Peter Holtz

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Cover sheet entitled: Catechol Amines and Other Sympathomimetic Amines
Title of the major work by Peter Holtz published in 1966

Peter Holtz (born  February 6, 1902 in Stolberg (Rhineland) , †  November 9, 1970 in Bonn ; full name: Peter Wilhelm Joseph Holtz ) was a German pharmacologist and physiologist . He worked from 1938 to 1952 as a professor of physiological chemistry and, after the Second World War, of pharmacology at the University of Rostock . From 1953 to 1970 he held the chair for pharmacology and toxicology as well as institute director at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. His most important achievements included the discovery of the enzyme dopa decarboxylase in 1939 and, subsequently, in the 1940s, the detection of noradrenaline as an endogenous substance and research into the biosynthesis of catecholamines , which in addition to noradrenaline include adrenaline and dopamine .

These results were fundamental to elucidating the effects of catecholamines as neurotransmitters and hormones . Based on this, specific catecholamine derivatives were developed for drug therapy , in which they play a role as sympathomimetics in emergency medicine for cardiac arrest and shock conditions, as well as for the treatment of respiratory diseases such as bronchial asthma and COPD , low blood pressure and Parkinson's disease . Because of his scientific work, Peter Holtz is therefore regarded, alongside Otto Loewi, as one of the most renowned German pharmacologists in the first half of the 20th century. Expressions of the recognition of his research were among other things the award of the Schmiedeberg plaque in 1964 , the highest award of the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology , as well as his acceptance into the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina and the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin .

A controversial aspect of his work is the more recently documented collaboration with the anatomist August Hirt , who carried out experiments with mustard gas on inmates of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp during the Nazi era from 1942 . It can be assumed that Peter Holtz was most likely aware of Hirt's human experiments , while his direct involvement can practically be ruled out.

Life

Study and Early Work

Peter Holtz was born in 1902 in the Rhineland town of Stolberg as the son of a businessman. He grew up in a bourgeois Catholic family and attended the humanistic grammar school in his hometown. He then studied medicine and, influenced by the Nobel laureate Albrecht Kossel , who worked in Heidelberg, chemistry at the universities of Bonn , Würzburg , Freiburg , Munich and Heidelberg . From 1925 he was a member of the Corps Bavaria Munich . At Bonn University, where he in 1926 the medical preliminary examination and three years later the medical state examination consisted doctorate he in 1930 when Hermann Fühner about the "detoxification of chloroform ."

In 1929, on Fühner's recommendation, he moved to the University of Greifswald , where he received an assistant position at the Institute for Pharmacology financed by the Emergency Association of German Science and initially devoted himself to radiobiological topics. In 1930 he went to the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Cambridge with a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation and in 1931 to the National Institute for Medical Research in London , where he worked in the working group of the later Nobel Prize winner Henry Hallett Dale , who was interested in Peter Holtz in research into endogenous substances. At the end of his fellowship, he moved to University College in Cambridge , before returning to the Pharmacological Institute of Greifswald University as a research assistant in 1932. In 1936 Peter Holtz obtained his habilitation in Greifswald under Paul Wels , the long-time director of the Greifswald Institute for Pharmacology, with a thesis on "Oxidation and reduction effects of irradiated sugar" and the lectureship for the subjects of pharmacology and toxicology . Along with Kurt Repke , who worked at various academy institutes in Berlin-Buch , and Fritz Markwardt , who works at the Medical Academy in Erfurt , he is one of the three most important students of Wels.

His application for an extraordinary professorship in physiological chemistry was rejected in May 1938, since it usually required at least six years of teaching activity for it to be granted. In November of the same year, however, he received the extraordinary chair for physiological chemistry at the University of Rostock , where he also held courses in pharmacology from the beginning of 1940. During his lectures in Rostock he met his future wife, a student of dentistry , whom he married in March 1939 in her hometown Stralsund . In May 1933 he joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) and in August 1934 the National Socialist German Lecturer Association (NSDDB). According to his own statements, he did not hold any office in either organization.

