Wilhelm Münnich

Wilhelm Münnich , actually Guillermo Enrique Münnich Thiele (born March 31, 1876 in Valparaíso ; † May 20, 1948 there ), was a Chilean physician and politician .

Life

Wilhelm was born as the son of the pharmacist of the same name (Guillermo Münnich Frick) and his wife Henrike Thiele (Enriqueta Thiele parish) from Valdivia. After attending high school in Valparaíso, he studied medicine at the Universidad de Chile in Santiago de Chile . During his studies in 1896 he was one of the founders of the Araucania fraternity . He was a reserve officer of the cavalry in the President's body regiment . From 1903 he completed his specialist training in surgery in Berlin and worked, among other things, at the Bergmann Clinic . Ernst von Bergmann recommended Anton von Eiselsberg to him , which is why Münnich went to Vienna ; later to Wroclaw to Johann von Mikulicz . He became an assistant to Ferdinand Sauerbruch and was back in Chile from 1906.

During the earthquake of August 17, 1906 near Valparaíso , he treated numerous victims. Münnich was friends with the Chilean President Pedro Montt Montt , whom he accompanied as a personal doctor on his cure and treatment in Bad Nauheim in 1910 , before he died in Bremen that same year . Together with Christoph Martin , Münnich co-founded the German-Chilean Federation in 1916 and campaigned for Germanness in Chile throughout his life .

For 40 years, Münnich was director of the German Hospital in Valparaíso, which was the oldest German hospital in Chile, founded in 1875 by a group of 71 German dignitaries and which lasted until 2010. He also directed the large municipal hospital in Valparaíso. He was also director of Banco Edwards and several social organizations, as well as president of the Asociación Médica , the local medical association. He became an honorary member and corresponding member of numerous Chilean and foreign scientific societies .

Münnich was Intendent (provincial governor) of the province of Valparaíso for one term and also took care of the economic development of Chile internationally, especially in banking , industry and agriculture . He was on the board of the National Agricultural Society Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura and managed his property Fundos Puchuncavi , which was a model company dedicated to the refinement of the Chilean breed cattle .

Wilhelm Münnich was married to Helene Kunstmann (Elena Kunstmann Münnich), with whom he had their son Guillermo Munnich Kunstmann, born in 1918.

literature

• Helge Dvorak: Biographical Lexicon of the German Burschenschaft. Volume I: Politicians. Sub-Volume 4: M-Q. Winter, Heidelberg 2000, ISBN 3-8253-1118-X , pp. 167-168.