Karl Diehl (doctor)

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Karl Diehl (born April 27, 1896 in Cleeberg , † October 25, 1969 in Bad Schwalbach ) was a German internist . Together with Otmar von Verschuer , he conducted research on the genetics of tuberculosis . In the literature, Karl Diehl is sometimes confused with the Krefeld doctor and NSDAP member of the state parliament, Emil Heinrich Diehl .

Life

Diehl took part in the First World War as a volunteer . In October 1914 he was badly wounded in the battle of Ypres and taken prisoner by the English . He was released on a prisoner exchange. After the war he studied medicine in Marburg and Hamburg . During his time as an assistant doctor he fell ill with tuberculosis. He first went to Davos for a cure , but then also became an assistant doctor at the German sanatorium there . In 1927 he switched to the tuberculosis clinic of the city of Berlin in Sommerfeld , the Waldhaus Charlottenburg, as the doctor in charge of the surgical department .

Together with Otmar von Verschuer, with whom he had been friends since studying in Marburg and who had also switched to the University of Hamburg with him , Diehl worked on the hereditary nature of tuberculosis. Their joint publication on "Tuberculosis Twins" caused a sensation. In this they saw evidence of the genetic disposition to tuberculosis and thus took an extreme position in the contemporary debate. However , they held back with eugenic demands. Diehl was more likely than Verschuer to take criticism by admitting that the number of twin pairs examined was low and that there was environmental tuberculosis. He rejected conclusions by analogy. After 1945, Diehl praised Verschuer for the concept of Christian eugenics as represented by Hermann Muckermann . He said he “seldom admired and adored a man as much as Muckermann” after he “heard him speak”.

Since 1931 Diehl was also an external research assistant at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics (KWI-A). In 1935 he became a doctor in charge of the tuberculosis hospital "Waldhaus Charlottenburg" and an associate professor in Frankfurt am Main , where Verschuer also worked. In 1937 he joined the NSDAP.

In 1936 Diehl tested the suitability of the 'rabbit model' developed by Hans Nachtsheim for tuberculosis research. Diehl succeeded in breeding two rabbit strains with different levels of resistance to tuberculosis pathogens. At the beginning of August 1939, a branch of the KWI-A for tuberculosis research was set up in his clinic, making Diehl department head at the KWI-A. His work was classified as important to the war effort in 1943 and was given special support.

Soon after the end of the war, Verschuer intended to bring Diehl to Frankfurt. Due to the high number of tuberculosis cases at the time, he hoped to find support for this project quickly. However, because of the food shortage, Diehl had already had to slaughter some of the animals he had bred, and more had been stolen by thieves. Also on Verschuer's initiative, Diehl became chief physician at the Paulinenberg tuberculosis clinic in Bad Schwalbach in 1948 . He continued the project to breed hereditary tuberculosis resistance until the late 1950s. In 1957 he became an adjunct professor at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and a research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich .

Fonts

  • About primary urethral carcinoma in men . Diss. Med. Hamburg 1922.
  • with Wilhelm Kremer: Thoracoscopy and Throacocaust . Berlin 1929.
  • with Otmar Frhr. v. Verschuer: twin tuberculosis
    • Part I: Twin Research and Hereditary Tuberculosis Disposition. Jena 1933
    • Part II: The inheritance in tuberculosis . Jena 1936
  • The legacy of shaping tuberculosis. Experiments on d. Tuberculosis in rabbits . Leipzig 1941.

literature

  • Ernst Klee : German Medicine in the Third Reich . Frankfurt a. M. 2001.
  • Hans-Peter Kröner: From Racial Hygiene to Human Genetics. Stuttgart 1998.
  • Hans-Walter Schmuhl (Ed.): Race research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes before and after 1933. Göttingen 2003.
  • Hans-Walther Schmuhl: Crossing boundaries. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics 1927-1945 . Göttingen 2005.
  • Achim Trunk: Race Research and Biochemistry. A project - and the question of Butenandt's contribution. In: Wolfgang Schieder u. Achim Trunk (Ed.): Adolf Butenandt and the Kaiser Wilhelm Society. Science, industry and politics in the 'Third Reich'. Göttingen 2004, pp. 247–285.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hans-Walther Schmuhl: Crossing borders. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics 1927-1945 . Göttingen 2005, p. 142.
  2. ↑ Hans-Walther Schmuhl: Crossing borders. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics 1927-1945 . Göttingen 2005, p. 240f.
  3. ^ Ingrid Richter: Catholicism and eugenics in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich . Paderborn 2002, p. 302. Hans-Peter Kröner: From race hygiene to human genetics. Stuttgart 1998, p. 192.
  4. ↑ Schmuhl: Border Crossing , p. 347.
personal data
SURNAME Diehl, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German internist
DATE OF BIRTH April 27, 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Cleeberg
DATE OF DEATH October 25, 1969
Place of death Bad Schwalbach