Collaboration with August Hirt

At the end of 1942, the anatomist August Hirt , who worked at the University of Strasbourg , contacted Peter Holtz through Wolfram Sievers , managing director of the German Heritage Research Foundation . Among other things, Hirt dealt with intravital microscopy, a form of fluorescence microscopy for examining living tissue . Among other things, he planned their use to research a possible protective effect of vitamins in the event of damage caused by the use of mustard gas as a warfare agent . From 1942 he also carried out experiments on prisoners of the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp . In 1943, Peter Holtz received a research assignment from the Reich Research Council with the title “Fluorescent bodies in normal and diseased organs” as part of his contacts with Hirt . The corresponding results were not published, the reports on this work were only made internally. For example, the mention of “Results on tumor tissue and infectious diseases ” in Hirt's reports most likely refers to results that Holtz had obtained in animal experiments in Rostock.

In the book "Auschwitz, the Nazi Medicine and its Victims" by the journalist Ernst Klee , Peter Holtz is named among the participants in a conference that took place in March 1943 at the University of Strasbourg and to which a number of academics were invited demonstrably involved in human experiments in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp. The Canadian historian Michael Kater went in his work “The Ahnenerbe der SS 1935–1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich ”, which is based on his dissertation at the University of Heidelberg, assumes that Peter Holtz and other scientists and doctors were“ demonstrably involved in human experiments ”in the context of Hirt's mustard gas experiments. However, Michael Kater made no distinction between human experiments in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp and experiments planned by Kurt Blome and Sigmund Rascher at the Central Institute for Cancer Research founded in 1942 in Nesselstedt near Posen in relation to the people involved . In this regard, however, there is most likely confusion between Peter Holtz and the pharmacologist Friedrich Holtz , who was the head of department at the Nesselstedt Institute, due to the same name .

According to recent research in the context of a dissertation at the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Greifswald, it can be assumed with regard to the contacts between August Hirt and Peter Holtz that Holtz probably knew about Hirt's human experiments in the Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp, without this being proven beyond doubt . A direct involvement of Peter Holtz in the experiments carried out by Hirt on concentration camp prisoners can, however, be practically ruled out, since it was never planned by those involved and there is no evidence of Peter Holtz's stay in Natzweiler-Struthof. With regard to his motivation for working with August Hirt, scientific interest in the method of intravital microscopy can be assumed, ideological reasons or approval of Hirt's views on “Jewish and Bolshevik subhumanism ” are likely to have played just as little role as intimidation or fear of repression.

Life after World War II

After the end of the Second World War , Peter Holtz was considered "burdened" because of his NSDAP membership, which initially led to the loss of his position at Rostock University. However, in the context of denazification, he was exonerated by an investigative committee of the university on the basis of statements from various people, in particular from neighbors and members of the university, and subsequently became candidates for the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED) in 1946 . In October of the same year, when the University of Rostock reopened for the winter semester of 1946/1947, he was given the chair of pharmacology. In 1949 Peter Holtz turned down a professorship for pharmacology at the Humboldt University in Berlin in favor of staying in Rostock, where he was elected dean of the medical faculty a year later . Like other renowned academics in the GDR, he concluded an individual contract with the State Secretariat for Higher Education in 1951, which, among other things, assured him of freedom of movement when traveling abroad. A year later he belonged to a group of 52 Rostock university lecturers who signed a memorandum published on March 31, 1952 , in which they rejected the science policy adopted by the SED's second university conference.

