Rudolf Lemke

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Grave of Rudolf Lemke in the north cemetery in Jena

Rudolf Hermann Lemke (born April 6, 1906 in Gollnow ; † October 27, 1957 in Jena ) was a German psychiatrist , neurologist and university professor who worked at the University of Jena .

First years, studies and career entry

Lemke was the son of a headmaster and later a doctor. He grew up in Storkow and finished his school career in 1923 at the secondary school in Jena with the Abitur. He then studied medicine at the universities of Jena, Vienna , Freiburg and Berlin , which he completed in 1928 with a state examination. In the same year he was awarded a Dr. med. PhD . After that he was a volunteer assistant at the Medical Clinic and the Pathological Institute of the University of Jena. In the meantime he was sick with tuberculosis , but later recovered completely.

From 1931 he worked at the Psychiatric and Nervous Clinic of the University of Jena under Hans Berger as an assistant doctor, whom he supported in his research on electroencephalography (EEG) .

He completed his habilitation in Jena in 1935 with a paper on a problem of schizophrenia. He then worked as a senior physician and private lecturer and, from 1942, as an associate professor at the Jena University Neurological Clinic.

Period of National Socialism and World War II

At the time of National Socialism, Lemke worked part-time at the Hereditary Health Court from 1934 and later at the Hereditary Health Supreme Court in Jena and was also an employee at the Public Health Office . In 1937 he became a party candidate and in 1939 a member of the NSDAP . Before that he had already joined the Nazi Doctors 'Association and the Nazi Teachers' Association . Gerhard and Schönberg, however, attest him a "political-critical attitude" during the Nazi era, because he u. a. unlike most of his colleagues, did not join the SA .

Lemke researched, among other things, the cause and development of homosexuality , which he saw in 1940 as "an urgent task" to combat and recommended "racial hygiene". As an expert witness he appeared in criminal proceedings against homosexuals. He summarized his related investigations and observations from clinical and expert work in the publication “On the cause and criminal assessment of homosexuality”, published in 1940. He advocated a theoretical concept that homosexuality is the cause of "an endocrine disorder of the diencephalon" and questioned purely hereditary biological explanations.

During the Second World War he was temporarily employed as a doctor in the nervous department of the hospital in Jena.

University professor in the GDR

After the end of the war, Lemke was able to continue his university career despite his known involvement in Nazi health policy. He was considered incriminated due to anti-Semitic remarks, his recommendation to sterilize homosexuals and his participation in the Hereditary Health Supreme Court, but despite reservations he was rehabilitated and denazified by means of an "exemption from the SMT ". His colleague, the psychiatrist Erich Drechsler had him in a " clean bill of health to certify" to have been a "staunch enemy of National Socialism" and a "perfect anti-fascists". Lemke was finally from 1945 as the successor to the dismissed Berthold Kihn, initially acting director of the psychiatric and mental hospital of the University of Jena. From May 1948 he took over the chair for psychiatry and neurology at the University of Jena and was made full professor there in 1950. He died on October 27, 1957 “from complications of a chronic duodenal ulcer ”. His grave is in the north cemetery in Jena.

Act

Lemke made many contributions to the development of psychiatry. At the beginning of the 1950s he created a child-neuropsychiatric department at the Psychiatric and Nervous Clinic of the University of Jena, separated from the adult area, in which children and adolescents were also treated in day clinics. At the time, current therapy standards in adult psychiatry, such as insulin shock procedures, were applied to children and adolescents, and psychotherapeutic procedures were also incorporated into his treatment concept. He was the author of many publications on psychiatry and neurology from the entire subject-specific spectrum. The term "vegetative depression" introduced by him found its way into the psychiatric literature. He wrote the textbook "Neurology and Psychiatry", which was continued after his death by the psychiatrist Helmut Rennert . Gerhard and Schönberg therefore refer to him as the "Nestor of Neurology in the former GDR".

Memberships and honors

Lemke took over the chairmanship of the newly founded Society for Psychiatry and Neurology of the GDR in 1956 , as well as of the working group for electrencephalography . For many years he was the chair of the medical-scientific society for psychiatry and neurology in Jena . He was also a board member and representative of the chair of the German Society for Psychiatry and Neurology . He was honored in the GDR with the title of Honored Doctor of the People .

family

In his first marriage, he was married to Antje Bultmann Lemke (1918–2017), a daughter of theology professor Rudolf Bultmann and later librarian, from August 1939 . However, the marriage was divorced on February 26, 1942. He remarried shortly after the end of the war, but his wife died of suicide on December 24, 1945 . He had five sons with his third wife, a doctor.

