Philipp Ellinger

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Philipp Ellinger (born June 18, 1887 in Frankfurt am Main , † September 12, 1952 in London ) was a German-Jewish pharmacologist . He helped develop fluorescence- based intravital microscopy and discovered the occurrence of riboflavin in the body of mammals .

Life

He was a son of the businessman Leo Ellinger and his wife Emma nee. Ruben. After attending grammar school in Frankfurt am Main, he studied medicine and zoology in Munich from 1905 to 1911, medicine and chemistry in Heidelberg and chemistry, physics and mineralogy in Greifswald. His uncle Alexander Ellinger , a pharmacologist in Königsberg and Frankfurt am Main, about whom he later wrote a detailed biography, encouraged him in his natural scientific and medical inclination. In 1911 he was awarded a doctorate in Greifswald with a dissertation prepared by the chemist Karl Friedrich von Auwers "Investigations on monounsaturated hydrocarbons, acids and esters with semicyclic double bonds". phil. PhD . In the same year he married Elisabeth geb. Guttmann (1892-1983). He then became an assistant at the Pharmacological Institute of the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg , headed by Rudolf Gottlieb . There he obtained his second medical doctorate in 1914 with a dissertation “Contributions to the knowledge of the specific secretory function of the renal nerves”. Back in Heidelberg after military service in World War I , he completed his habilitation in 1922 with a thesis on the pharmacology of cellular respiration for pharmacology. After Gottlieb's death in 1924, he was acting head of the Heidelberg Pharmacological Institute until 1925 when Hermann Wieland (1885–1929) took up his post. The acting management was repeated when Wieland died and Wolfgang Heubner succeeded him in 1930. Two years later, Ellinger received "the long-awaited ordinariate " at the Medical Academy in Düsseldorf . One year later, however, he was dismissed as a " non-Aryan " due to the law to restore the civil service . The pharmacologist Otto Krayer , who works in Berlin, refused the call to the vacant chair in a letter that has become famous, in which he described "the elimination of Jewish scientists as an injustice". His successor in Düsseldorf was Otto Girndt (1895–1948). Ellinger was offered a position at the nascent University of Ankara , but canceled soon after entering Turkey. He emigrated with his wife and three children to London, where he, supported by the Council for Assisting Refugee Academics (Council to assist refugee academics) employees at the Lister Institute of Preventive Medicine ( Lister -Institute for Preventive Medicine ) was. In 1937 and 1938 he traveled to Egypt on behalf of the Medical Research Council to research the Pellagra . In 1939 the family took on British citizenship so they were not interned after the outbreak of World War II . After the war Girndt was removed from office as a result of a denazification process . His successors were Ludwig Heilmeyer from 1945 to 1946 and Hellmut Weese from 1946 to 1950 . It is true that the British military government and a rectors' conference of the universities in the British zone of occupation demanded the reinstatement of the university professors who had been displaced by National Socialism. The Düsseldorf Medical Academy did not make any serious effort to get Ellinger back. She announced his retroactive retirement on June 1, 1950.

plant

After completing his medical doctoral thesis, Ellinger continued to occupy himself with the kidney nerves. This interest led to contact with the Heidelberg anatomist August Hirt . With him, who joined the Combat League for German Culture in 1932 and the SS in 1933 , he developed intravital microscopy from 1929 onwards. Test animals were injected with fluorescent substances such as fluorescein or trypaflavin and their organs were irradiated with ultraviolet light under the microscope . The fluorescent light from the cells of the organs then gave the microscopic image. Ellinger and Hirt used the method to study kidney function. They noticed that some cells, such as the epithelial cells of the kidney tubules , but also liver cells, fluoresced yellow-green when exposed to ultraviolet radiation if the animals had not yet been treated with fluorescent dyes.

Ellinger and his colleague Walter Koschara (1904–1945) examined the fluorescent pigments in 1933 more closely. They differed from those previously found and could be obtained in better yield from whey . Ellinger and Koschara called it by the collective name Lyochrome and purified five lactoflavins from it . The same pigments were discovered at the same time - in 1933 - by the Heidelberg chemist Richard Kuhn and his colleagues in yeast and in bacterial cultures and called flavins . "We came to an agreement with <Kuhn and co-workers> to name the group Lyochrome and the individual compounds flavins with the addition of the name of the material of origin, so that the flavin from milk is called lactoflavin ." It was the discovery of what is now known as riboflavin . Ellinger and Koschara's summary report in the journal Nature was Ellinger's "Schwanengesang in Deutschland". Ellinger also continued research on the subject in England.