On December 17, 1952, the Medical Faculty of Berlin's Humboldt University put Peter Holtz at the top of a list of proposals for the chair of Physiological Chemistry, ahead of Samuel Mitja Rapoport and Erich Strack . In the same month, however, Peter Holtz was appointed full professor of pharmacology and toxicology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main , succeeding Fritz Külz , who had died in 1949 . Since he did not receive permission from the GDR authorities to move permanently to Frankfurt , he did not return to the GDR in April 1953 after attending a conference in Bad Nauheim and the German Congress of Internists in Wiesbaden . His time at Frankfurt University was initially shaped by the personal conflict with his colleague Walther Laubender , which also affected research and teaching , who did not accept Holtz's appointment as director of the institute. Rather, Laubender claimed this position, which he held provisionally from 1949 until Holtz was appointed, for himself. The resulting and increasingly intensifying disputes ended in 1956 when Laubender left the institute by taking over the management of an independent department for experimental medicine. In 1957, Peter Holtz turned down an offer at the University of Cologne , and a year later he was visiting professor at the University of Chicago . He stayed in Frankfurt until his retirement in March 1970 and died in November of the same year in a clinic in Bonn as a result of bronchial carcinoma .

His successor as professor at the University of Frankfurt was Dieter Palm .

Reception and aftermath

Scientific work

Norepinephrine structural formula
Structural formula of noradrenaline, for which Peter Holtz provided evidence as an endogenous substance and clarified the biosynthetic pathway

Peter Holtz published 194 scientific publications in the course of his career , most of them in the specialist journal Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archive for Pharmacology , of which he was an editor from 1960. Although he was fluent in English , he published the majority of his work in German-language magazines by the end of his career . The monograph “Catecholamines and other sympathicomimetic amines”, dedicated to Otto Loewi and Henry Hallett Dale . Biosynthesis and Inactivation, Release and Effect ”, which can be seen as a summary of his life's work, was published in German in 1966.

At the beginning of his career, the focus of his research was on radiobiological work and investigations into the effects of the tissue hormone and neurotransmitter histamine , its biosynthesis from the amino acid histidine and the physiological and chemical aspects of ascorbic acid (vitamin C). His most important activities in the period that followed concerned the body's own reactions between tyrosine , dihydroxyphenylalanine (dopa), noradrenaline and adrenaline, as well as the role of the enzyme dopa decarboxylase, which he discovered in 1939, in the context of this synthesis pathway. At the same time as Hermann Blaschko in Cambridge and Oxford , in the 1940s, in addition to the detection of noradrenaline in the adrenal medulla , he succeeded in fully elucidating the biosynthesis of catecholamines , which among other things created the essential basis for elucidating their effect as neurotransmitters and hormones . The corresponding publication, which he had submitted for publication in October 1944, was not published until three years later due to delays caused by the war. However, the Swedish physiologist Ulf von Euler also published two papers on this subject in 1946. Von Euler, who together with Julius Axelrod and Bernard Katz received the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1970 “for their discoveries in connection with the humoral transmitters in the nerve endings and the mechanism of their storage, release and inactivation”, mentioned in his speech at the award ceremony on December 12, 1970 also the contribution by Peter Holtz, who had died about a month earlier.

At the end of his career, his interest in adrenaline and noradrenaline and in the regulation of the sympathetic nervous system led Peter Holtz to do research on the pathophysiological basis of arterial hypertension and its therapy.

Appreciation and memory

Due to his scientific life's work, Peter Holtz is one of the most renowned German pharmacologists, alongside Otto Loewi, in the first half of the 20th century. The results of his research, as well as his work as a university professor, had a fundamental and lasting impact on the subject. Both the lectures of Peter Holtz, which were characterized by his striving for clear presentation and also included experiments for demonstration purposes, as well as his lectures at scientific congresses were, according to the memories of colleagues, assistants and doctoral students , characterized by a "brilliant style of speech". According to his successor Dieter Palm, Peter Holtz was a “fanatical experimenter” and the physiological relevance of his research was of the greatest importance to him. His working style was not characterized by a systematic and methodical approach to dealing with a question, but rather by spontaneity and creativity.

