Samuel Mitja Rapoport

Samuel Mitja Rapoport in 1953 at a conference in Leipzig

Samuel Mitja Rapoport (born November 14, ^jul. / 27. November  1912 ^greg. In Volochysk ; † 7. July 2004 in Berlin ) was an Austrian biochemist , director of the Institute of Biological and Physiological Chemistry at the Humboldt University in East Berlin . He published 666 scientific publications up to 1996 and is one of the most famous biochemists of his time in Germany.

He was a staunch and active communist .

Life

Samuel Rapoport's Jewish family lived in Russia . The father was a businessman. During the First World War , she went from Volhynia to Odessa in 1916 , where she experienced the October Revolution and the Russian Civil War . She fled to Vienna in 1920 , so that Rapoport's early childhood was marked by threats and exile . In Vienna he attended middle school and joined the Association of Socialist Middle School Students (VSM). He studied chemistry and medicine and received his doctorate. In 1933 he entered the Institute for Medicinal Chemistry and made his scientific debut with the determination of amino acids in blood serum.

When the annexation of Austria through National Socialist Germany was only a matter of time, Otto von Fürth arranged for him in 1937 a scholarship to the Cincinnati Children's Hospital in Ohio , USA . Rapoport had his first wife Maria Szécsi , with whom he was married from 1937 to 1946, to come to Cincinnati. The Children's Hospital in Cincinnati was and is still one of the most recognized medical treatment and research facilities in the United States. Among other things, it was here that the first heart-lung machine was developed. Rapoport worked there as a pediatrician and obtained his second doctorate. In 1944 Rapoport met the German émigré and doctor Ingeborg Syllm in the hospital in Cincinnati, and they married in 1946. Ingeborg Syllm, born in Cameroon in 1912 , daughter of a Jewish pianist, grew up in Hamburg , studied medicine there and fled to the USA in September 1938.

When the Rapoports were in Switzerland in 1950 for a pediatrician convention, they learned that they had been targeted by the McCarthy Committee of Inquiry. After weighing up the risks, Rapoport did not return to the USA, while his wife, who was pregnant with the fourth child, brought the children from the States to Zurich in a night and fog action .

The Rapoport family moved to Vienna, where Samuel Rapoport worked temporarily again at the Institute for Medicinal Chemistry, but the university rejected his application for a professorship due to an intervention by the United States. Attempts to apply in other European countries such as France and Great Britain were just as unsuccessful. The Soviet Union , at that time under the Stalinist dictatorship, was suspicious of him as an American scientist. In 1952 he was offered the management of the Institute for Physiological and Biological Chemistry at the Humboldt University in East Berlin , which meant that he should build a new institute out of rubble without resources. His third country in exile became the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In Berlin, he dictated the book "Medical Biochemistry" in just three months, which became a standard textbook, had nine editions with 60,000 copies and was translated into several languages.

Samuel Mitja Rapoport was considered to be the most important representative of biochemistry in the GDR and was one of the Charité's most prominent personalities . His students Eberhard Hofmann , Sinaida Rosenthal and Reinhart Heinrich were appointed to chairs at various universities in the GDR. After the end of the GDR, Rapoport, already in retirement, took over the presidency of the newly founded Leibniz Society , which was made up of members of the dissolved GDR Academy of Sciences . He campaigned for the integration of the former GDR scholars and took part in the relevant university policy debate.

In his opinion, teachers should teach science “in the spirit of a Francis Bacon ”, “who saw logic, ethics and the scientific method as a unit”. Rapoport loved intellectual debate and was prone to conflict.

Scientific achievements

Rapoport researched primarily in the areas of water and electrolyte balance and the metabolism of erythrocytes . Rapoport described the role of 2,3-diphosphoglycerate for the anaerobic supply of energy in the red blood cells, a process that was named after Rapoport and his colleague Janet Luebering as the Rapoport-Luebering cycle . He recognized the vital importance of maintaining sufficient ATP levels for the viability of the erythrocytes. Against the background of the great need for blood transfusions during World War II , Rapoport, along with other scientists, made a significant contribution to improving blood conservation. This led to the establishment of the ACD medium (addition of citrate and dextrose to the blood), the use of further additives, the optimization of the pH environment, the determination of the optimal storage temperature, the improvement of the sterilization and processing techniques and, in particular, investigations of the transport compatibility of canned food, especially when transported by air. Rapoport was supported by Paul Hoxworth, who founded one of the first blood banks in Cincinnati as early as 1938, which to this day enjoys an excellent reputation nationwide. The shelf life of the whole blood can be extended from one to three weeks, with an inestimable value for the rescue of thousands of war wounded, but also other people in need of transfusions. Rapoport received the “Certificate of Merit” from US President Harry S. Truman for his achievements , the highest order given to civilians in the United States of America.

