Richard Rössler (pharmacologist)

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Richard Rössler (born June 7, 1897 in Ebensee in Upper Austria , † May 4, 1945 in Vienna ) was an Austrian doctor and pharmacologist . His successor at the Pharmacological Institute of the University of Vienna, Franz Theodor von Brücke , his successor but one Otto Kraupp and the chemical historian Rudolf Werner Soukup (* 1953) wrote about his life and research .

Richard Rössler

Life

Rössler was the son of the general practitioner Anton Rössler and his wife Alexandrine geb. from Stadler. After graduating from high school in Gmunden , he began studying medicine in Innsbruck, which was interrupted by military service in the First World War. In 1922 he was promoted to Dr. med. PhD. After working with Gustav Bayer (1879-1938) at the Institute of Pathology at the University of Innsbruck, Wolfgang Joseph Pauli (1869-1955) at the Institute of Colloid Chemistry of the University of Vienna and Otto Loewi of Pharmacology at the University of Graz he became assistant in 1924 at Ernst Peter Pick on Vienna Pharmacological Institute. In the following years research stays in England, among others with the physiologist Gleb von Anrep (1891–1955) in Cambridge , and in Freiburg im Breisgau with the physiologist Hermann Rein . In 1931 he qualified as a professor in pharmacology, toxicology and drug prescription theory. In 1934 he became an associate professor . After Pick's dismissal as a non-Aryan in 1938, Rössler was appointed as his successor and institute director with the support of Pick. From July 1944 he worked with the SS doctor Hermann Druckrey , who headed a pharmacological-toxicological research center at the police hospital in Vienna. About his death on May 4, 1945 - the Red Army conquered Vienna in mid-April - von Brücke writes: "A few days before he had come to his institute with a fatal head injury ... and the times were so chaotic, that to this day it has not been established whether he was the victim of an accident or whether the injury was caused by someone else's hand. ”Suicide has also been suspected. On August 24th, Rössler was buried in the Hütteldorfer cemetery .

research

Inspired by Anrep and Rein, Rössler dealt mainly with the pharmacology of the blood circulation. A skilful surgeon, he often used the "heart-lung preparation", in which in animal experiments the circulatory system is replaced by a system of tubes while the pulmonary circulation is preserved. With this preparation, then also in animals with an intact blood circulation, he examined the antidiuretic hormone of the neurohypophysis . As a vasoconstrictor substance, it should, as the alternative name "vasopressin" implies, increase blood pressure. After high doses, however, severe constriction of the coronary arteries led to heart failure and thus at least a temporary decrease in blood pressure. He also examined the circulatory effects of the methylxanthines caffeine , theophylline and theobromine on the heart-lung preparation . He realized that the pericardium influences the healthy as well as the pathologically disturbed pumping capacity of the heart. On the one hand, it prevents overstretching, on the other hand, it limits the power reserve that can be achieved by enlarging it according to the Frank Starling mechanism . The publications on the pericardium were discussed in detail in the then authoritative pharmacology textbook by Hans Horst Meyer and Ernst Peter Pick - Meyer was Picks' predecessor at the Vienna Institute - and are still considered today. In general, Rössler is one of the most cited authors in the “Meyer Pick”.

His most momentous work came from the research of the Vienna Institute on sympathomimetics from the group of catecholamines . The substances were synthesized by the company CH Boehringer Sohn in Ingelheim am Rhein and pharmacologically tested in Vienna. In 1937 the idea came up to make catecholamines less effective for the circulation by using larger substituents on the amino group while retaining their inhibitory effect on the smooth muscles . A useful inhibitor for the smooth muscles of the airways , i.e. a bronchospasmolytic , could thus be found. Rössler was to lead this field of research and Heribert Konzett, fifteen years his junior, was to collaborate. First of all, the two of them developed a method based on animal experiments to measure airway resistance , later known as the “Konzett-Rössler method”. The tests of the Boehringer substances then led to isoprenaline , which for a long time was the best means of interrupting an asthma attack and helped to subdivide the adrenoceptors into the two large groups α-adrenoceptors and β-adrenoceptors. It thus occupies a prominent place in the history of catecholamine research . Rössler left the publication to the discovery of Konzett as the only author. The description of the “Konzett-Rössler method” became the second most cited publication in the journal “Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology” after the Science Citation Index (cited 734 times from 1945 to 1990).

Position on National Socialism

Rössler thought German-national . Brückes' statement that he was “never succumbed to the aggressive ideologies of National Socialism ” , although he was always set up in Greater German, contrasts with his membership in the NSDAP and the note in his Gau-Akt that he had “ideologically on the soil of the National Socialism ”and“ always showing one's anti-Semitic attitude ”. His teachers Bayer, Pauli, Loewi and Ernst Peter Pick were Jews, as were many assistants at the Pharmacological Institute, including Hans Molitor and David Lehr (1910-2010).

