Rudolf Stich (doctor)

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Rudolf Stich

Rudolf Stich (born July 19, 1875 in Nuremberg , † December 18, 1960 in Göttingen ) was a German surgeon and university professor .

Life

Professional career until 1933

Rudolf Stich came as the son of the railway doctor and secret medical adviser Eduard Stich and his wife Sofie, nee. Troeltsch, to the world and grew up in a bourgeois-liberal milieu. Stich attended the humanistic grammar school (today: Melanchthon grammar school ) in Nuremberg. After graduating from high school, he began studying medicine at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen in the winter semester of 1894/95 , which he continued at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg . In 1894 he became a member of the Bubenreuther fraternity . In 1899 he completed his studies in Erlangen with the promotion of Dr. med. with Walter Hermann von Heineke and the medical license . He then worked as an assistant doctor in Erlangen with the physiologist Isidor Rosenthal and in Kiel with the pathologist Arnold Heller and the internist Heinrich Irenaeus Quincke .

From April 1, 1902, Stich worked as an assistant doctor to the surgeon Carl Garrè at the Albertus University of Königsberg . He completed his habilitation with him in 1905 in the field of organ surgery. With him he moved to the Silesian Friedrich Wilhelms University in Breslau and two years later to the Rheinische Friedrich Wilhelms University in Bonn . In 1906, Stich married Margarete Becker in Kiel; the couple had three children.

In Bonn, Stich was appointed senior physician and in 1909 an extraordinary professor. After he had unsuccessfully applied for the post of chief physician at the hospital in Nuremberg in 1908, he received a call from the Georg-August University of Göttingen to its chair for surgery in 1911, at the age of only 36, and at the same time became chief physician of the surgical department at the university clinic. With the beginning of the First World War , he was appointed advisory surgeon of the XXI on August 1, 1914 . Army corps appointed. In this position he remained in the rank of senior staff doctor until January 1919 and developed into a specialist in wounds and aneurysms of the blood vessels caused by the war . In the Weimar Republic he was a member of the German Democratic Party . When she rejected the election of Paul von Hindenburg as Reich President, he left the DDP.

Stich was also internationally recognized as a surgeon and was considered to be the "authority on vascular surgery", particularly because of the vascular suturing techniques he had developed. He was also a popular university professor with numerous students. With Bruns' contributions to clinical surgery, Stich published a respected surgical specialist journal. In 1925, 1932 and 1938 he chaired the 30th, 44th and 56th meetings of the Association of Northwest German Surgeons . His wife Grete, who was in contact with actors and artists, made her house a "center of bourgeois sociability".

time of the nationalsocialism

Since June 1933, Stich was a supporting member of the SS . In the autumn of 1933 he joined the Stahlhelm and became a member of the SA on November 1, 1933, when this organization was transferred to the SA . He was active in the SA and rose to SA brigade doctor and paramedic leader. In June 1937 he applied for membership in the NSDAP . He was also a member of the Nazi lecturers' association , the Nazi medical association and a number of other Nazi organizations. At the 61st meeting of the German Society for Surgery in 1937 he gave the opening speech in which he described January 30, 1933 as the “turning point of our national existence after many years of humiliating shame”. From 1939 to 1945 he was dean of the medical faculty at the University of Göttingen. At the beginning of the Second World War he received a draft order as an advisory surgeon of the XI. Army Corps , but returned to the university clinic on September 18, 1939. During the war, Stich regularly held courses on war surgery.

According to his own statement, as well as according to external assessments, Stich was a staunch National Socialist. In particular, he represented the National Socialist ideas on genetic biology and “racial hygiene” and the implementation of compulsory sterilizations according to the law for the prevention of genetically ill offspring , which were carried out in large numbers at his clinic. On the other hand, he opposed the murder of the mentally ill as part of the T4 campaign and supported the resistance of his colleague, the psychiatrist Gottfried Ewald , and his efforts to save patients. His anti-Semitism was selective: he did not take a stand against the dismissal of Jewish colleagues, but treated Jewish patients.

After 1945

In the final phase of the Second World War, Stich played a major role in the fact that Göttingen could be handed over to the troops of the United States Army on April 8, 1945 without a fight . Five days later, on April 13th, he handed over the dean's office to the internist Rudolf Schoen , but continued to function as director of the surgical clinic. He and other former university officials were arrested by the British occupation authorities on June 13, 1945 and taken first to Hildesheim , then to the Westertimke camp near Bremen. Medical and university colleagues and the Deputy President of the Province of Hanover, referring to Stich's medical and scientific merits and his age, campaigned for his release, which took place on August 31, 1945. The now 70-year-old anticipated his dismissal from office by applying for his ordinary retirement , which was granted to him retrospectively from September 1st.

