Wilhelm crutch

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Wilhelm Krücke ( December 26, 1911 in Steinbrücken / Dillkreis ; † February 7, 1988 in Bad Soden am Taunus ) was a German neuropathologist and director of the neuropathological department of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt am Main and, as full professor, director of the Edinger Institute of the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt am Main , thus first professor of neuropathology in Germany.

Life and academic career

Wilhelm Krücke came from a Protestant pastor family in northern Hesse that spanned several generations. After graduating from high school in 1930 at the humanistic grammar school in Dillenburg, he studied medicine in Marburg , Berlin and Frankfurt am Main, where he passed a state examination and obtained a medical license in 1936 . Initially a doctoral student at the Pathological Institute of Frankfurt University, he received training in general pathology in Berlin, most recently at the prosecution of the famous Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research in Berlin-Buch. Here he received his doctorate with his work “The mucoid degeneration of the peripheral nerves” in 1938, the beginning of his “life theme”: diseases of the peripheral nerves. In the same year he married the doctor Charlotte Arendt. He later had two daughters with her who also became doctors.

As a scientific assistant in the Berlin Neuropathological Department of the KWI for Brain Research under Julius Hallervorden , Krücke was drafted into military service in 1940 and until the end of the war as an air force pathologist, mainly in Belgium and northern France, most recently in Bad Ischl. As late as 1942 he had in the meantime in Berlin with a thesis "On the histopathology of neural muscular atrophy and hypertrophic neuritis and neurofibromatosis " habilitation . During the war he gained experience in traumatic damage to the brain and spinal cord. According to all previous research, no culpable behavior in connection with the examinations of the brains of Nazi euthanasia victims, as it particularly affected his superior Julius Hallervorden, can be proven. During his military service, Krücke arranged for the most important Berlin preparations to be transferred to Dillenburg in northern Hesse. Soon after the end of the war, branches of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, renamed the Max Planck Institute in 1948, were able to resume their scientific work in Dillenburg, later in Giessen.

After a short American captivity, Wilhelm Krücke received in 1947 from Arnold Lauche , Director of the Pathological Institute of the University of Frankfurt am Main, the only, initially unscheduled, assistant position at the recently orphaned Edinger Institute. Founded in 1907 by the Jewish neurologist Ludwig Edinger (1855–1918) and affiliated to the university as the “Neurological Institute” in 1917, it was the oldest German brain research institute. Krücke soon succeeded in developing the institute into a leading center for German neuropathology, from 1950 scientific assistant and from 1953 diet lecturer. As a result, he was appointed associate professor in 1955 and then director of the institute. In the same year he was one of the initiators of a scientific association that later became the " German Society for Neuropathology and Neuroanatomy (DGNN) eV". Likewise in 1955 his first large handbook article on diseases of peripheral nerves appeared, a presentation of the entire state of knowledge on this previously rather neglected topic, taking into account his own results. The work also made him known internationally. In 1956 Krücke was appointed Scientific Member of the Max Planck Institute (MPI) and Director of the Neuropathological Department of the MPI in Giessen. In 1961 he was appointed full professor at Frankfurt University and thus the first full professor of neuropathology in Germany.

Krücke's ties to the University of Frankfurt through the Edinger Institute prompted the Max Planck Society, not without his influence, to build the new MPI for Brain Research on the Frankfurt bank of the Main near the university. The building, which he played a major role in, was completed in 1962. Here, among other things, the Edinger Institute of the University and the Neuropathological Department of the MPI were combined spatially and personally under Krückes management and soon became a center that attracted scientists from all over the world for study purposes.

The focus of his own research remained the pathology of peripheral nerves. The differentiation between inflammatory and degenerative changes, i.e. neuritides and neuropathies, and thus also polyneuritides and polyneuropathies, was groundbreaking here. On the pathology of peripheral nerves, in addition to many original papers, he wrote other, in part extensive, manual and textbook contributions. In 1968, his international reputation prompted the Aachen public prosecutor's office to appoint him to the group of experts in the so-called Contergan trial on the question of thalidomide (Contergan) polyneuropathy. And it persuaded the leading US neuropathy researcher Peter J. Dyck from the Mayo Clinic to publish the standard work Peripheral Neuropathy there in 1975 with Krücke's detailed introduction. But his wide range of scientific work also included various encephalitis, such as herpes , toxoplasmosis and vaccinevirus encephalitis, subacute sclerosing panencephalitis and immunoreactive parainfectious herdcephalitis. His employees were given the opportunity to develop their own special fields of study, such as electron microscopy, neurochemistry, histochemistry, experimental neuropathology, developmental pathology, etc.