Eight of his employees at Frankfurt University completed their habilitation under his supervision. In addition to his successor Dieter Palm, his students included Kurt Greeff , who took over the management of the Pharmacological Institute at the University of Düsseldorf and in 1982 acted as chairman of the German Society for Cardiology, Hans-Joachim Schümann , who later founded the new company for more than 20 years The Pharmacological Institute of the University of Essen was headed by Athineos Philippu , who worked as a professor at the Universities of Würzburg and Innsbruck , and Horst Grobecker , who was appointed professor at the University of Regensburg . Holtz students also achieved management positions in the pharmaceutical industry , for example Hans-Günther Kroneberg from 1963 to 1972 as head of the Pharmacological Institute of Bayer AG and Wolfgang Schaumann between 1960 and 1980 in the same function at Boehringer Mannheim .

From 1952 Peter Holtz belonged to the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , in whose Senate he was elected in 1956. In addition, from 1953 he was a full, from 1967 corresponding and from 1969 external member of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin, which later became the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . In 1943 he and his assistant Karl Credner received the Von Eicken Prize, endowed with 2000 Reichsmarks, and in 1952 the GDR National Prize of 25,000 marks . In 1964, together with Otto Krayer, he was honored with the Schmiedeberg plaque , the highest award of the German Society for Experimental and Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology . Three years later in the USA, together with Ulf von Euler, George Joseph Popják and the later Nobel Prize winner John W. Cornforth, he was awarded the Stouffer Prize, endowed with 50,000 US dollars and awarded for outstanding research on high blood pressure and arteriosclerosis . The German Pharmacological Society, which he chaired in 1957, made him an honorary member in 1970.

The Research Center of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics at the University of Greifswald, founded in 2001, was named after Peter Holtz, a research network of working groups from the university's institutes and clinics for pharmacology, cardiology, anesthesia and pediatric oncology. As a result of the publication in 2006 of a biographical and medical-historical dissertation funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (see references), in which the type and extent of the collaboration between Peter Holtz and August Hirt were examined and documented, it was abandoned of the name.

Works (selection)

  • Peter Holtz, Karl Credner, Hedwig Walter: About the specificity of the amino acid decarboxylases. In: Hoppe-Seyler's journal for physiological chemistry . 262 (3-5) / 1939. Verlag Walter de Gruyter, pp. 111-119, ISSN  0018-4888
  • Peter Holtz: Dopa decarboxylase. In: Natural Sciences . 27 (43 )/1939. Springer-Verlag, pp. 724/725, ISSN  0028-1042
  • Peter Holtz, Karl Credner, Günther Kroneberg: About the sympathicomimetic pressor principle of the urine ("urosympathetic"). In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Pharmacology . 204 (1-3) / 1947. Springer-Verlag, pp. 228-243, ISSN  0028-1298
  • Sympathicomimetic therapy, especially of circulatory regulation disorders. Series: Regensburg Yearbook for Medical Training. Volume 5. Stuttgart 1956
  • Peter Holtz, Klaus Stock, Erik Westermann: Formation of Tetrahydropapaveroline from Dopamine In Vitro. In: Nature . 203 (4945 )/1964. Nature Publishing Group, pp. 656-658, ISSN  0028-0836
  • Catecholamines and other sympathomimetic amines. Biosynthesis and inactivation, release and effect. Series: Results of Physiology, Biological Chemistry and Experimental Pharmacology . Volume 58. Berlin and New York 1966
  • Pharmacology and toxicology. Drug damage and side effects from the pharmacologist's point of view. In: Robert Heintz (Ed.): Diseases caused by drugs: diagnostics, clinic, pathogenesis, therapy. Stuttgart 1966, pp. 1-44

