Ingeborg Rapoport

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Ingeborg Rapoport (1985)

Ingeborg "Inge" Syllm-Rapoport (born September 2, 1912 in Kribi , Cameroon ; died March 23, 2017 in Berlin ) was a German doctor and professor of paediatrics at the Charité Children's Hospital in East Berlin and from 1969 to 1973 owner of the first European chair for neonatology . Beyond the scientific community in the German Democratic Republic , she was one of the most renowned paediatricians of her time. She was married to the biochemist Samuel Mitja Rapoport .

Her subsequent doctorate by the University of Hamburg at the age of 102 caused an international stir , after 77 years earlier this university had refused to take part in the oral examination of the Rigorosum as a “Jewish half-breed” .

biography

live in Germany

Ingeborg A. Rapoport, b. Syllm, was born in 1912 as the daughter of the Hamburg merchant Paul Friedrich Syllm (Sillem) and the Jewish concert pianist Maria Feibes (September 23, 1891 in Aachen  - September 15, 1980 in Madison , Wisconsin ) in Kribi in what is now Cameroon , which at the time was a German colony was. She was raised Protestant .

Shortly after their birth, the family returned to Germany and settled in Hamburg . In 1928 the parents divorced. Maria Feibes worked as a respected piano teacher in order to take care of her mother and her two children Inge and Hellwig (1909-2004), because Paul Syllm was unable to support his family after he had used up his wife's fortune and she had spent several years had long cheated.

In September 1933 Maria Feibes converted to Judaism, her mother's religion, also to set an example against the political development in Germany. She lost her job as a music teacher at the Hans Hermanns Piano Academy in Hamburg in 1935 when she was expelled from the Reich Chamber of Music .

Ingeborg Rapoport visited the private Heilwig Lyceum in Hamburg. She felt isolated there and had to supplement her family income through tutoring. She completed her subsequent medical studies in 1937 with the state examination. The examination paper had to be done on examination paper with a yellow border, which marked her as a Jew. She then worked from 1937 to 1938 as an assistant doctor at the Israelite Hospital in Hamburg .

During this time she wrote her dissertation on the symptoms of paralysis caused by diphtheria under Rudolf Degkwitz . However, in 1937 the National Socialist university authorities in Germany refused her admission to the oral doctoral examination, and thus the doctorate , because she was classified as a “ first degree Jewish mixed race ” due to her Jewish grandparents on her mother's side . This revoked her university entrance qualification.

A total of 16 professors and private lecturers from the medical faculty were dismissed from their positions in Hamburg; of 52 Jewish students, only four were left in 1938.

"Second Life" in the United States

In September 1938, shortly before the pogrom night , she emigrated to the United States at the instigation of her mother, who followed her in January 1939 . Her state examination was not recognized in the USA, so she studied for two more years at the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia , which she could only afford because she had received a Hearst scholarship. Of the 48 medical schools she applied to, only two replied and invited her for an interview. The Columbia University had rejected because of their lack of means:

Forever I see the huge manager's room of the Dean of the Medical School, the oversized desk and the huge armchairs. He asked me to sit down and I promptly sank into the dark brown leather. Then he asked me a single question: “How much money do you have?” And when I answered “None”, he got up from his chair behind the desk and said politely and firmly: “Then we don't need to exchange another word .

In addition to her studies, she worked as a resident doctor in Brooklyn and Akron , Ohio until 1940, until she acquired the Medical Doctor in 1940 , a professional qualification that does not correspond to the German doctoral degree. She subsequently specialized in various institutions in the field of paediatrics . With this, Inge Rapoport, like only a few refugee Jewish doctors, had succeeded in finding professional success in the United States. At the University of Cincinnati she met Samuel Mitja Rapoport in 1944 . They married in 1946.

Rapoport, who later became a member of the Communist Party of the United States like her husband , was politically active in America against racial discrimination. Under the impression of racial segregation in the USA, she went from being a believing Christian to a believing communist, in her own words. She and her husband distributed the newspaper " The Worker " on weekends . The Cincinnati press accused the couple of increasingly subversive activities. Among other things, the allegation was made that her husband planned an attack on the Cincinnati water supply. His political views polarized his employees and professional colleagues. When the House Un-American Activities Committee started investigations against her and her husband during this time, the McCarthy era , they left the United States in 1950. During a congress in Switzerland in 1950, her husband had been informed by telegram that he was a target of the McCarthy Commission and he did not return to the United States. Heavily pregnant Inge Rapoport brought the children from the United States to Zurich in a night and fog action .

