Wilhelm Tonnis

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Otfrid Foerster , Herbert Olivecrona and Wilhelm Tönnis
The grave of Wilhelm Tönnis and his wife Herma in the Dortmund-Oespel cemetery.

Wilhelm Tönnis (born June 16, 1898 in Kley ; † September 12, 1978 in Cologne ) was a German neurosurgeon .

Life

He grew up in Kley near Dortmund as the offspring of a long-established, affluent farming family and graduated from high school in Dortmund in 1917. Immediately afterwards he was called up with other high school graduates for military service in the First World War on the French front and promoted to lieutenant. In 1919 he began his medical studies at the University of Marburg and received his doctorate in 1924 at the University of Hamburg. During his studies he became a member of the AMV Nordmark Hamburg (in the special houses association ). Wilhelm and Herma Tönnis' son Dietrich Tönnis (1927-2010) also became a very recognized medical doctor as a pediatric orthopedic surgeon.

In 1926 he became Fritz König's assistant at the Surgical University Clinic in Würzburg, and in 1932 head of a neurosurgical ward at the Luitpold Hospital in Würzburg, after having previously completed a nine-month training course with Herbert Olivecrona in Stockholm. On August 17, 1934, at the age of 35, he became head of Germany's first independent department specializing in neurosurgery in Würzburg (decree of the Bavarian State Ministry for Education and Culture).

A major technical advance in the emergence of modern neurosurgery was contrast agent diagnostics, which emerged from the late 1920s. At that time, neurosurgery had to prevail against resistance from general surgeons and also (as far as diagnostics were concerned) from neurologists.

In 1937 he moved to Berlin, where he became the first associate professor for neurosurgery at the Hansaklinik, in which position he was formally subordinate to Ferdinand Sauerbruch . At the same time he was appointed director of the newly established department for tumor research and experimental brain pathology at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Tönnis founded the world's first specialist neurosurgical journal, the Central Journal for Neurosurgery , and became its co-editor. During his time in Berlin from 1936 onwards, he worked closely with Hugo Spatz and his student Klaus-Joachim Zülch at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research . Much work on the continuation of the brain tumor classification arose from this collaboration . In 1943, at the same time as Spatz, Tönnis was made an honorary member of the Society of Bulgarian Neurologists and Psychiatrists in Sofia.

During the Second World War he was a general physician in the German Air Force and received the Knight's Cross for War Merit Cross with Swords on May 31, 1944. He initiated the air force evacuation of brain-injured soldiers from the front.

After the war, Wilhelm Tönnis initially worked as director at the Knappschaftskrankenhaus Bochum-Langendreer from April 1, 1946, and set up a neurosurgical center there. During this time he worked tirelessly for the institutionalization of neurosurgery in post-war Germany.

In 1946 he set up the department for tumor research and experimental pathology at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research . From 1949 to 1968 he held the first German chair for neurosurgery at the University of Cologne . On September 13, 1950, he founded and became chairman of the German Society for Neurosurgery .

In 1952 he became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina . Since 1954 he edited the "Handbook for Neurosurgery" with Olivecrona and Krenkel. He was president of the meetings of the German Society for Neurosurgery in Freiburg 1948, Göttingen 1949, Bonn 1950, Cologne 1959. In 1957 he became managing director of the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research and in 1959 President of the Association of German Neurologists, Cologne. In 1970 he founded the Wilhelm Tönnis Foundation.

Tönnis had married Herma Anna Maria Frieda Köster in Wentorf in 1926 . He died in 1978 at the age of 80 in a Cologne hospital.

Awards

literature

  • Ingeborg Geiger: The life and work of Wilhelm Tönnis taking into account his time in Würzburg. med. Diss. Würzburg 1981.
  • Joachim Gerlach: Letters to Tönnis. 1969.
  • Joachim Gerlach: From a new beginning to moving into the head clinic. 1973.
  • Fritz König: Memories. 1952.
  • Peter Röttgen: The beginning with Wilhelm Tönnis. In: 50 Years of Neurosurgery in Germany. Triltsch Druck, Düsseldorf 1986.
  • Peter Röttgen: Wilhelm Tönnis on his 70th birthday. In: DMW. 93: 1211-1212 (1968).
  • Wilhelm Tönnis: Memories 1898–1978. edited and supplemented by K.-J. Zülch. Springer, Berlin 1984.
  • Neurosurgery in Germany: Past and Present. 50 years of the German Society for Neurosurgery. Blackwell Science, Berlin 2001.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Death certificate No. 8259 dated September 13, 1978, Cologne registry office. In: LAV NRW R civil status register. Retrieved June 28, 2018 .
  2. ^ Association of Alter SVer (VASV): Address book and Vademecum. Ludwigshafen am Rhein 1959, p. 124.
  3. ↑ Martin Sperling: Specialization in medicine as reflected in the history of Würzburg. In: Würzburg medical history reports. Volume 3, 1985, pp. 153-184, here: pp. 168 f.
  4. ↑ Peter Röttgen , Neurosurgery, in: HW Schreiber, G. Carstensen (Ed.): Chirurgie im Wandel der Zeit 1945–1983, Springer, 1983, p. 148
  5. ↑ Newsletter of the German Science and Technology, organ of the Reich Research Council (Hrsg.): Research and progress . Staff news. German science and abroad. tape 19, 23/24 , 1943, pp. 252 .
  6. ↑ reocities.com ( Memento of the original from September 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.reocities.com
  7. ^ Member entry of Wilhelm Tönnis at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on June 18, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Tönnis, Wilhelm
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German neurosurgeon
DATE OF BIRTH June 16, 1898
PLACE OF BIRTH Kley
DATE OF DEATH September 12, 1978
Place of death Cologne