Peter Kohnstamm

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Peter Kohnstamm (3 years), his sister (11 years) and his brother Rudolf in the background (14 years)

Peter George Konstam , born as Peter Georg Oskar Kohnstamm (born April 19, 1908 in Frankfurt am Main , † February 15, 1995 in Kirkwall ) was a German international trauma surgeon, tuberculosis researcher, author of scientific papers and professor at the medical faculty in Ibadan , Nigeria .

He grew up in the internationally renowned sanatorium of his parents and, together with his sister Anneliese, served as the inspiration for the spa guest Gerdt von Bassewitz for the well-known children 's fairy tale Peterchens Mondfahrt .

Childhood and education, first marriage

Student ID of Peter Kohnstamm from 1930 (Frankfurt am Main is given as place of birth)

Peter Konstam grew up in Königstein im Taunus together with three older siblings as the son of a Jewish psychiatrist. As doctors, his parents ran the internationally known “Sanatorium Dr. Kohnstamm ”, which specialized in the treatment of artists and other“ intellectually superior ”people. In his memoirs, Konstam describes his impressions of the famous patients Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Otto Klemperer , Kurt Hahn , Carl Sternheim , Reinhold Lepsius - while Henry van de Velde , Botho Graef , Karl Wolfskehl and Stefan George were friends of the family (the latter two were school friends of his father from Darmstadt).

After the early death of his father in 1917 ("... his father died, and our world collapsed", p. 29) the sanatorium was sold (1921). From 1918 on, Konstam attended the humanistic Lessing Gymnasium in Frankfurt am Main, like his eldest brother Rudi (1897–1916), who died in the First World War . One of his school friends was Fritz von Bergmann , the son of Gustav von Bergmann .

Together with his first wife Micha-Lina (née Blumin, born July 29, 1908 in Wilna / Russia, doctorate on June 29, 1934 at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin - Konstam does not mention this marriage in his memoirs) he studied of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main, the medical field.

Graduation ceremony in 1927, speech, performance of Tiresias
Lessing-Gymnasium, list of high school graduates at Easter 1927
Accompaniment of a Mozart sonata on the piano at a party at Lessing-Gymnasium in 1926

After graduating as Dr. med. in Frankfurt (1933) he decided to emigrate after the anti-Jewish riots "carefully orchestrated" by Goebbels on April 1 and a special professional ban against his senior doctor Rosenberg , where he wanted to work as an assistant at a large Berlin hospital. Even though he was a member of the Protestant denomination, he was refused entry to work because of his Jewish surname ("At that moment I decided to get rid of the brown mud and said goodbye - forever", it says in his memoirs, p. 57 ).

He cultivated a lifelong friendship from childhood with the composer and conductor Otto Klemperer , who was largely responsible for his devotion to music. A talented pianist and conductor himself, he produced many operas and choral works in Nigeria and on the Orkney Islands.

Peter Konstam was the grandson of the physiologist Johannes Gad and the nephew of the Africa researcher Johannes Gad junior. His son is the renowned historian and underwater archaeologist Angus Konstam . His cousin was the film actress Phyllis Konstam . The family was largely related via Albert Andreae de Neufville to those of Thomas Mann , Walther Rathenaus and the Geheeb family.

Emigration, life and death in the Orkney Islands

He immediately emigrated to Great Britain, perfected his English, received the British medical state examination in 1934, completed a conjoint (conjoint analysis) as part of a supplementary course in 1935 and was made a “Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh” in 1938.

Konstam practiced as a doctor in Huddersfield / Yorkshire and spent the war years as a surgeon at a hospital in Aberdeen , where he cared for the war wounded. One of his students - Sheila - became his 2nd wife and mother of his son. In 1945 he received British citizenship and then completed his British military service in Hamburg.

After the war he worked as a major in the “Royal Army Medical Corps” and as a surgeon in Germany (especially in Hamburg ).

