Ludwig Frankenthal

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Ludwig Frankenthal (born November 27, 1881 in Schwanfeld ; † October 14, 1944 in Auschwitz concentration camp ) was a German surgeon of Jewish origin who was the chief physician of the Israelite Hospital in Leipzig from 1928 to 1938. In addition, due to his marriage to Ilse Hinrichsen (1904-1987) in 1928, he was the son-in-law of the well-known Leipzig publisher Henri Hinrichsen (1868-1942).

Live and act

After graduating from high school in Nuremberg in 1906, Frankenthal began studying medicine for five years at the University of Munich . He obtained his doctorate in 1911 with a dissertation on kidney tumors and received his medical license in 1912 . After that, Dr. Frankenthal as a junior doctor in Hamburg and Berlin , before the First World War as a surgeon of a medical unit in the hospitals of Alsace-Lorraine worked.

At the front he was able to recognize specific muscle changes in buried soldiers, which he referred to as burial syndrome in his later publications. After the war, Ludwig Frankenthal got a job at the surgical university clinic in Leipzig. In 1928, together with the internist Pascal Deuel (1885-1932), he took over the management of the Israelite Hospital, which was founded on donations from Chaim Eitingon 's family .

Also in 1928, Ludwig Frankenthal married his longtime partner Ilse Hinrichsen (1904–1987), who was a daughter of the well-known publisher Henri Hinrichsen and who made it possible for him to rise into the Leipzig bourgeoisie . From the happy marriage until his arrest, the two sons Günther (1929–1945) and Wolfgang (1931–1944) emerged.

In addition to his work as chief physician at the Israelite Hospital, Dr. Frankenthal made about 50 medical articles in professional journals, often dealing with the symptoms of burial syndrome. He was the first to recognize that the specific muscle damage caused by prolonged external violence can be linked to the transfer of the muscle pigment into the blood and urine, which in turn will lead to life-threatening kidney failure. The completed transfer of the muscle pigment into the blood and urine can be recognized by the doctor by the patient's black-red urine. Frankenthal's findings were already observed among victims of house collapses before the First World War, but Frankenthal first diagnosed burial syndrome as a mass phenomenon among soldiers of the First World War . His observations from the years 1916 to 1918 and the later publications based on them are used today in the rescue and first aid of earthquake victims, people buried in mountain shafts or war victims.

The National Socialists had not allowed Ludwig Frankenthal to publish any more since 1937. In July 1938 he lost his license to practice medicine as a Jewish doctor due to the fourth ordinance on the Reich Citizenship Act and was only allowed to work as a so-called "patient doctor " . After the November pogroms in 1938 , Dr. Frankenthal was arrested and taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp , from where he was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto via several other concentration camps over the next few years .

According to the Dutch Red Cross , Ludwig Frankenthal and his youngest son Wolfgang were transferred from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp on October 12, 1944 , where they were murdered two days later. Frankenthal's eldest son Günther died on February 28, 1945 in the vicinity of Auschwitz. His widow Ilse Frankenthal-Hinrichsen managed to escape to the Netherlands, where she lived in Brunssum until her death on July 30, 1987 . She got involved in art there and became an honorary citizen of her new hometown in 1975. She never visited Germany again.

As a result of the German air raids on London in September 1940, which led to numerous victims of burial, English doctors resorted to Frankenthal's earlier publications on burial. They published the research results of Dr. Frankenthals about the "crush syndrome" in the entire Anglo-Saxon-speaking area, so that he was posthumously recognized there as a doctor and scientist.

Publications (selection)

  • Kidney tumors at the Surgical University Clinic since 1902 , medical dissertation, Munich 1911
  • About burial , in: Virchow's archive for pathological anatomy and physiology and for clinical medicine, 222/1916, p. 332ff.
  • On the question of burial , in: Centralblatt für Allgemeine Pathologie und Pathologische Anatomie, Supplement to Volume 27, 1916, p. 12
  • Significance of recognizing the quadriceps rupture and its treatment for the general practitioner , in: Münchener Medizinische Wochenschrift 75/1928, p. 563ff.
  • Coverage of the palm skin defect by the skin of the little finger in Dupuytren's contracture , in: Zentralblatt für Chirurgie, 64/1937, p. 211ff.

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Frankenthal, Ludwig
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German doctor and scientist
DATE OF BIRTH November 27, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Swan field
DATE OF DEATH October 14, 1944
Place of death Auschwitz concentration camp