They first settled in Austria . As anti-Zionists , emigration to Israel was out of the question for both of them, although the Weizmann Institute in Israel had offered Mitja a job. The Federal Republic of Germany was also ruled out for both of them, since "too many members of brown ropes saved themselves over to the new state despite the collapse [...] and (had) already occupied important positions there again."

However, the University of Vienna also refused a professorship for Mitja, as the CIA intervened via a blacklist, according to Rapoport. The CIA had threatened to cut the university's US subsidies.

“Third Life” in the GDR

Ingeborg Rapoport (2nd from left) discusses with nurses at the children's clinic at the Cottbus district hospital, 1985.

In 1952 the family went to the German Democratic Republic , where Samuel Mitja Rapoport was offered a professorship at the Charité in Berlin . In the decades that followed, he became one of the most famous biochemists in the country. Ingeborg Rapoport initially worked as a senior physician at the Hufeland Hospital in Berlin-Buch , where she was recognized as a specialist in paediatrics in 1953 . She then worked in experimental research at the Institute for Biochemistry at the Humboldt University in Berlin , where she completed her habilitation in 1959 .

From 1959 until her retirement in 1973 she worked at the Charité Children's Clinic, including from 1960 as a lecturer. In 1964 she received her habilitation as a professor with a teaching position. In 1968 she became a full professor for pediatrics and in 1969 she held the first European chair for neonatology .

In the obituary of the Charité it says:

Prof. Rapoport was highly valued as a passionate researcher, committed pediatrician and teacher. At the same time, she was always a contentious reformer and a staunch socialist. [...] Until her retirement in 1973, Ingeborg Rapoport continued to develop her department in terms of content and structure with the establishment of a newborn intensive therapy ward and a research department (focus on hypoxia , bilirubin , surfactant ). This means that research in neonatology and pediatrics was also one of her merits. After her retirement, Prof. Rapoport continued to work scientifically into the eighties and was committed to promoting young talent.

In the obituary by her colleague Roland Wauer it says:

“In spite of all of her persistent socialist convictions, I experienced her as a woman who placed the personal qualities of her employees, such as honesty, medical commitment to research, and clinical and scientific willingness to perform, above political considerations. She was not resentful if you resisted her advertisements for an active implementation of her socialist ideals in the SED. "

Views on the GDR

Inge Rapoport was a member of the SED and defended the GDR in several interviews even after the fall of communism. In their opinion, the GDR was not an unjust state, nor was it an immoral state. She judged the critical portrayal of East Germany in the media and in research as defamation , also in relation to the crimes of the Stasi .

She was of the opinion that, despite the deficits, the GDR was superior to the Weimar Republic, the United States and the Federal Republic of Germany in terms of health care, social security and the educational system. In particular, she praised the health system for ensuring equal treatment for all regardless of social origin and wealth. Rapoport believed that modern society could learn from the GDR and said that it missed certain aspects of life in the GDR. It's the best company she's seen. In the future, the image of the GDR will differ significantly from today's:

"It was a time of learning and many initiatives for the continuous improvement of the health system, a time that I have never experienced before or later."

In the obituary for her husband in Biospektrum , her attitude was made even clearer:

“Inge and Mitja Rapoport always stood up for the GDR, which had become their adopted home, which for them was the only alternative to Germany, which had plunged the world into two wars and murdered more than six million members of their people. Both painfully felt the fall of the GDR as the end of their third life. "

However, she was also aware that she and her family were privileged in the GDR and that there were also downsides to life in the GDR, such as the discrimination against children from middle-class families. She saw her ideals as generally socialist. She hoped, she said, that one day there would be a state in which social justice would prevail and peace. “One who represents the ideals of the French Revolution. It doesn't necessarily have to be communist. "

She often emphasized that when the relationship between doctor and patient is shaped by money, the humanistic mandate of medicine is in danger.

Awards

On the occasion of their 100th birthday, the Charité and the Leibniz Society organized an academic ceremony in honor of Ingeborg and Samuel Mitja Rapoport in October 2012.

Recognition of her doctorate in 2015 after 77 years

The dean of the medical faculty of the University of Hamburg, Uwe Koch-Gromus, found out about her life story at the time of her 100th birthday and contacted the legal department of the university. "It was very important to me to do the little that can be made up for."

Contrary to the possibility of an examination-free recognition of a doctoral honoris causa , Rapoport attached great importance to taking the examination, however not on the level of knowledge at the time of her doctoral thesis, but on the entire history of diphtheria research up to the present.

