Werner Franke (biologist)

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Werner Wilhelm Franke (born January 31, 1940 in Paderborn ) is a German biologist , professor of cell and molecular biology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg and an internationally known leading expert on doping issues. In 1991 he made a significant contribution to the discovery of the state-decreed compulsory doping in GDR competitive sport and is the eighth winner of the Heidi-Krieger-Medal of the Doping-Opfer-Hilfe e. V. .

Life and work

Franke attended the Bonifatius elementary school in Paderborn, and in 1959 he passed the Abitur at the Theodorianum high school there . After his military service he studied biology , chemistry and physics at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg from 1960 to 1966 . As a student, Franke also worked as a writer for cabaret (including ironing board , Kom (m) ödchen , Die Onion) as well as television and radio. After his doctorate as Dr. rer. nat. (summa cum laude) in February 1967 Franke worked from 1967 to 1970 as a research assistant at the Faculty of Biology at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg . In January 1971 his habilitation in cell biology was accepted in Freiburg , until 1973 he was employed as a university professor at the University of Freiburg. In 1973 he was appointed university professor at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Between 1980 and 1991 he held the office of Managing Director of the Institute for Cell and Tumor Biology at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). From 1982 to 1990 Franke was President of the European Cell Biology Organization (ECBO). In 1975 he founded the German Society for Cell Biology , was its first managing director and later also its president (1999 to 2002), and in 2005 he was made an honorary member of the DGZ. From 1988 to 1994 Franke was Secretary General of the European Conference for Cell Biology (EMBC) and from 1988 to 2000 Chairman of the Science Council of the German Cancer Research Center. His main research interests included the topogenesis of proteins in the cell nucleus, the biogenesis and dynamics of membrane domains, and the molecular characterization of the cytoskeleton in normal and transformed cells.

Franke is married to the athlete and author Brigitte Berendonk .

Fight against doping

Werner Franke has been an opponent of doping in competitive sports for many years and is one of the sharpest critics of sports reporting that hushes up doping . "I don't do this full-time, but see it as the responsibility of the scientist," he said of his fight against doping. Together with his wife Brigitte Berendonk , a former discus thrower and shot putter, Franke has been involved in the fight against doping for years. The two were seen as “traitors, dirtiers” because of their commitment in top-class sport, said Franke in 2006. According to the assessment of sports historian Giselher Spitzer , the married couple Berendonk and Franke “have the merit of starting the public debate about anabolic steroids in the Federal Republic of Germany In April 1977 Franke published the article “Anabolic steroids in sport”, in which he pointed out the health dangers of taking anabolic steroids and criticized sports physicians who classified the administration of such agents as harmless or who prescribed athletes “for the purpose of increasing athletic performance”, namely Franke's assessment of "without any medical indication, without any appropriate weighing of interests and against the rules of the Olympic sports themselves".

Franke helped with the acquisition and evaluation of sources for the 1991 published by Brigitte Berendonk Doping-Documents. From research to fraud, in which she uncovered the longstanding systematic compulsory doping in competitive sport in the GDR . As early as December 1990, Berendonk and Franke had managed to secure documents (including 30 secret doctoral theses) in the GDR Military Medical Academy in Bad Saarow . The documents saved during the preparation of the book played an important role in the later legal processing of the GDR doping. In 1991 Franke filed charges against those responsible for doping in the GDR. All subsequent charges in this area, he said, were based on this.

In 2005 Franke announced his withdrawal from the fight against doping, but continued to do so because of the doping cases in cycling.

According to their own information, Berendonk and Franke were sued around 35 times (as of January 2016) for their doping publications. This also included a lawsuit by the nine ARD broadcasters and journalist Hagen Boßdorf , which was heard in April 2006. Franke was charged with the allegation that the ARD and Boßdorf indirectly supported doping offenses in cycling and spread "systematically lies". The one-day court process ended with the finding that Franke did not want to claim that the ARD and Boßdorf had misrepresented "facts about doping in the program". In Franke's assessment, he had only distanced himself in court from something that he had never claimed.

