarried sisters Martha Gella and Emilie took care of their widowed father and lived in the house until their own death in the mid-1930s. During the time of National Socialism , numerous members of the Heinemann family emigrated to the United States, to the League of Nations mandate for Palestine , the United Kingdom , Switzerland , the Netherlands and France, under the impression of the steadily intensifying anti-Semitism . However, some did not manage to escape in time: Henry lost two sisters (Anna Rebecca and Ida), two nieces, two nephews, four great nieces and one great nephew in the Holocaust . In addition, a great niece died in the course of the murders .

Professional beginnings

After completing his studies, Heinemann started his professional career at the medical faculty of the Strasbourg Kaiser Wilhelm University , where he was employed as a lecturer. At that time, his research focus was already on tropical medicine. There he also made the acquaintance of Albert Schweitzer , who - although almost nine years older than Heinemann and already having a doctorate in both philosophy and theology - was still studying medicine between 1905 and 1913.

Parallel to his university activities, Heinemann began his practical career as a tropical doctor, initially on the island of Ceylon, then part of the British Empire . In the early 1910s he worked at the Petoemboekan Central Hospital near Loeboekpakam on the east coast of the Sumatera Utara region in the Dutch East Indies . Gustav Baermann , who had once been Albert Neisser's assistant, had been the chief physician there since May 1906 .

Captivity and military service in the First World War

At the beginning of the First World War , Heinemann immediately gave up his job overseas in order to travel to Germany, but ended up as an "enemy alien" in British captivity on Ceylon and was interned in a camp in the south of the island, in Diyatalawa . There he was allowed to continue his medical activities, as contemporary witnesses reported:

"I would also like to especially mention Dr. Heinemann from Lüneburg, who - himself a prisoner of war - took care of the sick in a self-sacrificing manner and who treated all cases himself under the nominal supervision of an English doctor. He was an experienced and trustworthy help to the mothers during childbirth and also held a course on first aid in the event of an accident, which was well attended. His consulting room was in the middle of the camp and was identified by a red cross flag. "

However, the arrest of medical personnel violated the first Geneva Convention and his brother Robert, who was a judicial councilor and practiced as a lawyer in Lüneburg, was able to obtain his release in the course of 1915.

In the same year, Henry Heinemann volunteered for military service in Germany and was assigned to the 2nd Royal Bavarian Division as a medical officer . In the spring of 1916, he examined some of the crew members who had returned from British captivity of the SMS Emden , which had been attacked and destroyed in November 1914, and determined which were permanently unfit for service as a result of the wounds they had suffered. Later that year he took part in the Battle of Verdun , where he was wounded by shrapnel . He then served under Commander Jakob von Danner as a battalion doctor in the 18th Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment on the Eastern Front . Heinemann wrote a treatise on hygiene and health care at the front with the self-bound text War Diary of a Troop Doctor, was awarded the Iron Cross First Class and promoted several times. During the war and shortly afterwards he lived with his family in the Wiesbach district of the Upper Bavarian community of Ainring and in Herrsching am Ammersee .

Head physician for more than a decade and a half

Immediately after the end of the fighting, Heinemann resumed his work as a tropical doctor in Southeast Asia. At the turn of the year 1918/1919 he visited a prison camp in British India and treated patients there. He then returned to the Petoemboekan Central Hospital in Sumatra. In 1923 he switched to the hospital of the tobacco plantation Tandjong Morawa near Medan operated by the Senembah Maatschappij trading company . Heinemann held this position for almost 17 years. In addition, there was a polyclinic for needy breast patients in Medan from 1926, which he also directed.

In the 1920s in particular, he published numerous articles in specialist journals. Through his research, he developed a reputation as an excellent tropical medicine and was highly respected by the Dutch colonial power as well as by the local population and in his German homeland. Heinemann was in regular correspondence with Bernhard Nocht , the head of the Institute for Ship and Tropical Diseases in Hamburg , and was sometimes referred to in the German media as "Head of the Tropical Institute in Medan" - implying that his hospital is a branch of the Hamburg institute acted.