In 1948 Rapoport reported on the research he had carried out with two colleagues in Japan on Ekiri disease, which occurred epidemically in poor hygienic conditions. It is a life-threatening and highly infectious bacterial dysentery that leads to diarrhea, dehydration and impaired consciousness with cramps in babies and toddlers. Infusions with the addition of calcium could save lives in many cases. Rapoport did not know all the pathogenetic foundations of the disease, but already recognized the bacterial etiology and the importance of hygienic measures and calcium administration.

From 1952 Rapoport set up a biochemical institute at the Charité and shaped teaching and research in this area in the GDR for decades. His scientific interest lay in the clinical-biochemical field, in particular the research of reticulocytes and lipoxygenase . At an early stage he advocated the thesis that protein breakdown is energy-dependent, which was later confirmed. The pharmaceutical production of insulin in the GDR goes back to his suggestion, with his eldest son working on the implementation. He gave the physicist Reinhart Heinrich , who he had employed as an employee at the beginning of the 1970s , the task of quantifying, together with his son Tom Rapoport, the control that the various enzymes of a metabolic pathway exert on the flow through this pathway. This led to the development of Metabolic Control Analysis .

Rapoport published 666 scientific papers as main or co-author. His textbook " Medical Biochemistry " became a standard work. In 1969 he was elected a member of the GDR Academy of Sciences. He received several honorary doctorates. Numerous state awards recognized his achievements in the GDR.

The film "The Rapoports - Our Three Lives" by Sissi Hüetlin and Britta Wauer, which was awarded the Adolf Grimme Prize in 2005, documents the eventful and committed lives of the scientists Samuel and Ingeborg Rapoport.

Commitment to socialism

Grave of Samuel Mitja Rapoport in the Pankow III cemetery in Berlin

At the age of 13 Rapoport found works by Friedrich Engels in his father's archive . Personal experiences with war, displacement and political and racist persecution led to a communist attitude. The friendship with the writer Jura Soyfer , who died in the Buchenwald concentration camp, was important for Rapoport . Rapoport became active in socialist and communist organizations at an early stage. As a teenager he joined the Association of Socialist Middle School Students in Vienna, later he was active in Austria's illegal communist movement. From 1934 he belonged to the Communist Party of Austria ( KPÖ ), from which he was transferred to the SED in 1956.

His wife wrote about his orientation: “Mitja's priorities were clear: first was socialism, second was science, and only third was me and everything else. I approved this order, although my heart was often aching. "

In the USA he openly supported the union and communist movement and distributed the newspaper “ The Worker ” with his wife on weekends . He campaigned against discrimination against African Americans and for the improvement of the situation of workers. The Cincinnati press accused the couple of increasingly subversive activities. Among other things, the allegation was made that he planned an attack on the water supply of Cincinnati.

When the committee " Doctors of the GDR for the prevention of a nuclear war " was formed in the GDR in 1982 , Rapoport was elected chairman.

The university's obituary commented on his reaction to the changes in the GDR's higher education system after reunification: “He was all the more painful that when the GDR was annexed to the FRG, the chance of integration based on positive experiences in both German states was wasted. The more than 80% of the scientists who were wound up included his eldest son and many of his students. It pained him to see how easily the faculty councils of German universities could overturn the appointments they had proposed without political resistance. "

In the obituary of Biospektrum, his attitude was made even clearer: “Inge and Mitja Rapoport always stood up for the GDR, which had become their adopted home, which for them was the only alternative to Germany that plunged the world into two wars and more than six million Had murdered members of her people. Both painfully felt the fall of the GDR as the end of their third life. "

Private

His wife Ingeborg Rapoport worked as a pediatrician in Berlin from 1952 and held the chair of neonatology at the Charité from 1969 until her retirement in 1973 . The marriage resulted in four children: the biochemist Tom Rapoport , who moved from the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin to Harvard University in 1995, and the mathematician Michael Rapoport , who teaches at the University of Bonn . Rapoport's daughter Susan Richter ("Fufu") studied medicine and works in her own practice as a pediatrician in Berlin; Lisa, who was born almost blind shortly after fleeing America, works as a pediatric nurse despite her disability.

The grave of Samuel Mitja Rapoport is on the cemetery Pankow III in Berlin's Pankow district .