In June 2006 he called cycling “a single rolling highly criminal scene, a mafia-like system with confidentiality and everything that goes with organized crime”. In the same year he accused professional cyclist Jan Ullrich of doping on the occasion of the doping scandal Fuentes , in which he said he had access to the investigation files of the Spanish police . In February 2007, he obtained an injunction against Franke at the Hamburg Higher Regional Court , which forbade Franke to claim that Ullrich had paid the Spanish doctor Eufemiano Fuentes 35,000 euros within a year to purchase illegal substances. In the main proceedings, however, the OLG Hamburg dismissed Ullrich's action for an injunction against Franke, since Franke's assertion "is to be regarded as true with regard to its actual salary and does not violate the plaintiff's general personal rights".

In February 2008 Franke filed a criminal complaint for fraud against the Tour de France 2006 participant of the cycling team T-Mobile and the then team boss Olaf Ludwig . He suspected the driver displayed during the Tour de France to be moved to the University Hospital in Freiburg in 2006 and there own blood - transfusions to have received a fraudulent performance increase during sporting competition to bring about.

From 2007 Werner Franke belonged to the “Evaluation Commission Freiburg Sports Medicine”, which deals with the doping past of the University Hospital Freiburg. On March 1, 2012 Franke stated that he wanted to leave the commission. In doing so, he complied with a request from Commission chairwoman Letizia Paoli , who accused Franke of violating commission secrets. According to media reports, Franke was hereby before a dismissal. Franke later criticized that results should be kept secret. And according to his own statement, he noticed that the University of Freiburg had worked “against the Enlightenment”. He criticized the fact that individual members of the commission had stated in writing that certain results of the commission would not be published. Franke said he hadn't signed it and explained his withdrawal from the commission with his self-image: “I am a scientist. I create knowledge and publish it ... I even consider that to be criminal, because if I notice that these means were given here, which can lead to damage, then I have to inform about them. "

He criticized the fact that in doping cases it is often the athletes ("The athletes are victims in the sense (...) because they are not adequately informed beforehand"), but rarely the backers such as doctors, who are legally prosecuted. As his opponents, he does not see the athletes, "but the doctors, the responsible political bodies and parts of journalism that go beyond it," said Franke in 2015. In 2017 he accused the Federal Ministry of the Interior and the German Olympic Sports Confederation for a lack of will to clarify and reappraise the West German Doping before. He complained that, unlike those from the GDR, there were no legal proceedings against those responsible for doping from the Federal Republic, although, according to Franke, they “did exactly the same thing.” Franke also spoke out in favor of an independent doping control system and criticized in March 2015: “It it cannot be that the sports associations are allowed, can, should pay those who they control themselves. "

His often chosen approach, with bold and sometimes drastic sayings (for example, “The IAAF has someone by the gossip”, “This is where messes happen all the time. An example is the 'Hungarian ass gutter'”, “Everyone knows that only drunk and Stupid arriving there with positive results "," Doped like a pig "or" Typical friendly south-west corruption from Freiburg to Stuttgart ") to point out grievances, he justified in 2015 as follows:" There is no point, you have to speak directly in a proletarian way, to be heard. (...) I scare people with my vocabulary. ”Franke called this“ a satirical pungency that disturbs many people ”. In 2020, the German Press Agency attributed a “well-founded thug mentality” to Franke.

In 2018, Franke, together with Gerhard Treutlein , Claudia Lepping and Henner Misersky , wrote to the Bundestag Sports Committee , calling for an amendment to the Doping Victims Aid Act. Franke's group questioned the thesis of the Doping Victims Aid Association (DOH) that the damage caused by GDR doping victims could be inherited, and demanded that the applicants' reports be questioned. This led to a public dispute over the work of the DOH and the allocation of aid payments for doping victims. On the occasion of Franke's 80th birthday, Treutlein classified his merits with the words: "The fight against doping and for cleanliness in sport would be much worse if it hadn't been for him and Brigitte Berendonk".