In 1951 he was appointed lecturer and later professor of the medical faculty at University College Ibadan, Nigeria, where he worked at the hospital until 1962 before he started working as a surgeon in Kirkwall / Orkney Islands. His publications dealt with gastric ulcer and other diseases in the geographical area of ​​Nigeria. His greatest contributions were in the area of ​​effective treatment for spinal tuberculosis using chemotherapy and exercise therapy, which he lectured on in 1962 in the "Arris and Gale" lecture collection. He was also appointed a member of the Medical Research Council, which researched similar treatments in Korea, Hong Kong and Madras. That same year he was appointed to the Orkney Islands Health Department, where he established a blood transfusion service.

Peter Konstam died after a partial paralysis caused by a cervical laminectomy . His PubMed Central - US National Institutes of Health (NIH) biography contains an incorrect date of death (February 19). According to the Orkney Islands authorities, he died on February 15, 1995.

Old connections to Germany

All the years after his emigration he kept in contact with the Königsteinerin Gertrud Koch (1913-2007), who like his father was active in the social democratic party (and like him had been active as a city councilor for decades). It was she who urged him to publish his memoirs. Koch was also one of so far a total of six witnesses who confirmed that the novel The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann in the Dr. Kohnstamm played.

It must be mentioned here that Peter Kohnstamm had the text about Max Neisser from the documentation "Jews in Königstein" printed in his book in full . - This was the father of Liselotte Dieckmann - a cousin of Richard Hallgarten , the close friend of Klaus and Erika Mann . She was a comparative literary scholar - which could explain the parallel story by Peter Kohnstamm and Katia Mann .

She also died very old in 1994 , the same year in which the memoirs of Kohnstamm appeared in book form. This also seems like a hint, since Peter Kohnstamm was born in Frankfurt on the very day - April 19, 1908 - on which her grandfather Charles Hallgarten died there. The date was the 4th day of Passover , Easter Sunday .

literature

  • Peter Kohnstamm: Songs of a traveling journeyman - memories of times gone by. (Peter Konstam: Songs of a Wayfarer. Recollections of Times Past ), Königstein 1994, ISBN 3-9800793-2-5 .
  • Heinz Sturm-Godramstein: Jews in Königstein , Magistrate of the City of Königstein, 1983
  • Walther Amelung : Be it as it may, it was so beautiful. Life memories as contemporary history. Frankfurt am Main 1984.
  • Rudolf Bonnet: The Lessing-Gymnasium (Frankfurt) in Frankfurt am Main - teachers and students 1897-1947 , Frankfurt am Main 1954
  • Andreas Mettenleiter : Testimonials, memories, diaries and letters from German-speaking doctors. Supplements and supplements III (I – Z). In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 22, 2003, pp. 269-305, here: p. 274.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Eva Weissweiler : Otto Klemperer - A German-Jewish Artist's Life, Cologne, 2010, p. 85 f.
    Magistrate of the city of Königstein im Taunus (ed.): 150 years of cure in Königstein. From the beginning to the present (1851–2001). (Documentation on the occasion of the spa anniversary in 2001) Königstein im Taunus 2001.
  2. ↑ Abitur class Easter 1927: No. 745. Kohnstamm, (now Constam), Peter, * 19 April 2008, Dr. Surgeon at Ibadan in Nigeria (West Africa), stud. med. Heidelberg, Munich, Ffm., Berlin, Ffm; there Prom. 33 (50/640); Internship in Berlin; Emigrated to England and passed the state examination there; Surgeon in Aberdeen (Scotland) and then at St. Clad's Hospital in Birmingham; October 51 emigration to Nigeria; there also took over a surgical teaching position at the University College at Ibadan; kl .; Brother of No. 476. (From: Rudolf Bonnet: Das Lessing Gymnasium zu Frankfurt am Main - teachers and students 1897-1947, Frankfurt am Main 1954).
personal data
SURNAME Kohnstamm, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Konstam, Peter George; Kohnstamm, Peter Georg Oskar (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German international trauma surgeon, tuberculosis researcher, author of scientific papers and professor at the medical faculty in Ibadan, Nigeria
DATE OF BIRTH April 19, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH February 15, 1995
Place of death Kirkwall