Fonts (selection)

• Samuel Rapoport, M. Wing: Dimensional, osmotic, and chemical changes of erythrocytes in stored blood. Blood preserved in sodium citrate, neutral, and acid citrate-glucose (ACD) mixtures . In: J. Clin. Invest . July 26, 1947 (volume 4), p. 591 ff.
• K. Dodd, GJ Buddingh, SM Rapoport: The etiology of Ekiri, a highly fatal disease of Japanese children . In: Pediatrics . Vol. 3, No. 1, January 1949. P. 9 ff.
• Samuel Rapoport, J. Luebering: An Optical Study Of Diphosphoglycerate Mutase (From the Childrens's Hospital Research Foundation, Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Institute of Medical Chemistry of the University of Vienna, Austria) . In: J. Biol. Chem. 1952. p. 196 ff.
• Gisela Jacobasch , Samuel Mitja Rapoport: Molecular Diseases. Pergamon Press 1978.
• Samuel Mitja Rapoport, Lothar Rohland (ed.): Medicine and global human problems. Lectures . In: Veröff. Med. Ges. 1997. Issue 9, pp. 1 ff.
• Samuel Mitja Rapoport: The Experiences of Exile . In: TRANS Internet magazine for cultural studies No. 15, November 2003
• SM Rapoport: "Medical biochemistry. Textbook for students and doctors", Verlag Volk und Gesundheit Berlin. Several revised editions. 6th edition 1974.
• SM Rapoport and HJ Raderecht: Physiological-chemical internship taking into account biochemical working methods and clinical-chemical aspects , VEB Verlag Volk und Gesundheit, Berlin 1989, 8th edition, license no. 210 (700/189/89), ISBN 3-333-00194-2

literature

• Peter Nötzold:  Samuel Mitja Rapoport . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 2. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .
• Brunhild Fölsch, Walter Grünzweig: Marxism, exile and Jewish identity. The biochemist Samuel Mitja Rapoport . In: The Jewish Echo . Issue 49, Vienna 2000. 337ff.
• C. Frömmel: Lecture on the 90th birthday of Prof. Dr. Samuel Rapoport at a Charité symposium . Berlin, December 2, 2002.
• Ingeborg Rapoport: My first three lives - the memories of Ingeborg Rapoport . Nora, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-935445-81-4 .
• Th. Schönfeld: Samuel Mitja Rapoport (1912-2004) - In memoriam . In: Communications from the Alfred Klahr Society , No. 3/2004, Vienna.
• H. Goldenberg: Obituary Univ.-Prof. Dr. Samuel Mitja Rapoport (1912-2004) . In: Newsletter of July 20, 2004 Collected by the information management of the Medical University of Vienna .
• Gisela Jacobasch and Lothar Rohland (eds.): Samuel Mitja Rapoport (1912–2004) . In: Medicine and Society . Vol. 52, Berlin 2005, p. 103, ISBN 3-89626-536-9 .

Web links

Commons : Samuel Mitja Rapoport  - collection of images

• Literature by and about Samuel Mitja Rapoport in the catalog of the German National Library
• Obituary by Thomas Schönfeld
• Hans Mikosch, Gerhard Oberkofler: About Samuel Mitja Rapoport's two emigration (1937 and 1952) . In: Communications from the Alfred Klahr Society . No. 3/2008; Online PDF
• The Rapoports - Our three lives . TV documentation, Germany 2004 (entry on IMDb)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Samuel Mitja Rapoport . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
2. ↑ Rapoport, Ingeborg: My First Three Lives, Berlin 1997, p. 263. Quoted from: Barbara Einhorn: “Homecoming” to East Germany. Jewish returnees.
3. ↑ Samuel Mitja Rapoport . ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
4. ↑ Wolfgang Hachtel: As a Wessi in the GDR: Travel and Encounters . Books on Demand, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8448-6714-5 , pp. 64 ( google.de [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
5. ↑ http://www.biospektrum.de/blatt/d_bs_pdf&_id=934368
6. ^ STANDARD Verlagsgesellschaft mbH: Pediatrician Ingeborg Rapoport has died . In: derStandard.at . ( derstandard.at [accessed on March 31, 2017]).
7. ↑ Meeting reports of the Leibniz Society 68 (2004), 135–140 Obituary for Samuel Mitja Rapoport, presented at the commemorative event in the plenum of the Leibniz Society on September 16, 2004 p. 140
8. ↑ http://www.biospektrum.de/blatt/d_bs_pdf&_id=934368