Wilhelm Zwick

Friedrich Wilhelm Zwick (born March 15, 1871 in Jebenhausen , Württemberg ; † May 29, 1941 in Munich ) was a German veterinarian and virologist .

Life

He was born as the third child of the chimney sweep Karl Georg Zwick and Anna Maria. Schwarz (from today's Boller Strasse 50) was born. After studying veterinary medicine at what was then the University of Veterinary Medicine in Stuttgart, he studied natural sciences in Tübingen and obtained a doctorate in 1897. sc. nat.

After that, Zwick became a prosector at the Anatomical Institute and in 1900 a regular associate professor for epidemic studies, veterinary police, meat inspection and milk hygiene and at the same time head of the outpatient and obstetric clinic of the Veterinary University (TiHo) Stuttgart. In 1913 he was employed as full professor and director of the medical clinic at TiHo Vienna, combined with a teaching position for epidemic studies. During the First World War he stayed in Austria, was a colonel veterinarian and delegate to the Austrian Ministry of War.

In 1919 Zwick received a call as a veterinary internist at the Hessian Ludwig University of Giessen . He succeeded Hermann Friedrich Gmeiner (former professor for medical and forensic veterinary medicine) and from 1923 represented pathology and therapy as well as veterinary hygiene and animal disease studies, from 1924 still bacteriology and veterinary police. In 1926 he was appointed to the newly created chair for veterinary hygiene and animal disease teaching as a full professor and was thus the founder and director of the associated institute until 1936. In 1936 he became a member of the Leopoldina .

In 1895 horses suffered from the strange Borna disease in the Borna area (south of Leipzig) . In 1924, Zwick succeeded in transmitting the disease to a rabbit by injecting neuronal tissue from a sick horse intracranially, which confirms the suspicion of an infectious origin. In filtration experiments, the size of the infectious agent was found to be 85 to 125 nm, which provided the first indications of a viral pathogen (later discovered as the Bornash disease virus ).

Zwick received two honorary doctorates (Dr. med. Vet. Hc). He was a member of the Alemannia Munich (1900) and Marcomannia Berlin fraternities .

literature

• Matthias Gellert: Wilhelm Zwick (1871-1941) ; 1993
• Inge Auerbacher: Eight hundred years of Jebenhausen ; P. 228
• Giessen scholar in the first half of the 20th century ; Volume 2, Part 2, p. 1049
• Wilhelm Schauder: On the history of veterinary medicine at the University and Justus Liebig University of Giessen . Pp. 139-140; in: 350 Years of Justus Liebig University Gießen (1957), pp. 1607–1957

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dissertation Schaberg (PDF; 2.5 MB)
2. ^ Ernst Elsheimer (ed.): Directory of the old fraternity members according to the status of the winter semester 1927/28. Frankfurt am Main 1928, p. 594.