In 1977 Wilhelm Krücke retired as a university professor after reaching the age limit. In 1978 he resigned from the MPI position because the Max Planck Society had decided to leave neuropathology to the universities as a more clinical subject and to close their own departments in favor of those with pure basic research. However, Krücke was still able to work on a small scale at the Edinger Institute under his successor there, Wolfgang Schlote, who had survived a heart attack in 1981, until shortly before his death in Bad Soden / Taunus on February 7, 1988, probably as a result of a cerebral hemorrhage . His rich scientific legacy is kept in the archive of the Max Planck Society in Berlin.

Works (selection)

  • W. Krücke: About the fat embolism of the brain after an aircraft accident. In: Virchows Arch. 315, 1948, pp. 481-498.
  • W. Krücke: Pathological anatomy of vaccinevirus encephalitis. In: Monthly Children's Health. 100, 1952, pp. 182-184.
  • W. Krücke: Diseases of the peripheral nerves. In: O. Lubarsch, F. Henke, R. Rössle (eds.): Handbook of special pathological anatomy and histology. Volume 13/5, Springer, Berlin 1955, pp. 1–248.
  • K. Weisse, W. Krücke: The inclusion body encephalitides. New forms of encephalitis. In: Dtsch Med Wochenschr. 84, 1959, pp. 777-781.
  • W. Krücke: The diseases of the peripheral nerves. In: M. Staemmler (Hrsg.): Textbook of the special pathological anatomy. de Gruyter, Berlin 1960, pp. 750-793.
  • W. Krücke: Ludwig Edinger (1855-1918). In: 50 Years of Neuropathology in Germany 1885–1935. Thieme, Stuttgart 1961, pp. 20-33.
  • W. Krücke: Pathology of the peripheral nerves. In: K. Olivecrona, W. Tönnis, W. Krenkel (Ed.): Handbuch Neurochir. VII / 3, Springer, Heidelberg 1974, pp. 1-267.
  • W. Krücke: On the histopathology and pathogenesis of acute hemorrhagic leucoencephalitis. acute disseminative encephalitis and concentric sclerosis. In: H. Shiraki, T. Yonezawa, Y. Kuroiwa (Eds.): The etiology and pathogenesis of the demyelinating diseases. Proc Symp Tokyo 1973. Jpn Soc Neuropathol, Japan Science Press, Tokyo 1976, pp. 11-27.
  • W. Krücke, Vitzthum Countess H .: Damage to the roots and nerves. Pathological anatomy. In: H. Dietz, W. Umbach, R. Wüllenweber (Eds.): Clinical Neurosurgery. Volume II: Clinic and Therapy. 1984, pp. 302-313.

literature

  • GW Klinghardt: Wilhelm Krücke December 26, 1911 - February 7, 1988. In: Max Planck Society, reports u. Messages. No. 4, 1988, pp. 97-100.
  • Wolfgang Schlote : Professor Wilhelm Krücke +. In: Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Report. May 11, 1988, 21, No. 5, 1988, p. 4.
  • Wolfgang Schlote: Wilhelm Krücke (December 26, 1911 - February 7, 1988). In: Verh Dtsch Ges Path. 72, 1988, pp. 674-651.
  • Wolfgang Schlote: In memoriam Wilhelm Krücke. In: Acta Neuropathol. 77, 1989, pp. 557-560.
  • E. Gibbels, GW Klinghardt: Wilhelm Krücke (1911–1988): For the 100th birthday of the great neuropathologist on December 26, 2011. In: Fortschr Neurol Psychiat. 79, 2011, pp. 720-723.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ J. Peiffer: brain research in the twilight: examples of seducible science from the time of National Socialism. In: Treatises on the history of medicine and the natural sciences. Issue 79, Matthiesen, Husum, 1997. (Section "Permanent reproach, but also a warning to science" p. 52)
  2. ^ E. Gibbels, GW Klinghardt: Wilhelm Krücke (1911–1988): For the 100th birthday of the great neuropathologist on December 26, 2011. In: Fortschr Neurol Psychiat. 79, 2011, pp. 720-723. (Section "Relationship to National Socialism", p. 721)
  3. ↑ a b G Kreft: Heads - Brains - Networks / 130 Years of Brain Research. In: Research in Frankfurt, the science magazine of the Goethe University.
  4. ↑ a b Max Planck Institute for Brain Research: 100years minds in motion, 1956–1981. Scientific continuity. New start in Frankfurt am Main. 2014, pp. 38–39.
  5. ↑ Trial files for the so-called Contergan trial: Aachen Regional Court, Az. 4 KMs 1/68
  6. ^ PJ Dyck, PK Thomas, EH Lambert (eds.): Peripheral Neuropathy. Saunders, Philadelphia 1975.
  7. ^ Max Planck Society, Archive: Signature III. Dept., ZA 10

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Crutch, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neuropathologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 26, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Stone bridges / Dillkreis
DATE OF DEATH February 7, 1988
Place of death Bad Soden am Taunus