Awards and honors

In 1981 Franke received the Wilhelm and Maria Meyenburg Prize for cancer research. In 1984 he was awarded the Ernst Jung Prize for Medical Research. In 1986 he was accepted as a full member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences . Since 1989 he has been a member of the Academia Europaea . In 1995 the German Cancer Prize was awarded to Werner Franke (experimental part) and Claus Garbe (clinical part).

Werner Franke and his wife Brigitte Berendonk received the Federal Cross of Merit on Ribbon of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2004 , primarily as an award for the fight “against the inhuman and criminal methods of doping”.

In 2007 Franke was honored by the German University Association DHV with the award " University Teacher of the Year ". In 2009 he was awarded the Medal of Honor by the Medical Faculty of Charles University in Prague .

Publications

In April 1994 the Berliner Zeitung published a six-part series Doping in the GDR by Franke:

  1. Collective compulsion to be silent
  2. Beard growth in athletes and abortions on command
  3. A diabetic athlete was injected to the physical wreck
  4. Children - play balls for doctors and trainers
  5. The law was not a hurdle for doctors
  6. From Jena around the globe

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c CURRICULUM VITAE: Werner Wilhelm Franke. In: dkfz.de. Retrieved March 18, 2019 .
  2. ↑ List of high school graduates of the Association of Former Theodorians 1910–1985, page 39 , 1985, Bonifatius-Druckerei, Paderborn
  3. ↑ a b c FDP Wiesloch-Südliche Bergstrasse: Prof. Dr. Werner Franke: Lecture "Doping: - Crimes in the national interest". January 22, 2016, accessed March 17, 2019 .
  4. ↑ Werner Franke - cell biologist and educator. BIOPRO Baden-Württemberg GmbH, 2007, accessed on March 18, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Brigitte Berendonk is 70 - and is worried. Badische Zeitung, May 2, 2012 (accessed May 29, 2017)
  6. ↑ a b doping expert Werner Franke in full. In: Vorarlberg Online (VOL.at). Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  7. ↑ a b Lothar Gorris, Maik Großekathöfer, Udo Ludwig : "Only the very stupid" . In: Der Spiegel . tape 33 , August 14, 2006 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 19, 2019]).
  8. ↑ Giselher Spitzer: "Doping in Germany from 1950 to today": Selected project results . In: doping. The anti-doping magazine for competitive athletes, clubs and associations . tape 2/2017 . INGER Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH, Osnabrück, S. 88-93 .
  9. ↑ Werner Franke: Anabolic steroids in sport . In: doping. The anti-doping magazine for competitive athletes, clubs and associations . tape 2/2017 . INGER Verlagsgesellschaft GmbH, Osnabrück, S. 102-105 .
  10. ^ Frank Bachner: Of all things, Chief Doper Manfred Höppner was the most important informant of the criminal police . In: tagesspiegel.de . April 28, 2000.
  11. ↑ Barbara Bürer and Nils Klawitter: Since 1990, the West has adorned itself with athletes from GDR production. Their creators are now on trial. In: The time . March 19, 1998, ISSN  0044-2070 ( zeit.de [accessed March 17, 2019]).
  12. ↑ Jutta Braun: Expert opinion on the topic "Sport" for the Enquete Commission 5/1 "Working on the history and coping with the consequences of the SED dictatorship and the transition to a democratic constitutional state in the state of Brandenburg". Center for German Sports History Berlin-Brandenburg (ZdS), accessed on March 17, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Ludwig and: DOPING: Puzzle games in the swamp . In: Der Spiegel . tape June 24 , 1997 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 17, 2019]).
  14. ↑ Peter Ehrenberg: Enlightenment is like a virus . April 26, 2000 ( welt.de [accessed March 17, 2019]).
  15. ^ Doping investigator Werner Franke: "People, help yourself" . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed March 19, 2019]).
