Ludwig Edinger

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Ludwig Edinger, portrayed by Lovis Corinth in 1909

Ludwig Edinger (born April 13, 1855 in Worms , † January 26, 1918 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German neurologist and brain researcher.

In 1912 he was one of the co-signers of the foundation contract for the establishment of the University of Frankfurt am Main (opened in 1914). In the same year he was appointed Professor of Neurology by the King of Prussia - the first researcher in Germany. One of his almost forgotten achievements is to have differentiated between “old” and “newly acquired” sections on the basis of comparative anatomical studies in the human brain (“paleencephalon”, “neencephalon”; cf. telencephalon ).

Career

Family grave in the Frankfurt main cemetery

Ludwig Edinger was of Jewish descent and grew up in Worms, his father, Marcus Edinger, was a successful textile wholesaler and democratic member of the state parliament of Hessen-Darmstadt , who was not ashamed of his poor background, but advocated the exemption from school fees as early as 1873 (in vain) founded various welfare institutions. His mother Julie was the daughter of an important doctor in Karlsruhe. Ludwig Edinger studied medicine in Heidelberg (until 1874) and Strasbourg from 1872 to 1877 , but only turned to neurology during his work as an assistant doctor (1877–1882) in Gießen , which he also made the subject of his habilitation (1881) and due to which he received a private lecturer. After working in Berlin , Leipzig and Paris , he settled in Frankfurt am Main in 1883 as a “medical practitioner and specialist in neurology”. "I was almost the first in Germany who dared to use this special designation," he recalled.

In 1885, on Edinger's initiative, the pathologist Carl Weigert, who was affected by anti-Semitism elsewhere, was appointed director of the Dr. Senckenberg anatomy in Frankfurt am Main. Weigert immediately gave his friend Edinger a job at this institute. But it was not until 1902 that Edinger was given a separate room in the building for his neurological department, which became “Dr. Senckenberg Neurological Institute ”advanced. In the following year he was also officially appointed director of the institute he founded, which he steadily expanded. Although the brain researcher financed the institute privately, the Senckenberg Foundation feared additional material burdens and therefore, after long arguments in 1908/09, broke the bond. But soon afterwards Edinger was able to connect the Neurological Institute to the newly founded Frankfurt University. However, it was also expressly stated in his certificate of appointment as professor that he would continue to run his institute out of his own pocket. This was possible for him u. a. because he had been married to Anna Goldschmidt (1868–1929), a social politician and daughter of a long-established Jewish banking family in Frankfurt, from 1886 , and who in 1906 had inherited millions. In 1908 he was elected a corresponding member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

On January 26, 1918, Ludwig Edinger died unexpectedly of heart failure. He was buried in the Frankfurt main cemetery (Gewann II GG 21). Even after his death, he showed himself to be a neuroscientist up to the last consequence: He had ordered that his brain should be dissected in his institute. Edinger secured the continued existence of his neurological institute in 1917 by setting up a foundation. The Ludwig Edinger Foundation still owns the Neurological Institute at the Frankfurt Goethe University Clinic, which is now also bearing the name of its founder; in the medical field it is an “institute of special legal nature”. The Edinger Institute describes itself as the "oldest brain research institute in Germany".

The founding couple received a late recognition of their services to medicine in 1945 when the then Walter-Flex- Strasse was given its original name Edingerweg back.

Research topics

Initially at the kitchen table at home in Frankfurt, since as a Jew he had initially been denied a scientific career at a German university because of the anti-Semitism that flared up again around 1882/83, Edinger made thin sections of the brains of stillborn human fetuses and thus began his anatomical studies in secret Basic research that should become groundbreaking in neurology. Edinger presented the first results to the Medical Association in 1884 in ten lectures on the structure of the human brain, which he published shortly afterwards in book form. Through this work he suddenly became known in international specialist circles as an expert on the anatomy of the human brain and its development during the embryonic phase . Soon he extended his studies to the forebrain and diencephalon of sharks , amphibians , reptiles and birds and was thus able to understand the development history of the brain during evolution . Edinger's idea was to use a detailed comparison of the brain in the evolutionary ascending line of animals to assign defined performance to individual parts of the brain.

