Widukind Lenz

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Widukind Lenz (born February 4, 1919 in Eichenau ; † February 25, 1995 in Münster ) was a German doctor and human geneticist .

Life

Lenz was the second son of the human geneticist and racial hygienist Fritz Lenz . His mother Emmy, nee Weitz, died in 1928. He studied medicine from 1937 to 1943 at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen , the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin , the German University in Prague and the Ernst Moritz Arndt University in Greifswald . During his studies in Tübingen he joined the comradeship "Ludwig Uhland" in the winter semester 1937/38 , of which he was a member of the successor organization Burschenschaft Germania Tübingen until the end of his life. In addition to his studies, he was a youth group leader of the Hitler Youth , belonged to the NS student union and was a member of the SA . According to information in his résumé from 1941, a transfer to the SS failed due to opposition from the SA. In the same year he received his doctorate at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University of Greifswald with the subject “On the changes in human growth in the present”.

From 1944 to 1948 Widukind Lenz worked as a doctor in the Air Force and in POW camps. From 1952 he was a senior physician at the Eppendorfer Children's Clinic until he was appointed to the newly created Hamburg Ordinariate in 1961. In Hamburg he completed his habilitation in 1958 on the subject of "The Influence of Parents' Age and Birth Number on Congenital Pathological Conditions in Children". During this time he mainly worked in the field of clinical genetics and chromosome analysis . During his research in 1961, he made the momentous discovery in connection with the active ingredient thalidomide contained in Contergan. In 1963 he presented his book on "Medical Genetics". From 1965 Lenz was director of the Genetic Institute at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster .

His book Medical Genetics was recognized as a standard work in the German-speaking world for years.

Widukind Lenz was with the doctor Almuth Lenz, geb. Thomsen-von Krohn, married. The marriage produced a son and a daughter. Lenz's older brother was the mathematician Hanfried Lenz , the younger brother Friedrich (1922–2014) was a physicist.

Lenz died on February 25, 1995 in Münster.

Thalidomide research

Lenz became known through his scientific research that the active ingredient thalidomide contained in the drug Contergan was the cause of the increased incidence of malformations in newborns. On November 15, 1961, he called Heinrich Mückter , the research director at Grünenthal , drew his attention to the connections and demanded that the agent be taken back. Four days later at the medical congress in Düsseldorf, he spoke publicly about his discovery and again demanded an immediate withdrawal of "Contergan" from the market. On November 26th, the “Welt am Sonntag” took up this demand, related to the drug, and only on the following day, under the pressure that had already built up, the manufacturer Grünenthal took the drug off the market. In December of the same year, the Aachen public prosecutor began investigating the Grünenthal company. In the article Die Thalidomid-Embryopathie Lenz then published his first results on malformations caused by Contergan together with Klaus Knapp in the German Medical Weekly in 1962. For his teratological research on the thalidomide problem, he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Tübingen in 1963/64 . But several years had to pass before the trial against the Grünenthal company was opened on May 27, 1968 . In December 1970 the process was discontinued.

Together with his wife, Widukind Lenz campaigned for clarification of the background to the Contergan scandal and for compensation for the victims.

Honors and memberships

Works

  • Medical genetics: with key to the item catalog (1983)
  • Human Genetics in Psychology and Psychiatry (1978)
  • Medical genetics: basics, results and Problems (1970)
  • Medical Genetics (1963) (translations into English, Spanish, Russian and Japanese)
  • Medical Genetics: An Introduction to Its Basics and Problems (1961)
  • The influence of the age of the parents and the birth number on congenital pathological conditions in the child ( Habilschrift , Hamburg 1958)
  • Recessive-sex-linked microphthalmia with multiple malformations. In: Zeitschrift für Kinderheilkunde , Berlin, 1955, Vol. 77, pp. 384-390, ISSN  0044-2917 . PMID 13300470 . After that, that's Lenz syndrome named.
  • Diet and Constitution (1949)
  • On the changes in human growth in the present (dissertation, Greifswald 1943)

See also

Web links

literature

  • Anna Christiane Schulze: The role of Widukind Lenz in the uncovering of the teratogenic effects of thalidomide (Contergan): medical-historical consideration of the importance of an individual in the largest German drug scandal . Frankfurt (Main) 2016, DNB  1112557415 (dissertation).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ K. Philipp: Burschenschaft Germania Tübingen, complete list of the members since the foundation December 12, 1816 . Stuttgart 2008.
  2. ↑ 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. 367.
  3. ↑ Star No. 45 2007, p. 183
  4. ^ Widukind Lenz, Klaus Knapp: The thalidomide embryopathy. In: German Medical Weekly . Vol. 87 (1962), H. 24, pp. 1232-1242, doi: 10.1055 / s-0028-1111892 .
  5. ↑ Andrea Westhoff, indictment in the Contergan scandal, Deutschlandfunk on March 13, 1971, in: www.Deutschlandfunk.de
personal data
SURNAME Lenz, Widukind
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German human geneticist
DATE OF BIRTH February 4, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Eichenau
DATE OF DEATH February 25, 1995
Place of death Muenster