With Karl Heinrich Bauer , he edited the 14th and 15th editions of Carl Garrè's surgical textbook .

Stich continued to run a private practice well into old age and was a respected personality until his death and far beyond, who was positively remembered for a long time in the university and town. In 1955, on his 80th birthday, he received the Federal Cross of Merit and honorary citizenship of Göttingen. In 1971, at the suggestion of his widow, a Göttinger Straße was named after him.

It was not until the beginning of the 21st century that a critical examination of his role in the “Third Reich” began. It led to the fact that in 2010 the memorial plaque on his former house (since 2010 the seat of the Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research) was removed and in 2015 Rudolf-Stich-Weg was renamed Adam-von-Trott -Weg . The German Society for Cardiovascular and Thoracic Surgery awarded the Rudolf Stich Prize for special scientific achievements until 2012 , which has since been awarded as a research prize for vascular surgery .

Memberships

Honors

literature

  • Sebastian Stroeve: Rudolf Stich - Göttingen surgeon from 1911 to 1945. Diss. Göttingen 2001
  • Michael Sachs: Prof. Dr. med. Rudolf Stich. In: Hans-Ulrich Steinau , Hartwig Bauer (ed.): German Society for Surgery 1933–1945. The presidents. Heidelberg 2011, pp. 109–118.
  • Katharina Trittel, Stine Marg , Bonnie Pülm: white coat and brown shirt. The Göttingen physician Rudolf Stich in a kaleidoscope. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, ISBN 978-3-525-30056-5 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Willy Nolte (Ed.): Burschenschafter Stammrolle. Directory of the members of the German Burschenschaft according to the status of the summer semester 1934. Berlin 1934. p. 484.
  2. ↑ Dissertation: Aneurysm of the right axillary artery. Cerebral embolism, rebleeding and healing .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g Rainer Driever: Rudolf Stich (1875-1960) . Expert opinion for the Göttingen City Archives, 2012. PDF online
  4. ↑ Karl Philipp Behrendt: The war surgery from 1939-1945 from the point of view of the advisory surgeons of the German army in the Second World War . Med. Diss. Univ. Freiburg 2003 [1]
  5. ↑ Katharina Trittel, Stine Marg, Bonnie Pülm: white coat and brown shirt. The Göttingen physician Rudolf Stich in a kaleidoscope. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, pp. 7, 21, 177.
  6. ↑ Wolfgang Teichmann , Christoph Eggers , Heinz-Jürgen Schröder (eds.): 100 Years Association of Northwest German Surgeons . Hamburg 2009, p. 93
  7. ↑ Katharina Trittel, Stine Marg, Bonnie Pülm: white coat and brown shirt. The Göttingen physician Rudolf Stich in a kaleidoscope. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, p. 51.
  8. ^ Ernst Klee: Das Personenlexikon zum Third Reich , Frankfurt am Main 2007, p. 603
  9. ↑ Katharina Trittel, Stine Marg, Bonnie Pülm: white coat and brown shirt. The Göttingen physician Rudolf Stich in a kaleidoscope. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, pp. 27–31.
  10. ↑ The assumption that Stich did not have to face any denazification proceedings due to his retirement was refuted by the work of Trittel, Marg and Pülm (pp. 253–256).
  11. ^ Karl Garrè: Textbook of surgery. 14th and 15th editions, edited by Rudolf Stich and Karl Heinrich Bauer. Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg 1949.
  12. ↑ Katharina Trittel, Stine Marg, Bonnie Pülm: white coat and brown shirt. The Göttingen physician Rudolf Stich in a kaleidoscope. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, pp. 7–8, 141.
  13. ↑ Report should help: No more Nazi street names (HNA)
  14. ↑ Göttinger Tageblatt of October 17, 2015
  15. ^ Rudolf Stich in the light of new research (Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2014)
  16. ↑ Rudolf Stich: University professor, surgeon, Göttingen citizen and National Socialist (Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research)
  17. ↑ Katharina Trittel, Stine Marg, Bonnie Pülm: white coat and brown shirt. The Göttingen physician Rudolf Stich in a kaleidoscope. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2014, p. 38.
personal data
SURNAME Stich, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1875
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH December 18, 1960
Place of death Goettingen