Paul Schürmann

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Paul Schürmann (portrait drawing by Emil Stumpp , 1931)

Paul Schürmann (born July 25, 1895 in Gütersloh ; † July 2, 1941 at Borissow ) was a German military pathologist and tuberculosis researcher.

biography

Paul Schürmann was the son of the businessman Heinrich Schürmann (1863 to 1929) and his wife Wilhelmine, née Weber (1871 to 1940). He had four younger siblings. Immediately after the outbreak of World War I , he passed his secondary school diploma on August 9, 1914 and served as a soldier in Infantry Regiment No. 15 . Due to a bullet through the shoulder on the western front , which also affected the mobility of his right hand, he was dismissed from the army as unfit for war. After his recovery he began studying medicine at Heidelberg University in 1915. Later he returned to the army as a medical soldier, where he a. a. was employed in reserve hospitals and most recently as a field medical officer in the Würzburg Army Prosecture. In the meantime, he contracted tuberculosis in May 1918. After the end of the war and discharge from the army, he continued his medical studies, which he completed in May 1920 with a state examination. Without having obtained his doctorate, he received the title of Dr. med. He then worked as a medical intern at the Heidelberg Cancer Research Institute and at the German Lung Sanatorium in Davos , where he devoted himself to tuberculosis research. From 1921, the year he received his license to practice medicine, he completed his specialist training as a pathologist in the pathology department of the Dresden City Hospital, where he intensified his research on tuberculosis in particular and finally worked as a senior physician. From the beginning of October 1926 he was an assistant at the Pathological Institute of by the end of March 1930 University of Hamburg , where he joined in 1927 at Theodor driving with a record of tuberculosis of Pathology Habilitation and then as a lecturer worked. From the beginning of April 1930 he worked for five years as a regular associate professor for general pathology and pathological anatomy and prosector at the pathological institute at the University of Berlin. He dealt with the BCG live vaccine and was consulted as an expert after the Lübeck vaccination accident , in which 77 children died and many fell ill.

From mid-February 1935 he headed the pathological-anatomical department of the Military Medical Academy in Berlin. For a few months he was also director of the Robert Koch Hospital; However, when he was appointed full professor of general pathology in June 1935, he resigned from this office. He turned down appointments to the universities of Basel, Freiburg and Münster.

At the Military Medical Academy he set up the Institute for General and Military Pathology, where he became the commander of teaching group C at the beginning of March 1939. In addition to his research and teaching activities, organizational and administrative tasks became increasingly important. As early as 1938, Schürmann had set up a reserve hospital for headshot injuries at the research clinic of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research . At the beginning of the war, he was also a consulting pathologist at the Army Medical Inspector .

After the beginning of the Second World War , the passionate photographer and filmmaker shot material for medical instruction films with a film team from the Military Medical Academy (in particular on the rescue and care of war casualties and repatriation). First he was in France and then used during the airborne battle of Crete . After being injured in the war in Crete, he was taken to a military hospital and immediately afterwards took part in the attack on the Soviet Union in the wake of a tank division of Army Group Center , where he died early in the morning on July 2, 1941, after an artillery fire by the Red Army near Borisov. The grave is located in the Borissow central cemetery of honor, which no longer exists, and was moved from a field grave in autumn 1941. Posthumously, he was appointed senior physician retrospectively to July 1, 1941.

He was married to the dentist Susanne Struve, whom he had met during his time in Dresden. The couple had three daughters. His research on tuberculosis and the vascular system was groundbreaking.

Honors

Paul Schürmann Medal

The Paul Schürmann Prize has been awarded by the German Society for Military Medicine and Military Pharmacy since 1968 .

literature

  • Axel Murken: Life and work of the tuberculosis researcher Paul Schürmann (1895-1941) . In: Gütersloher contributions to local and regional studies , number 46 from March 1977, pp. 927–933
  • Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich . Who was what before and after 1945 . 2nd Edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Jürgen Peiffer: Hirnforschung in Deutschland 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), Berlin 2004, p. 1114
  2. Hans-Walter Schmuhl : Brain research and the murder of the sick. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research 1937-1940. Issue, state of research and scope of interpretation . In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte , issue 4/2002, Oldenbourg, Munich 2002, ISSN 0042-5702, p. 588 ( PDF )
  3. Ernst Klee : Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. , Frankfurt am Main 1997, p. 196