Karl Rösener

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Collage picture on the topic of "Fighting sleeping sickness through German colonial doctors" . Above, Robert Koch , who as a microbiologist laid the foundations for the entire research project and whose former assistant was Karl Rösener's Cameroonian boss, Friedrich Karl Kleine . In addition, sleeping wards and treatment in Cameroon, below the drug "Bayer 205" .

Karl Rösener (* December 24, 1879 in Grünstadt ; † May 12, 1956 in Schnaittach ) was a German doctor, colonial pioneer and tropical medicine in Cameroon . He became a specialist in fighting sleeping sickness , and later became a medical advisor and professor.

Life

Karl Rösener was born as the son of the businessman Carl Rösener and his wife Elisabetha. Klingel, born in Grünstadt, Palatinate , Kingdom of Bavaria . This is where the boy grew up too. From 1883 to 1893 he attended the local elementary and Latin school ; from 1893 to 1898 the humanistic high school in Kaiserslautern .

Then Rösener studied law, then medicine at the University of Munich , 1899/1900 in Strasbourg , most recently in Erlangen, where he was awarded a doctorate on July 22, 1904 with the grade "good". med. PhD. During his time in Strasbourg, he did part of his military service in the medical service in the realm of Alsace-Lorraine , with the 2nd Upper Alsace Field Artillery Regiment No. 51 , which also served him as an internship. This happened as a “ one-year volunteer ” from October 1, 1899 to March 31, 1900. Karl Rösener was dismissed as a “surplus paramedic” under the condition that he should make up the rest of his military service. After completing his doctorate, he became a soldier again, now in the Bavarian Army . From October 15, 1904, he joined the 6th Bay as a junior doctor . Field Artillery Regiment , since November 30, 1904, he served in the same function close to home at the 18th Bay. Infantry regiment in Landau . On March 24, 1905, he was promoted to assistant doctor here.

On May 14, 1905, Karl Rösener joined the Imperial Protection Force of German South West Africa , where he was promoted to senior physician on January 27, 1908. On February 1, 1909, Rösener switched to the German protection force in Cameroon . The Palatinate doctor was initially stationed in Dume .

When the German colony of Cameroon was expanded to include New Cameroon by the Morocco-Congo Treaty in 1911 , Rösener took up his activity there. Here it was particularly important to combat the widespread, fatal sleeping sickness, which the Palatinate doctor made a great contribution to. In Akonolinga he worked with the well-known physician Dr. Gottfried Freyer in the sleeping sick camp on the scientific investigation of the disease. Karl Rösener developed into a recognized specialist in this ailment. On August 18, 1912, the Palatinate was appointed medical officer. Later he headed the fight against sleeping sickness in the Carnot-Nola area (district of Ober-Ssanga-Uham, with the seat of government in Carnot).

The explorer Georg Escherich writes about Dr. Rösener in his book "Across the jungle of Cameroon" :

“ The best sign of the work of our doctors at that time is the unreserved trust they had everywhere in the contaminated area. Above all, Dr. Rösener and his gentlemen in the whole area in the greatest respect, and already in Gaza the chief there told me that the German doctor had "big medicine" and the people who got it would not die as much anymore. "

- Georg Escherich, "Across the jungle of Cameroon" , 1923

When the First World War broke out , Karl Rösener, under the leadership of the famous sleeping sickness researcher Friedrich Karl Kleine, was one of the 17 medical officers of the German protection force and took part in the fighting until they were discontinued at the beginning of 1916 due to a lack of ammunition, equipment and food. The remnants of the unit - 600 Europeans and 6,000 Africans who defied an overwhelming force of 15,000 Allied fighters - transferred to the neighboring, neutral Rio Muni colony ( Spanish Guinea ) on February 14, 1916 , where they were disarmed and under Spanish Protection provided. The doctors Friedrich Karl Kleine and Karl Rösener came from there to Spain and remained interned in Madrid (Kleine) and Saragossa (Rösener) during the war .

Rösener, who had also been promoted to the medical council, later lived as a professor and officer for tropical diseases in the Franconian town of Schnaittach, where he died in 1956.

The research of Friedrich Karl Kleine, Karl Rösener and other well-known colonial physicians led to the development of the world-famous drug "Bayer 205" or " Suramin ", the first fully functional remedy for the dreaded sleeping sickness , which was sold under the name "Germanin". Germanin - The story of a colonial deed is also the name of a German fiction film from 1943, which portrays this chapter of German medical colonial history in an interesting way, but in some cases with distorted propaganda.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Akonolinga, Cameroon, in the English Wikipedia
  2. ↑ Golf Dornseif: Cameroon's protection force in Spanish internment  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 674 kB)@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.golf-dornseif.de  
  3. ^ Feature film "Germanin" about German sleeping sickness research in Cameroon
personal data
SURNAME Rösener, Karl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German military doctor and tropical medicine
DATE OF BIRTH December 24, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Grünstadt
DATE OF DEATH May 12, 1956
Place of death Schnaittach