Oswald Bumke
Oswald Bumke ( born September 25, 1877 in Stolp, Pomerania Province; † January 5, 1950 in Munich) was a German psychiatrist and neurologist. His hand - and textbooks found around the world spreading.
In a fast and successful career, he was, by chair in Rostock ( 1914), Breslau (1916) and Leipzig (1921 ), 1924 Kraepelin's successor on the Psychiatry Department in Munich. In the years 1928/1929 he was rector of the University of Munich and for 22 years he headed the Munich Psychiatric Clinic.
Family
Oswald Bumkes parents come from the middle class. His father Albert (1843-1892) was the son of a brewer, his mother Emma (1850-1914) daughter of stumbling factory owner Karl Westphal. Bumkes father was a doctor and an assistant to Rudolf Virchow, but did not pursue a scientific career and died when Bumke was 15 years old. One of his three brothers, was born without a left hand and died early in a swimming accident, another was the later imperial court president Erwin Bumke.
Life
Early career
Oswald Bumke studied at the universities of Freiburg and Leipzig and was temporarily impressed by the scientific materialism Rudolf Leuckarts. He continued his studies at the universities of Munich and Halle an der Saale. In Hall was Karl Joseph Eberth, who discovered the typhus pathogen, his doctor father. Bumke chose as his theme a study about a rupture of the ascending aorta. On 1 August 1901 he became an assistant at the Psychiatric and Mental Hospital Freiburg Alfred Hoche and worked there from 1906 to 1913 as a senior physician. In 1904 he habilitated there with the work of the pupil disturbances in mental and nervous diseases. As a neurologist Bumke tried to infer the mental state of the pupillary unrest. In this field, he wrote many works, such as his Moscow lecture about the material basis of consciousness symptoms (1923 ) or his late work thinking about the soul ( 1941).
Professor in Rostock, Breslau and Leipzig
His first professorship had Bumke held in Rostock, where he worked from 1914 to 1916. Bumke was extremely dissatisfied with conditions there and described it as corrupt and backward. In 1916 he succeeded Alzheimers in Wroclaw. In 1918 Bumke a call to Heidelberg, but rejected because of Ludolf Krehl not willing to concede the Department of Neurology him. From 1921 to 1924 he worked in Leipzig, where he did a psychiatry took over from Paul Flechsig, which was marked by a " dungeon cells, grids, straitjackets, hammocks and still afraid of the sick ". ( According to Flechsig the Paul Flechsig Institute is named for Brain Research at the University of Leipzig.) The conversion, he said, had succeeded him, but to change the external conditions had been much easier than re-educate the nursing staff.
Consilium in Moscow
From March 1923 he spent seven weeks at the sick Lenin in Moscow. With it, other physicians were called to Lenin's bedside, which were considered to be outstanding experts: Max nun (Hamburg), Adolf von Strümpell (Leipzig), Oskar Minkowski, Otfrid Foerster (both from Wroclaw ) and Solomon Henschen (Sweden). The stay was originally calculated to three days Bumke called you on to stay seven weeks Foerster many months. The German government and the ambassador in Moscow Ulrich Graf von Brockdorff -Rantzau promoted the visit of political interests out by forces. Bumke made in Moscow the acquaintance of Leon Trotsky and Karl Radek, which he described as people with format, and Georgi Vasilyevich Chicherin, which he held for a psychopath. Nikolai Ivanovich Bukharin was him at the time as the opponent of Trotsky and Lenin.
Munich
On April 1, 1924, he took over as successor to Emil Kraepelin Professor of Psychiatry and head of the reasoned from this clinic at the University of Munich. At that experts pushed the fact that so no student of Kraepelin was appointed, partly due to lack of understanding. Bumke thus came to no easy inheritance, since Kraepelin, the Munich had made the center of German psychiatry, was still alive and Bumke also tried to introduce other ideas. Kraepelin had to counteract the over-evaluation of anatomy and physiology, placed its emphasis on psychological research and experimental psychology. Bumke tried both directions to let both come into their own and clarified the new course by the renaming of the university hospital in " Psychiatric and Mental Hospital, University of Munich. " For the academic year 1928/29, he was elected Rector of the University of Munich. The climate within the university was poisoned by this time by political struggles and intrigues. One of the voices was issued for him with " Methinks the alma mater needs long a psychiatrist " titled. From 1929 to 1933, Bumke board member of the Association of German universities until it was dissolved. During his time in Munich ( 1931) he published a pocket dictionary on the subject of mental health and psychiatric care along with others.
Died in 1934 his wife Hedwig, born Burckart, one of the first German doctors, whom he had met in Freiburg. In 1936 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina.
In the era of National Socialism Bumke was a supporting member of the SS and was a member of the Nazi Teachers' Association. From 1940 he was a consulting psychiatrist Military in Military District VII Southern Bavaria, headquartered in Munich. In August 1942, he was named Adolf Hitler as extraordinary member of the Academic Senate of the army medical service. Since 1944 Bumke was a member of the scientific advisory board Karl Brandt, who had risen to the authorized representatives of the health care system.
1946 Bumke was suspended from office. 1947 followed his reinstatement and retirement.
The person and work
Bumke was considered a gifted speaker and lecturer. In addition to a strong academic focus on the neurology Bumke dealt with border issues between medicine and society. Until shortly before his death he lectured on border issues in crowded psychiatric anatomical lecture at his university. Of general importance of his writings on "Culture and degeneration" are (1912/1922), in which he criticized ideas about supposed degeneration in medicine and society. Of great importance also comes to his controversy with Sigmund Freud. In contrast to Freud Bumke advocated the unity of the soul with all its manifestations. As a Unitarian, he said that the soul is not divided between ego, superego and id. He turned against his view unrealistic laboratory psychology and against all modern " brain and libido mythologies ". Outstanding is its " textbook of mental diseases ", which recognized the knowledge of his time in brilliant style.
Bumke had been elected as a capable organizer not only to the Rector of the University, but was also editor of the Archives of Psychiatry and the successor Friedrich von Müller Chairman of the Editorial Quorum of Munich Medical Weekly. Bumke wrong with the social and cultural elite of his time and showed themselves artistically interested. So he collected some works of Carl Spitzweg. For a representative portrait in Munich Rektorenornat Bumke was the painter Karl Bauer model. An example of his literary style and his philosophical ideas give Bumkes collected aphorisms ( see below).
Legends that Bumke Hitler's personal physician was, have proved to be unfounded. Bumke is met Hitler 's own statements after never. In his autobiography ( Memories and Reflections ), however, found a surprisingly clear-eyed analysis of Hitler's mind. It is still unclear so far, despite its complete rehabilitation after the war, his role in the era of National Socialism. It is clear, however, that he had been called as a psychiatrist to examine the Hitler assassin George Elser professionally. His essay, " The State and the mental diseases " from 1939 is probably but an attempt to develop a guideline for doctors to mitigate the impact of Nazi policies.