Wilhelm Roloff

The title of this article is ambiguous. For the German resistance fighter, see Wilhelm Roloff (resistance fighter) .

Wilhelm Roloff (born January 7, 1899 in Harburg an der Elbe , † August 5, 1949 in Regensburg ) was a German pulmonologist and tuberculosis researcher.

Live and act

Wilhelm Roloff, who grew up in Malente , graduated from the Oldenburg Gymnasium in Eutin in June 1917 , shortly afterwards he was called up for military service, mainly in the east. When he returned in April 1919, he began studying medicine in Berlin ; he studied there until 1923 and for two semesters in Freiburg im Breisgau . During this time he was famulus at the district hospital Salzwedel , at the Freiburg University Medical Center and the Hospital Moabit (Berlin). Roloff worked as a medical intern at the Berlin-Reinickendorf Hospital. In 1924 he was approved. His doctoral thesis dealt with the topic “About a case of syphilitic infection in a child during childbirth”. From 1924 to 1926 he was a volunteer assistant at the Charité women's clinic under Professor Ernst Bumm . Here Roloff developed a special loop for holding the legs during childbirth. In 1926 he became an assistant doctor at the surgical department of the Diakonissenkrankenhaus Bethanien , Berlin. In December 1926 he fell ill with tuberculosis , which was treated and healed in a sanatorium in Davos (Switzerland) until April 1927 . Here he made the decision to become a pulmonologist. The focus of his work was the research and therapy of pulmonary tuberculosis with a view to social and psychosomatic influences.

From 1927 to 1928 he worked as an assistant doctor at the Belzig sanatorium ( Mark Brandenburg ), from 1928 to 1933 as an assistant doctor and senior physician at the Sommerfeld tuberculosis hospital (Osthavelland) at Hellmuth Ulrici . In 1933/1934 Roloff was the head of the Berlin-Charlottenburg lung care. In 1935 he was recognized as a specialist in lung diseases. From 1934 to 1945 he was chief physician at the Treuenbrietzen Tuberculosis Hospital (Mark Brandenburg). In 1935 he married the medical-technical employee Ingeborg Wittekindt (1909–1996); between 1936 and 1944 their four sons were born in Treuenbrietzen. In 1937 he successfully campaigned to put a plaque in memory of Robert Koch on the house in which Koch had lived in the neighboring town of Niemegk in Treuenbrietzen in 1868/1869. In 1939 he completed his habilitation on "The prognosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in adults" at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin. From 1939 to 1945 he was employed as a staff doctor in the reserve and senior staff doctor. He served as chief physician of the reserve hospital for lung patients in Treuenbrietzen, partly in France.

After the end of the war and a short American imprisonment, he worked as a pulmonologist at hospitals in Herzogsägmühle near Schongau and Sonthofen in the Allgäu; from May 1946 he was chief physician at the Donaustauf lung sanatorium near Regensburg. In 1949 he died in a Regensburg hospital after a brief, serious illness.

Roloff was a member of the advisory board of the German Tuberculosis Society . At the first post-war congress of the German Tuberculosis Society in Wiesbaden (October 5 to 8, 1948), an appeal he formulated to “the peoples and governments of the world” was resolved to do everything possible to maintain peace and because of the “impending tuberculosis wave for to secure all people the right to an appropriate way of life with adequate food and housing, work and recreation ”.

Wilhelm and Ingeborg Roloff Prize

In memory of Wilhelm Roloff and his wife, the German Lung Foundation awards the Wilhelm and Ingeborg Roloff Prize every two years for outstanding journalistic contributions to pulmonary medicine. It was donated by their four sons and awarded for the first time in 1998.

Publications (selection)

• For the treatment of collapse in pregnant women with tuberculous lung. In: Zentralblatt für Gynäkologie. 1929, p. 2972.
• with Walter Pagel : On the virulence of the tubercle bacilli in pulmonary tuberculosis. In: Contributions to the clinic of tuberculosis. Vol. 72 (1929), p. 685 ff.
• Long-term success of lung collapse treatment. Statistical report on 1128 cases from 1918–1928. In: Contributions to the clinic of tuberculosis. Vol. 78 (1931), p. 495 ff.
• Marital Loans and Tuberculosis. In: Deutsches Tuberkuloseblatt. Vol. 8 (1934), p. 88 f.
• The capture and accommodation of tuberculous. A guide for practice. In: Ärzteblatt for Brandenburg. 1936, p. 13 f.
• The tubercular man as a silk farmer. In: The Public Health Service. Vol. 3 (1937), H. 18, pp. 621-624
• Robert Koch as a Brandenburg country doctor [in Niemegk]. In: Ärzteblatt for Berlin, Mark Brandenburg and Pomerania. No. 33/34 of 12./19. August 1939, p. 631 ff.
• The prognosis of pulmonary tuberculosis in adults. Med. Habilitation thesis. Berlin 1939.
• Tuberculosis as a problem in Africa. In: The Medical World. Vol. 14 (1941), p. 1184 ff.
• Age as a shaping factor for pulmonary tuberculosis. In: Tuberculosis. A manual in five volumes. Barth, Leipzig 1943, vol. 1.
• Tuberculosis lexicon for doctors and authorities. Thieme, Stuttgart 1943; 2nd edition 1949.
• Detecting and registering pulmonary tuberculosis. In: Medical weekly. Born 1./2. (1947), H. 41/42, p. 656 ff.
• Tuberculosis. In: Rudolf Schoen (Ed.): Internal medicine (= natural research and medicine in Germany 1939-1946. Vol. 74). Part I. Dieterich, Wiesbaden 1948, pp. 320–342.
• Pulmonary tuberculosis. An introduction. Springer, Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg 1948.
• Tuberculosis and personality. Attempt at the psychopathology of tuberculosis. In: Psyche . Vol. 3 (1949/1950), pp. 732-740 (reprint in issue 10/2012 of the journal Pneumologie under DOI: 10.1055 / s-0032-1325661 ).

literature

• Richard Bochalli : Obituary: Wilhelm Roloff. In: Journal of Tuberculosis. Vol. 93 (1949), No. 6, pp. 322-325 (with a detailed bibliography).
• Matthias David, Andreas D. Ebert (Ed.): History of the Berlin University Women's Clinics. De Gruyter, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-11-022373-6 , pp. 339, 344 u. 352 f.
• Rainer Dierkesmann et al. (Ed.): 100 Years DGP - 100 Years German Pneumology. Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 2010, ISBN 978-3-642-114533 , p. 40.
• Bernhard Möllers : Robert Koch. Personality and life's work 1843–1910. Schmorl and von Seefeld Nachf., Hanover 1950, pp. 63–66.
• Journal of the German Lung Foundation. 1998, p. 6 f.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wilhelm Roloff in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Eckart Roloff : The history of the Wilhelm and Ingeborg Roloff Prize of the German Lung Foundation. In: Lungs, Air and Life. Vol. 17 (2013), No. 38, pp. 11–14 ( PDF ).