In May 2015 Ingeborg Rapoport defended her doctoral thesis in a 45-minute examination interview in front of three professors from the University of Hamburg , almost 80 years after it was completed and 77 years after it was rejected due to her Jewish origin. The rescheduled examination was also possible because her doctoral supervisor Rudolf Degkwitz issued her a letter in 1938 confirming that he had accepted her doctoral thesis, but could not admit her to a doctorate due to the applicable laws.

On June 9, 2015, she received the doctoral certificate with the overall grade magna cum laude . At 102, she was the oldest person to have completed a doctorate . “Not only considering her old age, she was simply brilliant. We were hugely impressed by her intellectual alertness and speechless by her expertise. Also in the field of modern medicine. That was just unbelievable ”, commented Uwe Koch-Gromus on the examination performance.

Ingeborg Rapoport expressed the following motive for your efforts to gain late recognition: "I did my doctorate for the victims".

Children's book author

Inge Rapoport published a children's book shortly before her death in 2017: Donkey Ears. A children's book is crying . It was illustrated by Gertrud Zucker .

Documentation on the life of the Rapoports

The life of the Rapoport family is the subject of the one-hour television documentary "The Rapoports - Our Three Lives" by Sissi Hüetlin and Britta Wauer . It was first broadcast on ARTE in 2004 and was awarded the Grimme Prize in 2005. The film produced for their memoir, Our Three Lives , traces the life of the Rapoport couple through the various political systems.

The jury's reasoning for the award of the Grimme Prize states:

"... Lovingly and cautiously, he lets you feel the ecstatic dowry of life and circumstances - the feelings and moods, the coincidences and opportunities, the missed and not missed. Virtuoso he interweaves the historical material with the present, the judgments of contemporary witnesses and children with the self-portrait of the Rapoports. Unobtrusively and sensitively, he releases the charm of his protagonists, not only reproduces the visible, but also makes visible ... "

Private

Ingeborg and Samuel Mitja Rapoport's marriage resulted in four children. Tom Rapoport became a biochemist and has been a professor at Harvard University since 1995 , Michael Rapoport taught as a mathematician at the University of Bonn . Her daughter Susan works as a pediatrician in Berlin, her daughter Lisa, who was born almost blind shortly after fleeing America, works as a pediatric nurse at the Charité despite her disability.

Her brother Hellwig stayed in Hamburg all his life.

Works (selection)

  • Research in Perinatal Medicine: An Interdisciplinary Approach with Special Emphasis on Epidemiology, Hypoxia and Infections. Berlin 1986 (as co-editor)
  • My first three lives: memories. Autobiography. Edition Ost, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-929161-56-7 , 2nd edition: Nora, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-935445-81-4 .
  • with Anita Rausch, Lothar Rohland, Horst Spaar (eds.): The health system of the GDR - a historical balance sheet for future health policy. Trafo, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-89626-269-6 (Scientific workshop of the interest group medicine and society).

literature

  • Samuel Mitja Rapoport and Ingeborg Rapoport (-Syllm): Demonstrated faithfulness. In: Lothar Jaenicke: Profiles der Zellbiologie. 36 portraits from German history. Hirzel, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 3-7776-1693-1 , pp. 273-288
  • Medicine - a life science . For the 100th birthday of the research couple Ingeborg and Mitja Rapoport . With contributions by Werner Binus, Rita Gürtler, Herbert Hörz, Gisela Jacobasch, Burkhard Schneeweiß, Claus Wagenknecht. Pankower lectures, volume 174. Ed. "Helle Panke" e. V. - Rosa Luxembourg Foundation Berlin 2013, DNB 1033006750 ( excerpt )
  • Gabriele Goettle : CVs , in taz , December 28, 2015, p. 15 f. (detailed conversation with R.)
  • Bettina Frankenbach: Maria Syllm , in: Lexicon of Persecuted Musicians of the Nazi Era, Claudia Maurer Zenck, Peter Petersen (ed.), Hamburg: Universität Hamburg, 2009