Ludwig Edinger wrote the first color plates with cross-sections through the brains of the different animal phyla - color plates that in a similar way still adorn every textbook on brain anatomy today. He discovered new, unknown structures almost every day; its most important discoveries related to the course of the pain pathway and the nucleus accessory nerve oculomotorii ( Edinger-Westphal nucleus ) to which the originating core area of the parasympathetic nerve fibers of the third cranial nerve ( oculomotor nerve group), the pupillary reflex, and hence the adaptation control of the eye. His fame was so great that, for example, Korbinian Brodmann , who carried out the internationally valid structure of the cerebral cortex , secured Edinger's approval before the definitive name was given.

Ludwig Edinger did not stop at purely anatomical studies, but also turned his interest to comparative psychology and thus became a pioneer of animal psychology , from which modern behavioral biology emerged . He tried to explain the function of the brain from the structure of the brain. a. prove that when investigating the sensory perceptions of the animals, the researchers had previously always started out from humans and their sensory performance. Edinger, on the other hand, was able to show that many animals cannot react to certain stimuli simply because they do not have structures in the brain that are suitable for processing stimuli. He was the first researcher to realize that fish and amphibians can no longer simply be viewed as "deaf" because, for anatomical reasons, they do not associate a bell tone with what we humans associate with such an acoustic stimulus. Edinger attributed the differences in the behavior of the higher animals to the development of additional parts of the brain.

Many of his findings are still valid today, but more recent research results suggest that the "old" brain structures, for example in birds, have also taken over functions in the course of evolution for which the cerebrum is responsible in mammals.

Ludwig and Anna Edinger had three children: Fritz (1888–1942), Dora (1894–1982) and Tilly (1897–1967). Fritz had a doctorate in neurology and sociologist, the daughter Tilly Edinger became the founder of “paleoneurology” in Germany.

Fonts

  • About the brain of myxine glutinosa. Berlin 1906.
  • Introduction to the theory of the structure and functions of the nervous system. Leipzig 1909 and 1912.
  • My course of life. Memories of a Frankfurt doctor and brain researcher. Edited by Gerald Kreft, Werner Friedrich Kümmel, Wolfgang Schlote and Reiner Wiehl . Waldemar Kramer Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 3-7829-0561-X .

literature

  • CU Ariëns Kappers : Ludwig Edinger. 1855-1915. In: German journal for neurology. Volume 53, No. 6, 1915, pp. 425–448, doi: 10.1007 / BF01843237 (honoring the 60th birthday)
  • (Anonymous): Ludwig Edinger 1855–1918. Commemorative publication for his 100th birthday and the 50th anniversary of the Neurological Institute (Edinger Institute) of the University of Frankfurt am Main , Steiner, Wiesbaden 1955 (Writings of the Scientific Society at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main / Natural Science Series; Vol . 1)
  • Heidemarie Emisch: Ludwig Edinger. Brain anatomy and psychology , Urban & Fischer, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-437-11378-X (also Univ. Diss. Mainz 1990)
  • Gerald Kreft: German-Jewish history and brain research. Ludwig Edinger's Neurological Institute in Frankfurt am Main , Mabuse-Verlag, Frankfurt / M. 2005, ISBN 3-935964-72-2
  • Wilhelm Krücke :  Edinger, Ludwig. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 4, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1959, ISBN 3-428-00185-0 , p. 313 ( digitized version ).
  • Wolfgang Schlote : Ludwig Edinger (1855–1918) , in: Günther Böhme (ed.): The Frankfurt Republic of Scholars , Schulz-Kirchner, Idstein

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ G. Kremt, founder, patron and scholar. Ludwig Edinger: Researcher - Founder - German Jew, Societäts-Verlag (2011) ISBN 3-7973-1259-8
  2. ↑ Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Edinger, Ludwig. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , pp. 334 f .; here: p. 334.
  3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 73.
  4. ↑ Grave of the Edinger family in the Frankfurt main cemetery (Gewann II, grave GG 21, location , pictures )
  5. ↑ Grave map to grave II GG 21. In: files of the main cemetery Frankfurt
  6. ↑ see the institute's homepage
  7. ↑ The renaming of streets and squares. In: Frankfurt am Main 1933–1945. Institute for Urban History, accessed on July 26, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Edinger, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German physician, neurologist and brain researcher
DATE OF BIRTH April 13, 1855
PLACE OF BIRTH Worms
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1918
Place of death Frankfurt am Main