Rudolf Ehrenberg

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Rudolf Ehrenberg (born November 19, 1884 in Rostock , † May 13, 1969 in Göttingen ) was a German biologist and physiologist . His life's work includes on the one hand experimental physiology or physiological chemistry and on the other hand biological-philosophical problems from the border area between natural and human sciences, especially philosophy and theology .

Life

1884-1918

Rudolf Ehrenberg was born in Rostock as the son of the lawyer Prof. Dr. Victor Ehrenberg and his wife Helene, b. Born of Jhering and baptized Lutheran. In 1888 his father accepted a call to Göttingen University , so the family moved to Göttingen . After passing the Abitur in 1903 at the Göttingen humanistic grammar school, he studied medicine in Freiburg , Tübingen , Göttingen, Berlin and finally again in Göttingen, where he passed the medical state examination in 1909 and received his doctorate in 1910. med. received his doctorate.

After a short assistantship at the Medical University Clinic in Heidelberg with Ludwig Krehl and a military service in Strasbourg , he returned to Göttingen, where he also studied chemistry and physical chemistry . In 1911 he became an assistant at the Göttingen Physiological Institute. In 1913 he qualified as a professor in the subject of physiology with the habilitation thesis on source experiments on warm-blooded kidneys . On March 1, 1914, he married the librarian Helene Frey. Throughout the First World War he was employed as a medical officer on the Western Front. During the war he was awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class.

1918-1945

In 1907/08, Rudolf Ehrenberg began an intensive friendship with his cousin Franz Rosenzweig , which was to be of particular importance for his later scientific direction. Together with their common cousin, the philosopher Hans Ehrenberg , and with the legal historian and sociologist Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy and the medical doctor Viktor von Weizsäcker , they belonged to a circle of friends in which political and cultural conversations were also emphatically religious. Franz Rosenzweig had a major influence on Rudolf Ehrenberg in his temporary religious and literary activity, which was mainly reflected in the book Ebr.10.25 , published in 1920 . A fate reflected in sermons . But Rudolf Ehrenberg also took an active part in the creation of Franz Rosenzweig's Star of Redemption (1921).

After the end of the war, Ehrenberg returned to the Physiological Institute of the University of Göttingen as a private lecturer and senior assistant. In 1921 he was appointed associate professor . In the 1920s, when physiological chemistry had not yet separated from physiology as a separate subject, he was already dealing with chemical and physico-chemical questions on the living organism and thus established the subject physiological chemistry in research and teaching. His most important achievement in the field of experimental physiology during these years was the application of radioactive indicators in biological experiments , which he inaugurated . To this end, he developed Radiometric Microanalysis, first published in 1925 .

An important area of ​​his scientific work that occupied him intensively theoretically and practically from 1919 and throughout his later life found its first expression in the book Theoretical Biology from the Standpoint of the Irreversibility of the Elementary Life Process , published in 1923 . Here, the time component and the directional character of life are worked out for the first time in great clarity. In his Theoretical Biology , Rudolf Ehrenberg developed "the law of the necessity of death" as the basic law of life; d. H. the life of an individual is from the beginning a continuous aging process that progresses through the whole life until death and this process is identical with the central life event. This is proven by extensive findings from scientific literature and by our own experiments.

Ehrenberg signed after the transfer of power , the commitment of the professors at German universities and colleges to Adolf Hitler and the Nazi state , a call to vote 11 November 1933rd

In 1935, all of these activities were interrupted or severely hindered when the rulers of the Nazi regime forced Rudolf Ehrenberg to apply for early retirement because of his Jewish father as a so-called Jewish mixed race . In 1938 he also lost his venia legendi . Finally, in October 1944, he was drafted into physical forced labor by the Gestapo , initially in a camp of the Todt Organization near Holzminden , and from January 1945 in Göttingen. This only ended after he received news in March 1945 that his only son had died on January 22, 1945 on the Eastern Front.

1945–1969

After the end of the war, Rudolf Ehrenberg was rehabilitated on May 9, 1945 - like the other colleagues affected - and finally - but not until 1953 - transferred to the status of a full professor, which he was given at the time when he established Physiological Chemistry in Göttingen an independent subject had been failed. In the winter semester 1945/46 he gave his first lecture ("for listeners of all faculties"), which was published in 1946 as the book The Course of Life . It was the topic that had preoccupied him for 25 years and that he had represented several times, until he was denied, in scientific and generally understandable publications and lectures. In addition, his second theoretical and philosophical major work Metabiology was published in 1950 . In the post-war years, Ehrenberg was often used for lectures and the like. a. invited to various Protestant academies . His theories met with great interest. He died on May 13, 1969 after a short illness.

meaning

Apart from the experimental pioneering achievements described, its special significance lies in the fact that, with his metabiology, he has given a convincing connection between biology and philosophy and, in the end, also with theology, and on the basis of the thesis of the essential unity and mutual similitude of all life - thus also of the spiritual, spiritual and religious - the metabiological method developed. It uses the laws that are recognized as essentially biological (see his Theoretical Biology ) and applies them to the other realm of reality, the spiritual and spiritual life, in the execution of parables.

Publications

  • Iscariot and the butcher . Wuerzburg 1920
  • Ebr. 10.25 . A fate in sermons . Wuerzburg 1920
  • Theoretical biology from the standpoint of the irreversibility of the elementary life process . Berlin 1923
  • The course of life. A biological-metabiological lecture . Heidelberg 1946
  • Metabiology . Heidelberg 1950
  • The "cup speech". On the wedding of Franz and Edith Rosenzweig on March 28, 1920, in Kalonymos , 20th year, no. 1, 2017, p. 1ff. (with comments from the editor)

literature

  • Rudolf Hermeier (ed.) God dwells beyond all our knowledge. Hans Ehrenberg and Rudolf Ehrenberg in memory. Brendow, Moers 1987 (with detailed bibliography)
  • Maria E. Ehrenberg: Rudolf Ehrenbergs Theoretical Biology and Metabiology. Did the dialogue between Rudolf Ehrenberg and Franz Rosenzweig contribute to its creation? In: Wolfdietrich Schmied-Kowarzik (ed.): The philosopher Franz Rosenzweig 1886 - 1929 , Volume 1, Freiburg 1988
  • Valentin Wehefritz: natural scientist, philosopher, theologian. Prof. Dr. med. Rudolf Ehrenberg (1884–1969). The fate of German scholars in the 20th century . University library of the TU Dortmund , 2016. Series: Universität im Exil, 8 ISBN 978-3-921823-85-9 Proof, not in trade
  • Volker Zimmermann: Medicine in Göttingen during the National Socialist dictatorship. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 9, 1991, pp. 393-416; here: p. 399 f. and 405.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Source (PDF file; 6.22 MB), p. 129, left. Column; the call on the front pages, also in 4 other languages
  2. ↑ with photographer Portrait around 1913
personal data
SURNAME Ehrenberg, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biologist and physiologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Rostock
DATE OF DEATH May 13, 1969
Place of death Goettingen