Oskar Vogt

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Oskar Vogt together with his wife Cécile Vogt
Bust of Vogt on the Berlin-Buch campus

Oskar Vogt (born April 6, 1870 in Husum , † July 31, 1959 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German brain researcher .

Life

Oskar Vogt, the son of a pastor at the Marienkirche , graduated from the Husum School of Academics and studied psychology, zoology and medicine in Kiel and Jena from 1888 to 1894 . In 1890 he became a member of the Teutonia fraternity in Jena . In 1894 he received his doctorate with his thesis on fiber systems in the middle and caudal beam sections in Jena. He then worked at Otto Binswanger's psychiatric clinic and stayed with Auguste Forel in Zurich . At Forel, Vogt learned the therapeutic use of hypnosis . Forel gave him the editing of the magazine for hypnotism (from 1902: Journal for Psychology and Neurology ).

In October 1894 Vogt became an assistant at Paul Flechsig's Psychiatric and Mental Clinic in Leipzig . Six months later, Vogt von Flechsig was fired, among other things because of his hypnotic therapy methods. In a private letter to Forel in 1895, Vogt described Flechsig as “rags and dégenerée” and as a slanderer. Even Emil Kraepelin had previously developed at Flechsig Institute with this intractable differences after a few months ten years, had been terminated by this and felt the accusations as slander.

Memorial plaque for Oskar and Cécile Vogt at the former Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch. Artist: Axel Schulz (1965)

In 1902 Vogt founded the Neurobiological Laboratory of the University of Berlin , which emerged from the former private neurological central station, where Korbinian Brodmann also conducted research from 1901 . The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research emerged from the neurobiological laboratory in 1914 (new building in 1931 in Berlin-Buch ).

From mid-1925 to mid-1927 Vogt had dissected Lenin's brain in 30,000 sections . He found that Lenin had an extraordinary accumulation of pyramidal cells in the third layer of the cerebral cortex. From this he concluded that Lenin had a particularly strong ability to associate and described him as an "association athlete". However, this realization was already highly controversial at that time.

Oskar Vogt was director of the KWI from 1930 to 1937, until he was denounced for his attitude towards communists and Jews. Although the ministry had already given him notice in 1934, Vogt remained in office for more than two years. With his wife, the French brain researcher Cécile Vogt b. Mugnier he moved to Neustadt in the Black Forest , where he set up the private institute for brain research and general biology and headed it until his death.

The Vogt-Vogt Syndrome is named after the Vogt couple .

At the time of the Nuremberg Trials , he received no support for his idea of examining the brains of the main war criminals who were convicted and executed in the Third Reich .

From 1924 Vogt had been a corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR , in 1932 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and from 1950 was an honorary member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin .

With his wife Cécile he had the daughters Marthe Louise Vogt (1903–2003) and Marguerite Vogt (1913–2007), who both became scientists and worked for many years in California.

He died on July 31, 1959, and was buried on August 4 in the crematorium of the Freiburg main cemetery.

Awards

literature

  • Arno Bammé : Oskar Vogt: The guardian of Lenin's gray cells. In: Husumer Nachrichten . April 13, 2011 ( PDF ).
  • Peter Düweke: Cecilie and Oskar Vogt (1875–1962, 1870–1959). In: Ders .: A short history of brain research: From Descartes to Eccles. Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-45945-5 , pp. 114–128.
  • Walter Kirsche : Oskar Vogt 1870–1959: Life and Work and its Relation to Contemporary Brain Research. A contribution to the 25th anniversary of his death. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1986, ISBN 3-055-00006-4
  • Jürgen Peiffer : Brain research in Germany 1849 to 1974: Letters on the development of psychiatry and neurosciences as well as the influence of the political environment on scientists (= writings of the mathematical and natural science class of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. No. 13). Springer, Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-540-40690-5 .
  • Tilman Spengler : Lenin's brain. Novel. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991, ISBN 3-498-06256-5 .
  • Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Vogt, Oskar. 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 , p. 1453.

Web links

Commons : Oskar Vogt  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Peter Kaupp: Early Coins - From the memories of the sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies of his studies in Jena (1872/73). In: Bernhard Schroeter (Ed.): For fraternity and fatherland. Festschrift for the fraternity and student historian Prof. (FH) Dr. Peter Kaupp. Jena 2006. pp. 395-424, here p. 411.
  2. ^ Peiffer: Hirnforschung in Deutschland 1848–1974. 2004, p. 229.
  3. ↑ Volker Roelcke : On the way to psychiatry as a science: The project of a “statistics for madmen” and Emil Kraepelin's reformulation of the psychiatric classification. In: Eric J. Engstrom, Volker Roelcke (ed.): Psychiatry in the 19th century: Research on the history of psychiatric institutions, debates and practices in the German-speaking area. Schwabe Verlag, Basel 2003, ISBN 3-631-51846-3 , p. 179
  4. ^ Peiffer: Hirnforschung in Deutschland 1848-1974. 2004, p. 184. Letter to FW Hagen dated January 19, 1883
  5. ↑ Hans-Walter Schmuhl (ed.): Race research at Kaiser Wilhelm Institutes before and after 1933 , p. 126
  6. ↑ As a German brain researcher demonstrated Lenin's genius , NZZ, November 20, 2017
  7. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Oskar Vogt. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed October 30, 2015 (Russian).
  8. ↑ Member entry of Oskar Vogt at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 18, 2016.
  9. ^ Badische Zeitung .
personal data
SURNAME Vogt, Oskar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German brain researcher
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Husum
DATE OF DEATH July 31, 1959
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau