Rudolf Zenker

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Rudolf Zenker (born February 24, 1903 in Munich ; † January 18, 1984 there ) was a German surgeon and university professor. He performed the first heart transplant in Germany .

Life

As the son of the well-known Munich eye doctor Heinrich Zenker , Zenker studied medicine at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich and the University of Zurich . He was a student of Ferdinand Sauerbruch and Martin Kirschner .

During the Nazi era , he became a member of the SA in 1934 and of the NSDAP in 1937 . He also joined the NS-Ärztebund , the NS-Lehrerbund , the NS-Dozentbund and the NS-Fliegerkorps . In 1938 he completed his habilitation with Kirschner at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen . In 1943 he became an adjunct professor in Heidelberg and chief surgeon in the Mannheim city hospitals . It was at this time that he reworked Martin Kirschner's work, The Operations in the Abdominal Cavity .

1951 appointed him Marburg University as a professor of surgery and director of the Surgical Clinic. There he performed the first successful open heart surgery in Germany on February 19, 1958, using a heart-lung machine . In the same year he moved to his hometown Munich as the successor to Emil Karl Frey on the chair of the LMU . Until his retirement in 1973 he was director of the surgical university clinic . Zenker prepared a team for the open heart operations. Under Zenker's direction, in collaboration with Werner Klinner in Munich, Germany's first heart transplant was carried out on a 36-year-old patient on February 13, 1969, which survived only 27 hours, not due to poor biocompatibility , but rather as a result of previous damage to the donor heart.

Handwritten message from Rudolf Zenker on a medical article that he wrote himself

In contrast to his predecessors, Zenker placed particular emphasis on promoting the specialization of surgery. In his era in Munich, for example, cardiac and thoracic surgery , urology (under the direction of Egbert Schmiedt ), anesthesiology and experimental surgery were elevated to independent chairs. He was looking for solutions to immunological problems in transplant surgery. In 1973 he became editor of the journal Chirurgie der Gegenwart .

Memberships

Honors

literature

  • Hans Georg Borst (ed.): Rudolf Zenker (1903–1984) on his 100th birthday . Germering 2004.
  • Hans-Jürgen Peiper : The Zenker School. (Address on the occasion of the ceremony for the 68th birthday of Prof. Dr. med. Horst Hamelmann on May 26, 1992 in Würzburg) In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 11, 1993, pp. 371-387.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Ernst Klee : The dictionary of persons on the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 . Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, second updated edition, Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3-596-16048-8 , p. 692.
personal data
SURNAME Zenker, Rudolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German surgeon and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Munich
DATE OF DEATH January 18, 1984
Place of death Munich