Karl Heusch

Karl Maria Martin Heusch (* July 6, 1894 in Aachen ; † February 5, 1986 ibid) was a German urologist and founder of several urological departments.

Live and act

Karl Heusch came from the Aachen branch of the Heusch family and was a relative of the Aachen mayor Hermann Heusch . He was the son of the businessman Karl Heusch (1863-1923) and Barbara, née Appelrath (1861-1940).

After attending the Aachen Realgymnasium , Karl Heusch began studying medicine in Berlin, interrupting it in 1914 to volunteer for the German Army in the First World War . Among other things, he took part in the war in the Ottoman Empire as a member of a special command and was subordinate to the Ottoman Army . In 1917 Heusch returned to Germany as a royal Ottoman medical lieutenant and in 1919 resumed his medical studies at the University of Bonn . In 1921 he received his doctorate in Cologne with the dissertation “ The conditions of childhood polyrstal stenosis ” and was then taken on as an assistant doctor at the municipal hospitals in Aachen . In 1922 Heusch moved to Otto Hildebrand and later to Ferdinand Sauerbruch at the Charité's 1st Surgical Clinic in Berlin, from where he was transferred to Otto Ringleb's urology department in 1925 as a senior physician .

As early as 1930 Heusch developed considerable sympathy for National Socialism and initially joined the National Socialist German Medical Association , where he worked for the later Reich Health Leader Leonardo Conti . In 1933 he officially became a member of the NSDAP and a supporting member of the Schutzstaffel (SS). In the same year, through Conti’s mediation, Heusch was appointed doctor in charge of the urology department at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital which he had newly established . One of his senior physicians there was the later Nobel Prize winner Werner Forßmann . Heusch benefited from the fact that the Nazis had driven out the doctors Leopold Casper, Alexander von Lichtenberg and Paul Rosenstein . In addition, Heusch was appointed as a doctor on duty at state receptions on the staff of Hermann Göring and as a sports doctor at the Summer Olympics in 1936 and part-time as a theater doctor in all of Berlin's state theaters.

From 1934 to 1938 Heusch was also a lecturer at the “Municipal Academy for Medical Advanced Training”, where he was responsible for international urology courses. In 1935 he was appointed secretary of the “Society of Reich German Urologists” and in 1937 as deputy chairman of the “Berlin Urological Society”. In addition, he worked on behalf of the Central Office for Public Health of the NSDAP, among other things, in the implementation of compulsory sterilization according to the law for the prevention of hereditary offspring . He also acted as an appraiser at the Berlin Hereditary Health Supreme Court . Heusch was then awarded the medal for German people care for his achievements to date .

At the beginning of the Second World War , Heusch was drafted into the Wehrmacht as a surgeon and medical officer in a field hospital and deployed in France. After the end of the Western campaign , he was able to return to Berlin, where he resumed his service in his department at the Virchow Hospital and from 1941 was co-editor of the "Zeitschrift für Urologie". In 1942 Heusch was the first doctor in Germany to complete his habilitation in urology with Otto Ringleb at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin with the habilitation thesis: " Clinical contributions to cancer of the urinary bladder " and then accepted a lecturer position there. Scientifically, Heusch dealt primarily with renal fistula, renal tuberculosis and bladder tumors.

After considerable damage caused by the war in an air raid in 1943, the urology department of the Virchow Hospital was relocated to Karlsbad on the initiative of Heusch and temporarily refurbished because the entire inventory had been lost. Just a few months later, Heusch returned to Berlin, where he initially began setting up an alternative clinic. In 1944 he was promoted to SS-Sturmbannführer in Berlin on the recommendation of Ernst Hermann Himmler .

After the war, Heusch practiced as a doctor in Berlin from October 1945 and from February 1946 he participated in the establishment of a new urology department at the Siemens Jungfernstieg hospital . After he had to leave Berlin a year later for political reasons, Heusch returned to his hometown Aachen. There he was commissioned by the then senior city director Albert Servais and the incumbent medical officer to set up a new urological department at the Aachen city hospitals. In 1947 he was promoted to chief physician in this department. Heusch worked in Aachen until his retirement in 1963 and has since been appointed professor hc in the urology chair at the University of Madrid . After his retirement on January 22nd, 1964, he was subsequently awarded the official title of professor by the education minister of the state government of North Rhine-Westphalia, Paul Mikat .

In addition, Heusch was elected President of the German Society for Urology in 1951 and 1953 and was later made an honorary member of this society and of the professional association of German urologists . In 1953 Heusch headed the 15th Congress of the German Society for Urology in Aachen, during which, among other conference items, the Maximilian Nitze Prize for urological research founded by Alexander von Lichtenberg in 1928 was re-established and the establishment of the Professional Association of German Urologists was sought came into force a year later in Bad Wildungen .

Since his return to Aachen, Heusch, like most of his family, has become a member of Club Aachener Casino . Heusch had been married to Margarethe Nagel (* 1900), daughter of the businessman Hermann Nagel, since 1923.

Fonts (selection)

• The conditions of childhood polyrstal stenosis , dissertation Bonn, Zeitschrift für Kinderheilkunde No. 31, Cologne 1921
• Urologie und Volksgesundheit , in: Zeitschrift für Urologie No. 30, 1936, pp. 823-832
• Clinical contributions to cancer of the urinary bladder , habilitation thesis, Leipzig, 1942
• Timeline for the history of the German Society for Urology , in Zeitschrift für Urologie No. 50, 1957, pp. 649–652
• 50 years of the German Society for Urology , in: Zeitschrift für Urologie, special volume “Wiener Kongreßbericht”, Leipzig 1957, pp. 13–21
• 10 Years Urological Clinic Aachen , in: Der Krankenhausarzt No. 33, 1960, pp. 75–77
• Memories of Otto Ringleb on his 100th birthday , in: Der Urologe No. 15, 1975, pp. 119–120

literature

• Richard Kühl: Leading clinic doctors in Aachen and their role in the Third Reich , study by the Aachen Competence Center for the History of Science, Volume 11, Ed .: Dominik Groß, Diss. RWTH Aachen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86219-014-0 pdf
• Richard Kühl: A “solid front”: Karl Heusch and the German urologists . In: Thorsten Halling, Friedrich Moll: Urologie im Rheinland , Springer-Verlag, Berlin Heidelberg 2014, pp. 126–142 digitized
• M. Krischel, F. Moll, H. Fangerau: The "German Society for Urology" founded in 1907 and the "Society of Reich German Urologists" under National Socialism . In: Urologie 2011 , Springer-Verlag 2011 pdf
• Ute Margot Wrobel: Karl Maria Martin Heusch (1894–1986) - first habilitation in urology in Germany: an occupational and bibliography ; Medical dissertation RWTH Aachen 2013
• Wolfgang Mauermayer (Ed.): German Society for Urology 1907–1978: Opening speeches of the presidents 1st– 30th congress , Springer-Verlag 2013 Biography pp. 187/188, u. a .; digitized
• Slatomir Joachim Wenske: The development of urological clinics in Berlin - A contribution to Berlin's medical history ; Dissertation, Berlin 2008 pdf
• Wilhelm Leopold Janssen , Eduard Arens: History of the Club Aachener Casino. Aachen 1937 (2nd ed. By Elisabeth Janssen and Felix Kuetgens , 1964), p. 269/270, no. 1083