  16. ↑ Hannah Pilarczyk: The Involuntary Witness . In: The daily newspaper: taz . June 13, 2006, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 15 ( taz.de [accessed on March 17, 2019]).
  17. ^ Udo Ludwig, Gerhard Pfeil: DOPING: "Journalistic Corruption" . In: Der Spiegel . tape April 14 , 2006 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 17, 2019]).
  18. ↑ Doping trial: sport without doping . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed March 17, 2019]).
  19. ↑ Werner Franke: The doping of the others . June 29, 2006 ( welt.de [accessed March 17, 2019]).
  20. ↑ Jan Ullrich wins trial against doping expert Franke Sächsische Zeitung, February 14, 2007
  21. ↑ sueddeutsche.de: Badly burned out , August 18, 2010
  22. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Franke shows Klöden and Co.. Doping expert wants to advance investigations . ) On: sport.zdf.de , February 24, 2008.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / sport.zdf.de
  23. ^ Evaluation Commission Freiburg Sports Medicine - Evaluation Commission Freiburg Sports Medicine .
  24. ^ Sports policy: Freiburg: doping fighter Franke leaves university commission - badische-zeitung.de .
  25. ↑ General sports: doping hunter Franke came before resignation with withdrawal; TIME ONLINE .
  26. ↑ a b c d Franke, Prof. Werner (molecular biologist and doping expert. Has been fighting against fraud in sport for a long time and is familiar with the soccer allegations) | Program | SWR1 Baden-Württemberg. In: swr.de. March 5, 2015, accessed March 17, 2019 .
  27. ↑ ►Doping in top-class sport | System or single perpetrator (HD German). In: Youtube.com. March 3, 2019, accessed March 17, 2019 .
  28. ^ A b Süddeutsche de GmbH, Munich Germany: Doping educator and provocateur: Werner Franke is 75 - Political News. Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 1, 2015, accessed on August 25, 2020 .
  29. ↑ "The West German state was fully behind everything". In: saechsische.de. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  30. ↑ "This kind of sport is totally dirty". In: Tagesspiegel. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  31. ↑ Franke criticizes the doping control system again. In: Tagesspiegel. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  32. ↑ Doping hunter Werner Franke attacks Kristin Otto: "Doped like a pig". In: RTL. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  33. ^ A b Werner Franke: The sharp-tongued fighter against doping is 80. In: Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung. Accessed February 1, 2020 .
  34. ↑ FOCUS Online: Dispute over doping victim support association continues. Retrieved March 17, 2019 .
  35. ↑ Anno Hecker: Doping Commentary: The Furor of the Old Fighter . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed March 17, 2019]).
  36. ↑ Javier Cáceres Berlin: Until the blood hurts . In: sueddeutsche.de . January 31, 2019, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed March 17, 2019]).
  37. ^ A b CV Werner W. Franke: Awards and honors (excerpt). In: dkfz.de. Retrieved March 18, 2019 .
  38. ^ Members of the HAdW since it was founded in 1909. Werner W. Franke. Heidelberg Academy of Sciences, accessed on July 10, 2016 .
  39. ↑ Directory of members: Werner Franke. Academia Europaea, accessed June 26, 2017 .
  40. ^ Doping educator couple Franke-Berendonk received the Federal Cross of Merit ( Memento of December 25, 2004 in the Internet Archive ) Netzeitung, May 7, 2004
  41. ↑ "University Lecturer of the Year": Award goes to Professor Dr. Werner Franke press release German University Association, October 4, 2007
personal data
SURNAME Franke, Werner
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Franke, Werner Wilhelm (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German biologist and anti-doping opponent
DATE OF BIRTH January 31, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Paderborn