The family lived in a large colonial household in Sumatra. The hot summers were spent in Berastagi , where at an altitude of 1330 meters above sea level one could temporarily escape the tropical climate of the swampy coastal plain. Heinemann was one of the sponsors of the young tropical doctor and biometeorologist Werner Borchardt , whom he had met during a medical conference in Marburg. He invited him to study in the Dutch East Indies for one to two years. Borchardt died in early December 1930 - just a few weeks after his arrival - in an eruption of the Merapi volcano on Java . On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the discovery of the element radium , Heinemann gave a lecture on Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen in 1938 at the Oostkust van Sumatra Institute in Medan .

Last years

Heinemann inherited his parents' house in Lüneburg from his sisters in 1938, but was unable to take care of it due to the distance. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War , his wife traveled again to Lüneburg to settle a few matters. In August 1940 the house was Aryanized and the household was dissolved. Henry Heinemann received nothing from the already very small proceeds.

Excerpt from the 251st expatriation list of the German Reich published on August 30, 1941 with the names of Henry Heinemann, his wife and their children. Henry is listed under the Name Change Ordinance of 1938 with the additional first name Israel .

He continued to work for the Senembah Maatschappij until May 10, 1940. Immediately after the German Reich invaded the Netherlands at the beginning of the Western campaign in World War II , he was released and interned. After a few months, however, he was declared a “non-hostile German citizen” and released from custody. He then assisted some time in the mission tuberculosis clinic of Otto Paneth (1889-1975) in about 75 kilometers southwest of Medan located Batakdorf Kaban Djahé before it with its own practice in Berastagi settled. On August 27, 1941, Henry Heinemann, his wife and their two children were placed on the 251st expatriation list on the basis of the law on the revocation of naturalizations and the revocation of German citizenship and their German citizenship was declared forfeit. They were thus stateless . The decision was published on August 30 in the Deutsches Reichsanzeiger .

When Sumatra was occupied by the Japanese Empire in March 1942 , the new rulers put Heinemann and his wife under arrest in Berastagi . Barbed wire was not used, but it was not allowed to leave the place. Many of the other detained people lived in the villas of the Dutch who had fled. Within the camp, Henry Heinemann continued to run a doctor's practice and was allowed to "continue to work without being challenged."

After the end of the Second World War, the couple left Southeast Asia for good in 1947 and moved to the Netherlands. They now lived in a townhouse at Surinameplein 92, in the Westindische buurt district ( Amsterdam-West district ). From 1949 Henry Heinemann headed the Tropical Diseases Advisory Office, which was part of the Tropical Hygiene and Geographic Pathology Department of the Koninklijk Instituut voor de Tropen . In the same year he applied for a refund for his birthplace in Lüneburg, and in May 1950 he received Dutch citizenship. In 1952 a comparison was made with the new owner of the Lüneburg house. He was allowed to keep it, but had to compensate Heinemann with 100,000 D-Marks .

Dora died unexpectedly on August 20, 1955 during a visit to Lüneburg. In recognition of his medical services in the former colony, Henry Heinemann was appointed officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau by royal decree on July 18, 1958 . The award was presented to him by the Minister for Overseas Affairs Gerard Helders (1905-2013). At around the same time, however, he was forced to retire due to prostate cancer . Just a few months later, he died on Christmas Eve that year.

Publications

1910s

• With Gustav Baermann: The intracutaneous reaction in syphilis and framboesia . In: Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift, Volume 60, № 28, 1913, Pages 1537–1542.
• With Gustav Baermann: The treatment of amoebic dysentery with emetine . In: Münchener medical Wochenschrift, year 60, № 21 & 22, 1913, pages 1132 and 1210.
• Tuberculosis observations on Javanese contract workers . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Volume 54, № 2, 1914, pages 206–211.
• A case of malaria related metritis and perimetritis . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 23, № 6, 1919, Pages 111–112.