The second topic in England, the fruit of his journey to Egypt, became the biochemistry of nicotinamide from 1942 , the deficiency of which leads to pellagra. He showed that antibacterial chemotherapy can lead to pellagra by reducing the production of nicotinamide in the intestine.

literature

  • Guido Jakobs, Karen Bayer: Displaced Jewish University Lecturers - Would you like to return? In: Wolfgang Woelk, Frank Sparing, Karen Bayer, Michael G. Esch: After the dictatorship. The Düsseldorf Medical Academy from the end of the Second World War to the 1960s, pp. 115–137. Klartext Verlag , Essen 2003. ISBN 3-89861-173-6 .
  • Alexander Knipis: Ellinger, Philipp (1887–1952), biochemist, pharmacologist. Retrieved October 13, 2013.
  • Jürgen Lindner, Heinz Lüllmann: Pharmacological institutes and biographies of their directors. Editio Cantor, Aulendorf 1996, ISBN 3-87193-172-1 .
  • K.öffelholz, U. Trendelenburg: Persecuted German-speaking pharmacologists 1933–1945, p. 78. 2nd edition, Dr. Schrör Verlag, Frechen 2008, ISBN 3-9806004-8-3 .
  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 . Volume 2.1. Munich: Saur, 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 260

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ellinger, Alexander. In: New German Biography . Volume 4, pp. 457-458, 1959.
  2. ^ Philipp Ellinger: Alexander Ellinger (1870-1923). In: Results of Physiology . 23, 1924, pp. 139-179.
  3. ↑ Philipp Ellinger: On the pharmacology of cell respiration . In: Hoppe-Seyler's Journal for Physiological Chemistry . 119, 1922, pp. 11-38.
  4. ↑ Knipis.
  5. ↑ Klaus Starke : The history of the pharmacological institute of the University of Freiburg. Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004. 2nd edition ( PDF 1.52 MB)
  6. ↑ Udo Schagen: Resistant behavior in the sea of ​​enthusiasm, opportunism and anti-Semitism. In: Yearbook for University History . 10, 2007, pp. 223-247.
  7. ↑ P. Pulewka: Doctor and researcher for 56 years . In: Therapy of the Present: Monthly Journal for Practical Medicine . 119, 1980, pp. 216-228; here p. 218.
  8. ↑ Philipp Ellinger: On the influence of nerve cutting on the excretion of water and salt through the kidneys . In: Archives of Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology . 90, 1921, pp. 77-104. doi : 10.1007 / BF01864668 .
  9. ↑ Ph. Ellinger, A. Hirt: To the function of the renal nerves . In: Archives of Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology . 106, 1925, pp. 135-208. doi : 10.1007 / BF01861597 .
  10. ↑ Philipp Ellinger, August Hirt: Microscopic examinations of living organs. I. Communication. Method: intravital microscopy . In: Journal of Anatomy and History of Development . 90, 1929, pp. 791-802.
  11. ↑ Philipp Ellinger, August Hirt: Microscopic examinations of living organs. II. Communication: On the function of the frog kidney. The excretion of fluorescein and trypaflavin in the frog kidney . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 145, 1929, pp. 193-210. doi : 10.1007 / BF01862317 .
  12. ↑ Ph. Ellinger, A. Hirt: Microscopic investigations on living organs. III. Message: On the function of the frog kidney. The excretion of fluorescein and trypaflavin by the winter frog kidney . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 150, 1930, pp. 285-297. doi : 10.1007 / BF01862068 .
  13. ↑ Ph. Ellinger, A. Hirt: Microscopic investigations on living organs. IV. Communication: On the function of the frog kidney. The excretion of trypaflavin and acid by the summer frog kidney . In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology . 159, 1931, pp. 111-127. doi : 10.1007 / BF01861392 .
  14. ^ A b Philipp Ellinger, Walter Koschara: The lyochromes: a new group of animal pigments . In: Nature . 133, No. 3363, 1934, pp. 553-558. doi : 10.1038 / 133553a0 .
  15. ↑ Knipis.
  16. ↑ P. Ellinger: Lyochromes in the kidney. With a note on the quantitative estimation of lyochromes . In: Biochemical Journal . 32, 1938, pp. 376-382.
  17. ^ P. Ellinger: The formation of nicotinamide from nicotinic acid by the rat . In: Biochemical Journal . 42, 1948, pp. 175-181. (PDF; 1.1 MB)
  18. ↑ P. Ellinger, MM Abdel Kader: The nicotinamide-saving action of tryptophan and the biosynthesis of nicotinamide by the intestinal flora of the rat . In: Biochemical Journal . 44, 1949, pp. 285-294. (PDF; 1.6 MB)
  19. ^ P. Ellinger, MM Abdel Kader: Nicotinamide metabolism in mammals . In: Biochemical Journal . 45, 1949, pp. 276-281. (PDF; 1.8 MB)
  20. ↑ P. Ellinger, P. Armitage: The inheritance in the rat of the capacity to eliminate nicotinamide methochloride . In: Biochemical Journal . 53, 1953, pp. 588-596. (PDF; 1.5 MB)
  21. ^ E. Ellinger, F. Mackenzie Shattock: Nicotinamide deficiency after oral administration of penicillin . In: British Medical Journal . 1946, pp. 611-613. doi : 10.1136 / bmj.2.4477.611 .
personal data
SURNAME Ellinger, Philipp
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 18, 1887
PLACE OF BIRTH Frankfurt am Main
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1952
Place of death London