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Object metadata @ LexM. In: uni-hamburg.de. Retrieved March 31, 2017 .
  2. ^ Sarah Levy: National Socialism: "A 40-year silence in Eppendorf". In: The time . June 9, 2015, accessed March 30, 2017 .
  3. ↑ a b c Wiebke Bromberg: Experts are speechless: Ingeborg Rapoport: Doctoral examination with 102! In: MOPO.de. May 15, 2015, accessed March 30, 2017 .
  4. ^ Gabriele Goettle: CVs . In: the daily newspaper . ( taz.de [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
  5. ↑ a b newspaper vum Lëtzebuerger Vollek - Magna cum laude. In: zlv.lu. Retrieved March 30, 2017 .
  6. ^ Gabriele Goettle: CVs. In: The daily newspaper . Retrieved March 31, 2017 .
  7. ^ Frank Junghänel: Ingeborg Rapoport: Pediatrician receives doctorate at the age of 102 . In: Berliner Zeitung . ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
  8. ^ A b Wolfgang Hachtel: As a Wessi in the GDR: Travel and Encounters . Books on Demand, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8448-6714-5 , pp. 64 ( google.de [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
  9. ↑ http://www.biospektrum.de/blatt/d_bs_pdf&_id=934368
  10. ^ STANDARD Verlagsgesellschaft mb H .: Pediatrician Ingeborg Rapoport has died . In: derStandard.at . ( derstandard.at [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Hachtel: As a Wessi in the GDR: Travel and Encounters . Books on Demand, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8448-6714-5 ( google.de [accessed March 31, 2017]).
  12. ↑ http://www.klahrgesellschaft.at/Mitteilungen/Oberkofler_3_08.pdf
  13. ↑ Werner Binus, Rita Gürtler, Herbert Hörz, Gisela Jacobasch, Burkhard Schneeweiß, Claus Wagenknecht: For the 100th birthday of the researcher couple Ingeborg and Mitja Rapoport. In: Issue 174: Medicine - a life science. Retrieved March 30, 2017 .
  14. ^ Gabriele Goettle: CVs . In: the daily newspaper . ( taz.de [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
  15. ^ BBB Management GmbH Campus Berlin-Buch. In: bbb-berlin.de. Retrieved March 31, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Roland R. Wauer : In memory of Ingeborg Rapoport , in: Berliner Ärzte, Heft 6/2017, p. 31, pdf [1]
  17. ↑ Ulrike Scheffer: 102-year-old doctor from Berlin-Pankow: Living with history. In: Der Tagesspiegel . June 9, 2015, accessed March 31, 2017 .
  18. ^ A b Walter Laqueur , "World Revolution, or the Dream That Failed" (pp. 186-187), Generation Exodus , IB Tauris, 2003, ISBN 978-0-85771-287-5
  19. ↑ a b "I still want to live". In: Der Tagesspiegel . Retrieved March 31, 2017 .
  20. ^ Born in the West, longing to be back in the GDR. In: Reuters . Retrieved March 31, 2013 .
  21. ^ Ingeborg Rapoport - PhD at the age of 102. In: RotFuchs. Retrieved March 30, 2017 .
  22. ↑ http://www.biospektrum.de/blatt/d_bs_pdf&_id=934368
  23. ^ STANDARD Verlagsgesellschaft mb H .: Pediatrician Ingeborg Rapoport has died . In: derStandard.at . ( derstandard.at [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
  24. ^ Marianne Walz: The examination of a centenarian. In: neue-deutschland.de . June 8, 2015, accessed June 10, 2015 .
  25. ^ Sarah Levy: National Socialism: "A 40-year silence in Eppendorf". In: zeit.de . June 9, 2015, accessed June 10, 2015 .
  26. ↑ Christian Engel: Late honor: 102-year-old receives doctorate. In: Spiegel Online . June 9, 2015, accessed June 10, 2015 .
  27. ↑ 102-year-olds take doctoral examination. In: sueddeutsche.de . May 15, 2015, accessed June 10, 2015 .
  28. ↑ Hamburger Ärzteblatt 06/15 p. 7.
  29. ^ Horst Schäfer: Magna cum laude. In: Junge Welt . May 20, 2015, accessed March 30, 2017 .
  30. ↑ "I did my doctorate for the victims". In: Der Tagesspiegel . March 29, 2017, accessed March 31, 2017 .
  31. ↑ 104-year-old children's book author Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport has died. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 31, 2017 ; accessed on March 31, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rbb-online.de
  32. ↑ illustrated book / illustrated / with illustrations 2017. Book. approx. 80 p .: 56 color illustrations. Hardcover Edition Märkische LebensArt ISBN 978-3-943614-12-1
  33. ↑ The Rapoports - Britzka Film. Retrieved March 31, 2017 .
personal data
SURNAME Rapoport, Ingeborg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Syllm-Rapoport, Ingeborg A. (full name); Syllm, Ingeborg (maiden name); Rapoport, Inge
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pediatrician
DATE OF BIRTH September 2, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Kribi , Cameroon
DATE OF DEATH 23rd March 2017
Place of death Berlin , Germany