Werner Scheler

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Werner Scheler (left) with Ulrich Hofmann at his summer residence in Prieros (July 21, 2018)

Werner Scheler (born  September 12, 1923 in Coburg ; † October 9, 2018 ) was a German doctor and pharmacologist . From 1959 to 1971 he was professor, institute director and at times rector at the University of Greifswald . From 1979 to 1990 he was the penultimate president of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR . He was also a member of the Central Committee of the SED from 1978 to 1989 .

Life

Werner Scheler was born in 1923 as the son of a Steinach master locksmith in the hospital in Coburg and grew up in Steinach . He attended elementary school in Steinach and the secondary school in Sonneberg in Thuringia . During the Second World War he served as an anti-aircraft soldier . After the end of the war, he obtained his Abitur from 1946 to 1947 at the preparatory college in Jena . In parallel, he began in 1946 at the University of Jena , a medical school , which he in 1951 with a doctorate on the biological effects of choline completed. He then went to the Humboldt University in Berlin and worked there until 1959, initially as a research assistant, later as a senior assistant and research assistant. In 1956 he was in Pharmacology and Toxicology habilitation .

In 1959 Werner Scheler took over a visiting professorship at Humboldt University with a teaching position in pharmacology and toxicology . At the same time he worked until 1971 as director of the Pharmacological Institute of the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald . 1962 followed a professorship with a chair at Greifswald University, which he then headed from 1966 to 1970 as rector .

In 1971 he became director of the newly founded Research Center for Molecular Biology and Medicine of the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin (DAW) - from October 1972 referred to as the Academy of Sciences of the GDR (AdW) - the association of bioscientific and medical academy institutes in Berlin-Buch .

At the beginning of July 1979 he succeeded the long-time Academy President Hermann Klare , who had carried out the academy's reform from 1968 to 1972, and worked as the penultimate President of the Academy together with 1st Vice-President Ulrich Hofmann until the end of June 1990 . His successor in the presidency, Horst Klinkmann , also a well-known doctor, headed the academy until it was dissolved in 1992.

Werner Scheler's research focused on the function of the red blood pigment hemoglobin . He published numerous specialist publications on this.

politics

Werner Scheler joined the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) during the National Socialist era . After the end of the Second World War, he became a member of the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) in 1945 and with the forced unification of the SPD and KPD in 1946, he became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (SED). In 1963 he joined the Kulturbund of the GDR and became a member of the Presidential Council of the Kulturbund, which he represented from 1963 to 1967 as a member of the People's Chamber .

Werner Scheler was a member of the SED district leadership of the Academy of Sciences. On the IX. At the SED party congress in 1976 he was elected as a candidate and two years later as a full member of the Central Committee of the SED , of which he was a member until the fall of the Berlin Wall and peaceful revolution in 1989. In 1981 he received a mandate from the Kulturbund as a member of the People's Chamber, of which he was also a member until the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Awards

Werner Scheler's awards in the GDR included the Patriotic Order of Merit in gold and bronze, the Order of the Banner of Labor in Level II, the GDR Medal of Merit and the Karl Marx Order . In 1970 he received the National Prize of the GDR, 2nd class, and the honorary title of Honored Doctor of the People .

In 1971 he was admitted to the Academy of Sciences of the GDR as a corresponding member and two years later as a full member. In addition, since 1977 he has been a member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina Halle (Saale) , which has been responsible for the German National Academy of Sciences since 2008 . Since 1993 he has been a member of the Leibniz Society of Sciences in Berlin .

He was a member of several scholarly societies in other countries, including the Academies of Science of the Czechoslovak Republic and Bulgaria and the Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences of the Soviet Union . In 1982 he was accepted as a foreign member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR . The universities in Greifswald and Vilnius awarded him an honorary doctorate .

Publications

Werner Scheler published around 350 scientific publications .

  • Basics of general pharmacology. Publishing house Gustav Fischer, Jena 1969, 1980, 1989.
  • From the German Academy of Sciences in Berlin to the Academy of Sciences in the GDR. Dietz Verlag, Berlin 2000.
  • Werner Scheler, Peter Oehme : Between medicine and society. On the life and work of Friedrich Jung . Volume 8 of the treatises of the Leibniz Society. trafo Wissenschaftsverlag, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-89626-345-5 .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary . In: Berliner Zeitung . October 16, 2018, p. 13 .
  2. ↑ Harry Waibel : Servants of many masters. Former Nazi functionaries in the Soviet Zone / GDR. Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-631-63542-1 , p. 284.
  3. ↑ Handbook of the People's Chamber , 4th electoral period, 1964
  4. ↑ Member entry by Prof. Dr. Werner Scheler (with picture) at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on July 20, 2016.
predecessor Office successor
Georg Tartler Rector of the University of Greifswald
1966/70 		Werner Imig
personal data
SURNAME Scheler, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German pharmacologist, President of the Academy of Sciences of the GDR, politician (SED), MdV
DATE OF BIRTH September 12, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Coburg
DATE OF DEATH October 9, 2018
Place of death Berlin