1920s

• Waarneming van een geval van Encephalits lethargica . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Volume 60, 1920, pages 556–557.
• About meningococcal sepsis . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Volume 60, 1920, pages 563-566.
• Bijdrage tot het doorvoeren van hygiënian maatregelen onder primitieve omstandigheden. Latrine hygiene . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, Volume 60, 1920, pages 819-837.
• Tuberculosis of the oral cavity . In: German monthly for dentistry, volume 39, issue 9, 1921, pages 257-266.
• With K. Wilke: Contribution to the treatment of blennorrhoea in adults . In: Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift, year 68, № 5, 1921, page 143.
• Investigations into the diagnostic value of the methods of Wassermann, Sachs-Georgi and Meinicke (DM) in malaria countries (the behavior of blood serum in malaria) . In: Münchener medical Wochenschrift, year 68, № 48, 1921, pages 1551–1553.
• Comparative blood tests using the methods of Wassermann , Sachs - Georgi and Meinicke (DM). I. Communication . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 25, № 3, 1921, Pages 80–98.
• Comparative blood tests using the methods of Wassermann, Sachs-Georgi and Meinicke (DM). II. Communication . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 25, № 11, 1921, Pages 323–334.
• Investigations into the practical value of Meinicke's turbidity reaction and the other serodiagnostic methods in the tropical country . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 26, № 12, 1922, Pages 369–379.
• The treatment of gonorrheic infection of the eye in Javanese and Chinese workers, especially with Caseosan . In: Clinical monthly sheets for ophthalmology, Volume 68, January / February, 1922, pages 163-165.
• Antibody studies in tuberculosis. The complement fixation reaction and its malaria defect . In: Münchener medical Wochenschrift, year 69, № 28, 1922, pages 1035-1037.
• On the question of the intensive serum treatment of tetanus . In: Klinische Wochenschrift , Volume 2, № 27, 1923, Page 1291.
• Treatment attempts with the tuberculosis vaccine Shiga . In: Contributions to the Clinic of Tuberculosis and Specific Tuberculosis Research, Volume 56, № 1, 1923, pages 20–40.
• Investigations into the cerebrospinal fluid. I. Communication: The cerebrospinal fluid of malaria sufferers . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 28, № 1, 1924, Pages 26–32.
• Investigations into the cerebrospinal fluid. II. Communication . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 28, № 5, 1924, Page 187.
• About treating leprosy with thymol . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 28, № 12, 1924, Page 523.
• Treatment of leprosy with intravenous injections of a thymol oil emulsion . In: Contributions to the Clinic of Tuberculosis and Specific Tuberculosis Research, Volume 59, № 4, 1924, Pages 619–621.
• For diagnosis and therapy of chronic amebiasis . In: Archives for Digestive Diseases, Volume 33, № 3/4, 1924, Pages 203-214.
• Over the treatment of leprosy with thymol . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, year 65, 1925, pages 66–69.
• Another contribution to the question of the importance of serological blood tests in tropical countries . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 29, № 4, 1925, Page 179.
• Investigations into the cerebrospinal fluid. III. Communication: Some questions of the practical syphilis and tuberculosis diagnosis in the tropical country . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 29, 1926, page 316.
• With Lotte Heinemann: Investigations into the cerebrospinal fluid . IV. Communication . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 30, № 1, 1926, page 61.
• A case of pylorospasm complicated by malaria . In: Zeitschrift für Kinderheilkunde , volume 42, № 5/6, 1926, pages 672–673.
• Contribution to the issue of tuberculosis in the tropics . In: Contributions to the Clinic of Tuberculosis and Specific Tuberculosis Research, Volume 64, № 5/6, 1926, pages 598–600.
• The "rapid hemolytic reaction to syphilis " by Kadisch . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 31, 1927, pages 552.
• Symmetrical skin manifestations in a Beri-Beri patient . In: Dermatologische Zeitschrift, Volume 50, № 2, 1927, pages 135–136.
• Enkele opmerkingen omtrent vergelijkende Physiologie en vergelijkende Pathologie . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 1927, pages 36-42.
• Report on two cases of salvarsan- resistant framboesia (with some remarks on the pathology of framboesia) . In: Archives for Dermatology and Syphilis , № 156, 1928, pages 577–582.
• Kort passed over de werkzaamheden of the polikliniek voor mighty borstlijders te Medan gedurende het eerste jaar van hair bestaan . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, 1929, page 19.

