Wilhelm Kattwinkel (neurologist)

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Wilhelm Kattwinkel (born March 27, 1866 in Kierspe ( Westphalia ), † January 21, 1935 in Partenkirchen ) was a German neurologist and paleontologist . He became particularly well-known through the discovery of the fossil deposit in the Olduvai Gorge , which in the subsequent period also yielded many finds of hominins .

Life

The son of the businessman Wilhelm Kattwinkel († 1877) and Henriette Kattwinkel, née Bancklotz (1833–1898), first studied natural sciences in Bonn and Strasbourg, and from 1894 then medicine in Bonn, Königsberg and Erlangen. He obtained his doctorate in 1892 in Erlangen. med. and passed the state examination in Munich in 1894. In 1895 he married the daughter Martha (* 1872) of the factory owner Julius Schmidt in Schwelm . After his military service, Kattwinkel became a volunteer assistant with Hugo von Ziemssen and from 1900 to 1905 he did internship at the Hôpital Salpêtrière and the Bicêtre in Paris. In 1902 he completed his habilitation in Munich, was appointed associate professor for neurology in 1909 and acquired knowledge of paleontology, in particular in the German Society for Anthropology, Ethnology and Prehistory by Karl Alfred von Zittel and Johannes Ranke .

From 1910 to 1911, Kattwinkel and his wife went on a privately financed research trip to German East Africa to research sleeping sickness . In 1911 he found a rich fossil site on the southeastern edge of today's Serengeti National Park, which he named after the Maasai word for the "wild sisal" Sansevieria ehrenbergii or Sansevieria suffruticosa (according to other sources after the 1893 in Africa introduced sisal agave ) called Oldoway Gorge (English Olduvay or Olduvai Gorge). Subsequently, supported by Ernst Freiherr Stromer von Reichenbach (Munich), August Rothpletz (1853–1918, Munich) and Wilhelm von Branca (Berlin), another expedition of the Geological Institutes in Munich and Berlin into the Olduvai Gorge was prepared. The expedition took place in 1912/13 under the leadership of the geologist Hans Reck , who found the first hominin fossils in 1913. This expedition was to be followed by others, including one financed by Kattwinkel himself in 1914. When the First World War broke out, the expedition participants WB Sattler and G. Schulze were interned. Kattwinkel himself decided not to go on the trip and never visited the Olduvai Gorge again.

Kattwinkel headed a military hospital until 1918 and then resumed teaching in Munich. Until the winter semester of 1934/35 he was listed in the course catalogs of the Ludwig Maximilians University as a non-scheduled associate professor for internal medicine and neurology. Since the 1920s he also worked as a doctor in the “Wiggers Kurheim” sanatorium in Partenkirchen.

Trivia

Louis Leakey , who was best known for his finds in the Olduvai Gorge, incorrectly referred to Wilhelm Kattwinkel as a “butterfly collector” who happened to find the fossil deposit. Why Leakey did not find out more about the discoverer is unknown. His misrepresentation was partially adopted in later literature.

Works

  • A case of primary systematic degeneration of the pyramidal tracts. (Spastic spinal paralysis). In: German journal for neurology. 33 1907, pp. 1-13, doi: 10.1007 / BF01652538 .
  • with L. Neumayer: About the course of the so-called Helweg's three-cornered path or Bechterew's olive bundle (Fasciculus parolivaris). In: German journal for neurology. 33, 1907, pp. 229-237 & panel V, doi: 10.1007 / BF01668438 .
  • with L. Neumayer: About the origin and course of the Türck bundle. In: German journal for neurology. 39, 1910, pp. 183-192 & Tafeln III-IV, doi: 10.1007 / BF01650000 .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Georg Glowatzki:  Kattwinkel, Wilhelm. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1977, ISBN 3-428-00192-3 , p. 331 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ^ G. Maier: African Dinosaurs Unearthed: The Tendaguru Expeditions. Indiana University Press, 2003, ISBN 0-253-34214-7 .
  3. ^ Lecture catalog of the LMU Munich 1934/35 (PDF; 3.8 MB).
  4. ^ G. Glowatzki: Wilhelm Kattwinkel, the discoverer of the Oldoway gorge. In: Homo - journal for comparative research on humans. Volume 30, 1979, pp. 124-125.
personal data
SURNAME Kattwinkel, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neurologist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 27, 1866
PLACE OF BIRTH Kierspe
DATE OF DEATH January 21, 1935
Place of death Partenkirchen