Painting neurologist

The passionate hobby painter Lemke was a long-time friend of the East Frisian painter Hans Trimborn , with whom he had extensive correspondence. This correspondence, which ran from 1931 to 1957, was published by his son in 2004.

Possibly through his first wife he met the poet Ricarda Huch , who was a close friend of Antje Bultmann-Lemke. Bultmann-Lemke managed to persuade Huch to have her husband portray him in 1941; Huch had not previously accepted an offer from Otto Dix .

From 1952 to 1957 he traveled to Weimar again and again to experiment with the graphic artist and printer Arno Fehringer and to implement his own ideas lithographically .

Fonts (selection)

  • Historical presentation of the theories about the origin of cancer , Langensalza 1928 (also Jena, Med. Dissertation, 1929).
  • About the social prognosis of schizophrenia with special consideration of the encephalographic findings (habilitation thesis at the University of Jena, 1935).
  • On the cause and criminal assessment of homosexuality , Fischer, Jena 1940.
  • Neurology and Psychiatry: Basics for Studies and Practice , JA Barth, Leipzig 1956 (expanded to 1970 in five editions).
  • Psychiatric themes in painting and graphics , VEB G. Fischer, Jena 1958 (edited by Helmut Renner).
  • Atlas of pneumoencephalography in brain tumors , VEB Verlag Volk und Gesundheit, Berlin 1959 (with co-workers and final editing by Roland Werner).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Helmut Rennert: In memoriam Rudolf Lemke (1906−1957) . In: Archives for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases , Volume 196, Issue 6, February 14, 1958, pp. 539-541.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich: Who was what before and after 1945. , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 365.
  3. ↑ Manfred Heinemann: The reopening of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in 1945 . In: Dieter Voigt (ed.): GDR science in the conflict between research and state security . Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1995, ISBN 3-428-08342-3 , p. 32.
  4. ↑ a b c Uwe-Jens Gerhard / Anke Schönberg: The role of Rudolf Lemke in the establishment of child neuropsychiatry in the post-war period . In: Uwe Hoßfeld / Tobias Kaiser / Heinz Mestrup (eds.): University in Socialism. Studies on the history of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena , Volume 1, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2007, p. 1974.
  5. ^ A b Günter Grau: Lexicon on the persecution of homosexuals 1933–1945. Institutions - People - Areas of Activity, Berlin 2011, p. 196f.
  6. ↑ Florian Mildenberger: The discourse on male homosexuality in German medicine from 1880 to today . In: Dominik Groß, Sabine Müller, Jan Steinmetzer (eds.): Normal - different - sick ?: Acceptance, stigmatization and pathologization in the context of medicine , Medizinisch Wissenschaftliche Verlagsges., Berlin 2008, p. 97.
  7. ↑ Tobias Kaiser / Hans Maestrup: The University of Jena in the time of the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR. In: Senate commission for the processing of Jena university history in the 20th century (ed.): Traditions - Breaks - Changes. The University of Jena 1850–1995 , Böhlau, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-412-20248-4 , p. 649.
  8. ^ Ernst Klee: German Medicine in the Third Reich. Careers before and after 1945 , S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2001, p. 243.
  9. ↑ Uwe-Jens Gerhard / Anke Schönberg: The role of Rudolf Lemke in the establishment of child neuropsychiatry in the post-war period . In: Uwe Hoßfeld / Tobias Kaiser / Heinz Mestrup (eds.): University in Socialism. Studies on the history of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena , Volume 1, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2007, p. 1978.
  10. ↑ Uwe-Jens Gerhard / Anke Schönberg: The role of Rudolf Lemke in the establishment of child neuropsychiatry in the post-war period . In: Uwe Hoßfeld / Tobias Kaiser / Heinz Mestrup (Eds.): University in Socialism. Studies on the history of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena , Volume 1, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2007, p. 1971.
  11. ↑ Inventory directories of the Tübingen University Library, Volume 2: Rudolf Bultmann 1884−1974 , Harrassowitz-Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, p. 243f .; Eberhard Hauschildt: Rudolf Bultmanns Sermons , p. XVI note 13.
  12. ↑ Traugott Wolf: Protestantism and social market economy: A study using the example of Franz Böhm . Munich 1997, p. 101; Katrin Lemke: The Ricarda Huch portrait of the Jena doctor Rudolf Lemke A picture and its background . In: Weimar-Jena: The big city - The culture-historical archive 7/2, 2014, pp. 113–125 ( digitized version ).
personal data
SURNAME Lemke, Rudolf
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lemke, Rudolf Hermann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German psychiatrist, neurologist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 6, 1906
PLACE OF BIRTH Gollnow
DATE OF DEATH October 27, 1957
Place of death Jena