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 17 (see literature)
  2. ↑ a b Hans-Joachim Schümann, Results of Physiology, Biological Chemistry and Experimental Pharmacology 1972, 66: 2–12 (see literature)
  3. ↑ Kösener Corpslisten 1996, 13, 1549
  4. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 19 (see literature)
  5. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 21 (see literature)
  6. ↑ a b c d e f Hans Herken, Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archive for Pharmacology 1972, 274 (1): 1–6 (see literature)
  7. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 22 (see literature)
  8. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 23 (see literature)
  9. ^ Athineos Philippu: History and work of the pharmacological, clinical-pharmacological and toxicological institutes in German-speaking countries. Berenkamp, ​​Innsbruck 2004, ISBN 3-85093-180-3 , p. 281
  10. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 24–26 (see literature)
  11. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 26/27 (see literature)
  12. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 33 (see literature)
  13. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 42 (see literature)
  14. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 40/41 (see literature)
  15. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 44 (see literature)
  16. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 46 (see literature)
  17. ↑ Ernst Klee: Auschwitz, Nazi medicine and its victims. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-10-039306-6 , p. 379
  18. ↑ Michael Kater: The "Ahnenerbe" of the SS 1935–1945. A contribution to the cultural policy of the Third Reich. Series: Studies on Contemporary History. Volume 6. Second edition. Oldenbourg Wissenschaftsverlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-486-55858-7 , p. 417
  19. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 50–52 (see literature)
  20. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 124 (see literature)
  21. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 53 (see literature)
  22. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 127 (see literature)
  23. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 54/55 (see literature)
  24. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 34–36 (see literature)
  25. ↑ a b c Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 56/57 (see literature)
  26. ↑ Gerhard Maeß: May many doctrines fight for the one truth: 575 years University of Rostock. Konrad Reich Verlag, Rostock 1994, ISBN 3-86167-062-3 , p. 35 and p. 214
  27. ↑ Hans Mikosch, Gerhard Oberkofler: About the two-time emigration of Samuel Mitja Rapoport from Vienna (1937 and 1952). Some archive notes. In: Communications from the Alfred Klahr Society. 3/2008. Alfred Klahr Gesellschaft, pp. 14–22 (especially p. 19)
  28. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 58–67 (see literature)
  29. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 67–72 (see literature)
  30. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 72/73 (see literature)
  31. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 122 (see literature)
  32. ^ Björn Lemmer : Obituary for Prof. Dr. med. Dieter Palm In: BIOspectrum. 4/2005. Spektrum Akademischer Verlag, p. 434, ISSN  0947-0867 ( PDF file , approx. 97KB; accessed on July 20, 2010)
  33. ↑ For a bibliography of Peter Holtz's publications see: Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 128–142 (see literature)
  34. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 95 (see literature)
  35. ↑ a b Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 98/99 (see literature)
  36. ↑ See the chronological presentation of Peter Holtz's research in: Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, pp. 80–96 (see literature)
  37. ↑ US by Euler: Adrenergic Neurotransmitter Functions Nobel Lecture, December 12, 1970 ( PDF file , approx. 167KB; accessed on July 20, 2010)
  38. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 97 (see literature)
  39. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 100 (see literature)
  40. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 99 (see literature)
  41. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 125 (see literature)
  42. ^ Athineos Philippu: History and work of the pharmacological, clinical-pharmacological and toxicological institutes in German-speaking countries. Berenkamp, ​​Innsbruck 2004, ISBN 3-85093-180-3 , p. 205
  43. ↑ Member entry of Peter Holtz at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on January 25, 2013.
  44. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 118 (see literature)
  45. ↑ a b Holtz, Peter . In: Werner Hartkopf: The Berlin Academy of Sciences. Its members and award winners 1700–1990. Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-05-002153-5 , p. 158.
  46. ↑ Christina Witte, Greifswald 2006, p. 117 (see literature)
  47. ↑ Irvine H. Page, James W. McCubbin: The Meaning of the 1967 Stouffer Prize. In: Circulation. 37/1968. American Heart Association, pp. 473-475, ISSN  0009-7322
  48. ↑ Inge Kutter: The medicine explainer. History and ethics: a historian in Greifswald teaches prospective doctors unknown aspects of their profession. In: The time . Edition 47/2007 of November 15, 2007 (accessed on July 20, 2010)
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on August 9, 2010 .
personal data
SURNAME Holtz, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Holtz, Peter Wilhelm Joseph (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacologist and physiologist
DATE OF BIRTH February 6, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Stolberg (Rhineland)
DATE OF DEATH November 9, 1970
Place of death Bonn