After Molitor, who emigrated to the USA in 1932, Rößler helped Pick in 1938 at great personal risk to leave Austria and to take his property with him. Lehr reported in detail, who emigrated in 1938 and later wrote a book about Austria in the 1930s. Rössler was a loyal member of the Pan-Germanist German National People's Party and shared its anti-Semitism. On the other hand, he was a fatherly friend to him. Their discussions about Jews and anti-Semitism usually ended with Rössler's statement that he, Lehr, was an exception to the rule. “I knew from Jewish friends that their Aryan acquaintances spoke similarly. So there must have been a large number of exceptional Jews in Vienna. "On March 12, 1938, the day Hitler arrived in Linz , Austria , Rössler said:" I am afraid to step in front of my revered teacher Professor Pick and tell him that he has been released and that I am his successor. How on earth am I supposed to do this? How to tell him that after a life of leadership and care for every employee he is no longer allowed to enter his own institute and other university buildings? "

Recognition of research

In 1934 Rössler received the Ignaz Lieben Prize for his cardiovascular research . In 1941 he was elected a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ August W. Holldorf:  Pauli, (until 1898 Pascheles), Wolfgang Josef. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 20, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-428-00201-6 , p. 118 ( digitized version ).
  2. ↑ a b Michael Hubenstorf: Medical Faculty 1938–1945 . In: Gernot Heiss, Siegfried Mattl, Sebastian Meissl, Edith Saurer and Karl Stuhlpfarrer (Eds.): Willing Science. The University of Vienna 1938–1945 . Vienna, Publishing House for Social Criticism 1989, pages 233–282. ISBN 3-85115-107-0
  3. ^ Bridge 1955.
  4. ^ Leopold Ther: Pharmacological methods. Scientific publishing company, Stuttgart 1949, p. 175.
  5. ↑ Richard Roessler: About experimental heart damage through coronary vasoconstriction and their influence by pharmaceuticals. In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 153, 1930, pp. 1-35. doi : 10.1007 / BF01862632
  6. ↑ W. Antopol and R. Roessler: About the cardiac action of pituitary posterior lobe extracts on dogs under natural circulatory conditions. In: Journal for the entire experimental medicine 94, 1934, pp. 453-470. doi : 10.1007 / BF02643647
  7. ↑ E. Flaum and R. Rössler: About the heart effect of the purine body. In: Klinische Wochenschrift 12, 1933, pp. 1489-1491. doi : 10.1007 / BF01761165
  8. ↑ Richard Rösler and Klaus Unna: The meaning of the pericardium for the damaged heart. In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs archive for experimental pathology and pharmacology 177, 1935, pp. 288-312. doi : 10.1007 / BF02023134
  9. ↑ Richard Rössler and Klaus Unna: Control of cardiac output through the pericardium with changing aortic pressure. In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 180, 1936, pp. 568-577. doi : 10.1007 / BF01858750
  10. ↑ Hans H. Meyer and Ernst P. Pick: The experimental pharmacology as the basis of drug treatment. Ninth edition. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin and Vienna 1936, pp. 830–831.
  11. ↑ Joseph P. Holt: The normal pericardium. In: American Journal of Cardiology 26, 1970, pp. 455-465. doi : 10.1016 / 0002-9149 (70) 90702-2
  12. ↑ Heribert Konzett and Richard Rössler: Experimental arrangement for examinations of the bronchial muscles. In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 195, 1940, pp. 71-74. doi : 10.1007 / BF01861842
  13. ↑ Heribert Konzett: New broncholytic highly effective bodies of the adrenaline series. In: Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archive for Experimental Pathology and Pharmacology 197, 1941, pp. 27-40. doi : 10.1007 / BF01936304
  14. ^ Klaus Starke: A history of Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology. In: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology 358, 1998, pp. 1-109 doi : 10.1007 / PL00005229
  15. ^ Bridge 1955.
  16. ^ Soukup 2004.
  17. ^ Hans Molitor: In memoriam Prof. Dr. Dr. H. c. Ernst Peter Pick. In: Archives internationales de Pharmacodynamie et de Thérapie. 132, 1961, pp. 205-221.
  18. ^ David Lehr: Austria Before and After the Connection. Dorrance Publishing Co., Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 2000, pp. 55-62. ISBN 0-8059-4778-7 .
personal data
SURNAME Rössler, Richard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian doctor and pharmacologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Ebensee
DATE OF DEATH May 4, 1945
Place of death Vienna