Philalethes Kuhn

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Philalethes Kuhn (born September 13, 1870 in Berlin ; † August 4, 1937 in Bad Tölz ) was a German tropical medicine and hygienist .

Life

Kuhn was born as the son of the city and district school inspector Dr. phil. Ernst Kuhn was born in Berlin. He attended the Friedrich-Werdersche Gymnasium in his native Berlin, where he passed the Abitur in 1889, and studied medicine at the Kaiser Wilhelms Academy for military medical education from 1892 to 1894 . In 1894 he passed the medical state examination. In the same year the doctorate took place.

Kuhn maintained his military career, was an assistant doctor in 1895 and was transferred to the Imperial Protection Force for German South West Africa in 1896 . Here he took part in the campaign against the Zwartbooi-Nama and Northwest Herero in 1897 . From 1897 to 1900 he was district chief of Grootfontein . In 1902/03 he worked temporarily at the Institute for Tropical Diseases in Hamburg . In 1903 he was born in Swakopmund with Maria. Knight married. When the military conflict with the Herero broke out, the couple were returning from their honeymoon in the north of South West Africa (Grootfontein). Kuhn was activated in the protection force and led the defense of the besieged Omaruru . As a doctor, he made lasting contributions to the creation of the Elisabethhaus in Windhoek (maternity ward) and the Heimathaus in Keetmanshoop as well as through his fundamental research on African horse sickness . In 1906 he was assigned to the High Command of the Protection Forces in the Colonial Department of the Foreign Office as a medical officer. From 1909 to 1912 he was on leave without a salary and during this time did research in the bacteriological department of the Imperial Health Department in Berlin.

In 1912 Kuhn was transferred to Cameroon , where he took over the management of the government hospital and the position of chief doctor of the protection force . As the successor to Hans Ziemann , he was eventually appointed medical officer for the protected area. On February 17, 1914, he was reassigned to the Reich Colonial Office for use as an assistant at the Institute for Ship and Tropical Hygiene, and in June 1914 he was retired from active military service.

On the First World War, Kuhn took on from August 1914 to mid-1915 as chief physician of the field hospital 9 of the XV. Army Corps . After that he was a consultant hygienist in Strasbourg . In 1914 he received the title of professor and qualified as a professor at the University of Strasbourg in the subject of hygiene. In 1915 he became an associate professor of social hygiene and head of the bacteriological institute for Alsace . From mid-1917 until the end of the war he served as an army hygienist on the Western Front. As senior physician he was finally dismissed after the end of the war.

As a civilian, Kuhn first took on a professorship for hygiene at the University of Tübingen (1919/20), then at the Technical University in Dresden (1920). At the same time, he acted as chairman of the scientific advisory board of the Hygiene Museum and deputy chairman of the German Hygiene Museum e. V. (1920 to 1923). On April 1, 1926, he became a full professor of hygiene and director of the Hygiene Institute at the University of Giessen . For health reasons he was retired on May 1, 1935. In the same year he received an honorary doctorate from the university.

Kuhn was one of the leading racial hygienists of his time. Since 1905 he was a member of the German Society for Racial Hygiene, which he co-founded, and advocated racial selection even before the First World War. As early as 1923 he became a member of the NSDAP . In May 1924 he was elected together with Hellmuth von Mücke in Dresden as the leader of the Völkisch-Soziale bloc , a successor organization to the NSDAP, which has since been banned. But in December of the same year he resigned from this office due to internal disputes. In 1931 he rejoined the NSDAP. Since 1932 he was a member of the Reichsschaft der Hochschullehrer in the Nazi teachers' union and took part several times in "racial hygiene training courses" of the National Socialist German Medical Association . As one of the first professors, he took up the subject of “Racial Hygiene and Population Policy” in his lectures. After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists in May 1933 he was one of the actors in the book burnings .

In addition, he also dealt with studies on alcohol in the tropics, research and control of malaria , sleeping sickness and multiple sclerosis . In the early 1930s, he described structures that he observed in bacterial cultures under certain conditions and referred to as Pettenkoferien . In his opinion, these would be protozoa-like parasites that penetrate the bacterial cells and live in symbiosis with them. In fact, it was only a question of changes in shape of the bacteria examined in response to the particular culture conditions he had chosen.

After a stroke he resigned on May 1, 1935. He died two years later on August 4, 1937.

Publications (selection)

literature

  • Stephan Dalchow: The development of the National Socialist hereditary and racial care at the medical faculty of the Ludwig University of Giessen . Schmitz, Gießen 1998, ISBN 3-87711-205-6 , ( Work on the history of medicine in Gießen 26), (At the same time: Gießen, Univ., Diss., 1998).
  • Wolfgang U. Eckart : Medicine and colonial imperialism. Germany 1884-1945 . Schöningh, Paderborn et al. 1997, ISBN 3-506-72181-X .
  • Helga Jakobi, Peter Chroust, Matthias Hamann: Aeskulap & Hakenkreuz. On the history of the Medical Faculty in Gießen between 1933 and 1945 . A documentation of the working group “Medicine u. Fascism". General student committee of the student body of the Justus Liebig University, Giessen 1982.
  • G. Olpp: Outstanding tropical doctors in words and pictures . Verlag der Ärztliche Rundschau Gmelin, Munich 1932, pp. 219–223.
  • Jürgen Peter: The breach of racial hygiene in medicine. Effects of racial hygiene on thought collectives and medical fields from 1918 to 1934. Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-935964-33-1 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andreas Peschel: The development of the Dresden NSDAP until 1933 , in: Dresdner Geschichtsbuch 18 (2013), ISBN 978-3-936300-91-8 , pp. 151–170, here p. 153.
  2. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 350.
personal data
SURNAME Kuhn, Philalethes
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German tropical medicine and hygienist
DATE OF BIRTH September 13, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 4th August 1937
Place of death Bad Tölz