1930s

• On the question of the influence of malaria on the resistance of the organism to tuberculosis . In: Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift , No. 52, 1930, pages 2213-2214.
• With Werner Borchardt : Tuberculosis and chlorine metabolism in the tropical climate . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 35, 1931, Pages 567-577.
• Investigations with the pallida reaction . In: Dermatologische Wochenschrift, Volume 94, Issue 20, 1932, pages 680-689.
• About the practical usefulness of the Pallida reaction in the tropical doctor's group . In: Archives for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, Volume 36, 1932, pages 9-19.
• With Raden Pirngadi: Failure of the polikliniek voor befoeftige borstlijders te Medan over het jaar 1929–1930 . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, year 73, 1933, pages 161–169.
• Het hygienic work of Senembah-Maatschappij gedurende de laatste jaren . In: Het Geneeskundig Tijdschrift voor Nederlandsch-Indië, year 75, 1935, pages 524-533.

Remarks

1. ↑ In the birth register of the Jewish community of Lüneburg and also in the municipal registration card, he is consistently listed as "Henry Joseph". The variants "Henri Josef" and "Josef Henri" can also be found in Dutch publications in particular.
2. ↑ During the time of the German Empire there was no uniform German citizenship. Rather, Heinemann was initially of Prussian citizenship, later "Bavaria after the passport" was added.
3. ↑ Henry and Dorothea married in Wiesbach in July 1915; her daughter was also born there in May 1916. Several medical articles by Heinemann from 1919 indicate that the place of residence is "currently Herrsching am Ammersee".
4. ↑ The NV Senembah Maatschappij (Maatschappij = society) was temporarily the second largest plantation company in Sumatra and had its focus on tobacco cultivation. It was founded in 1889 with its seat in Amsterdam. In 1959, their possessions in now independent Indonesia were nationalized. The Senembah area, after which it is named, was located between the sultanates of Deli and Serdang .
5. ↑ The name of the plantation - Tandjong Morawa - is made up of the local name "Tandjong" and the Latinized name of Moravia .
6. ↑ "DM" stands for "third modification".
7. ↑ Lotte Heinemann (1892–1972) was the daughter of Robert Simon Heinemann and thus Henry's niece. She practiced as a doctor in Lüneburg.

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Anneke de Rudder: "Object provenance and family research - The example of the Heinemann descendants". Retrieved from provenienzforschung.info ( Museumsdorf Cloppenburg ) on June 14, 2019.
2. ^ Lieselotte Resch / Ladislaus Buzás: Directory of doctors and dissertations from the University of Ingolstadt - Landshut - Munich 1472–1970. Volume 2: Faculty of Medicine 1472–1915 . University Library Munich , Munich, 1976, page 410.
3. ↑ Gerhard Dannemann: Trapped at the other end of the world. Germans in World War I in East Asia and Australia. Books on Demand , 2018, ISBN 978-3-7460-4595-5 , page 97.
4. ^ "Henry Heinemann, noted physiologist, killed in accident". In: The New York Times , Nov. 25, 1977, p. 28.
5. ↑ Becki Cohn-Vargas: "The Heinemann Legacy". Retrieved from beckicohnvargas.com on June 14, 2019.
6. ↑ Katja Sabisch: The woman as a test subject. Medical experiments on humans in the 19th century using the example of syphilis research . Transcript Verlag , Bielefeld , 2007, ISBN 978-3-89942-836-0 , page 101.
7. ^ Christian Böhringer: During the war in Ceylon . In: Süddeutsche Monatshefte , Volume 13, 1916, pages 44-45.
8. ↑ Central sheet for the entire hygiene with inclusion of the bacteriology and immunity, Volume 25, Springer Verlag, 1931, page 746.
9. ^ "Hamburg scientists perished in the volcano of Merapi?" In: Hamburgischer Correspondent , № 593, December 20, 1930.
10. ↑ Frederik Jacobus Johannes Dootjes: Oostkust van Sumatran Instituut 1916 to 1941 . Brill , Leiden (1941), 110.
11. ↑ Kroniek . Oostkust van Sumatra-Instituut, 1941, page 96.
12. ↑ Dietlind Klappert: “Caught in Paradise. A childhood behind barbed wire in Indonesia from 1938–1945 ”. Retrieved from gaebler.info (Christoph Gäbler's homepage with genealogical information) on June 14, 2019.
13. ↑ Handelingen of the Staten-Generaal Bijlagen 1949–1950 . Retrieved from resolver.kb.nl ( Royal Library of the Netherlands ) on June 14, 2019.
14. ↑ "Kort en bondig". In: Haarlems Dagblad , Volume 73, Number 22, August 5, 1958, Page 4.