Individual Notes
Note for: Selma Holländer, 2 Apr 1847 - 10 Oct 1911
Index
Religion: Jewish
Burial: Place: Lohestrasse Jewish Cemetery, Breslau, , Dolnoslaskie, Poland
Individual Notes
Note for: Alfred Bielschowsky, 11 Dec 1871 - 5 Jan 1940
Index
Education: M.D.
Occupation: Geh. Mediz. Rat; Prof. Opthalmologie
Place: Breslau, , Dolnoslaskie, Poland
Event: Type: General Information
Note: Alfred was born in a town called Namslau, around 50 km east of Breslau in Lower Silezien. In this period the city counted approx. 6167 inhabitants of which 1985 catholics and 156 Jewish people. There were a catholic and a protestant church and a jewish synagogue.. A court and a garrisson with 300 troopers. In Namslau one could find a productionplace for tiles, an important brewery and machine factory. Namslau obtained in 1270 civic rights. Only a few km to the east the population spoke polish.
As a child the parents of Alfred send him to the town of Glatz, where he followed a catholic education.
It is not known whether the B. had a jewish education at home or whether the transition to the baptizing to Catholic religion started already here. When Alfred was 17 years old he obtained his diplom of the catholic grammar school.
Religion: Jewish; Converted Catholic
Individual Note: On March 23 1906 Alfred was appointed Professor on the medical university in Leipzig by appointment of the royal ministry.
His first house was in Breslau in the Maxstreet 5 next to the clinic.
On February 25 1934 the SS Bremen left German for the trip to the USA at the invitation of Dr.Arnold Knapp.
Biography:
Alfred Bielschowsky was born to a Jewish family in Namslau, Lower Silesia. He graduated from the Königliches Katholisches Gymnasium zu Glatz in 1889 and then entered the study of medicine at the university of Breslau. He soon moved on to Heidelberg, where he graduated in 1891. During the first terms of clinical education he was influenced by the lectures of Theodor Leber (1840-1917).
Bielschowsky continued his education at the University of Berlin, attending the lectures of Karl Ernst Theodor Schweigger (1830-1905). He obtained his doctorate in surgery at Berlin in 1893, and received his medical license – Ärztliche Approbation – in Leipzig on March 1, 1893. He then served one year in military service.
He spent his hospital service and assistant period at the university eye clinic in Leipzig, where he received education in ophthalmology under Carl Hubert Sattler (1880–) and in 1900 was habilitated as Privatdozent in ophthalmology. In Leipzig he worked under the physiologist Ewald Hering, who headed the physiological institute next to the eye clinic. In the physiological institute he became acquainted with Frans Bruno Hofmann (1869-1926), and the two made fundamental work on the fusion and cyclodeviation in obliquus superior pareses, and congenital hyperfunction of the obliquus superior. At this time he also developed a lasting friendship with his colleague Emil Krückmann (1865-1944).
Following his habilitation, Bielschowsky proved himself an outstanding university teacher and scientist, becoming ausserordentlicher professor in 1906. From 1906 to 1912 he was head physician in the Leipzig eye clinic. In Leipzig, Bielschowsky married Frieda Johanna Blume, the daughter of an advisor to the supreme court , the Reichsgericht. They had three children
In 1912 he was called to the chair of ophthalmology at the University of Marburg, heading the university eye clinic.
During World War I, Bielschowsky was busy attending to severely wounded and blinded. In 1915 he established a 35 bed ward for soldiers who had been blinded by shell splinters or poison gas. Realising that medical rehabilitation was not sufficient, he hired the young student Carl Strehl to teach the blinded soldiers Braille, a system of reading and writing that enables the blind to see by using their sense of touch. It is named for the French pedagogue Louis Braille (1809-1852). His wife, too, participated in the education of the blinded.
It is to a large degree due to his efforts and organisational skills that the Deutsche Blindenstudienanstalt was established in Marburg. With Strehl, Bielschowsky founded the "Verein blinder Akademiker Deutschlands" (the Association of Blinded German Academicians.
In 1923 he moved to the chair in Breslau. It was here, in 1932, he published his epoch-making work Die Lähmungen der Augenmuskeln, still a standard work og motility disturbances of the muscles of the eye.
For his contributions during the war, Bielschowsky was honoured with the Iron Cross for War Aid (Eisernes Kreuz der Kriegshilfe) from Reichsmarschall Paul von Hindenburg, and was awarded the title of Geheimer Medizinalrat (Privy Medical Counsellor) by Emperor Wilhelm II. However, all this was of no significance when the National Socialist Party – Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the Nazis – came to power in 1933. Because of his Jewish origin he was fired as head of the Breslau eye clinic already the following year.
In 1936, Bielschowsky emigrated to the United States of America and settled in Dartmouth, New Hampshire. In America, his knowledge and outstanding didactic abilities were received with enthusiasm. Adelbert Ames helped him in having a new beginning at the Dartmouth College in Hannover, New Hampshire, and in 1937 the Dartmouth Eye Institute was established for him. He remained head of the institute until his death in 1940.
In Germany, the Bielschowsky-Gesellschaft für Schielforschung is named for him.
His main field of work was the physiology and pathology of space perception (Raumsinn) and the movements of the eyes. He was a collaborator in the Handbuch der gesamten Augenheilkunde by Graefe-Saemisch.
Bibliography:
Die Lähmungen der Augenmuskeln. 1932.
Angelika Katharina Kaufmann:
Alfred Bielschowsky (1871-1940). Ein Leben für die Strabologie. 1994. 225 pages.
G. K. Von Noorden:
Historical Review: Alfred Bielschowsky and Hermann Burian.
Binocular Vision & Eye Muscle Surgery Quarterly, 10:229.
Individual Notes
Note for: Seelig Bielschowsky, 3 Aug 1811 - 31 May 1895
Index
Religion: Jewish
Burial: Place: Namslau, , Opole, Poland
Individual Notes
Note for: Albert Bielschowsky, 3 Jan 1847 - 21 Oct 1902
Index
Occupation: Literary Historian; Goethe Expert (Goethe-Biograph)
Place: Berlin, , Berlin, Germany
Religion: Jewish
Burial: Place: Berlin, , Berlin, Germany
Individual Note: Albert B was also known as Goethe B. as he was the first one to write a biography on Goethe
Individual Notes
Note for: Eduard Bielschowsky, 4 Apr 1840 - 27 Mar 1910
Index
Occupation: Founder of the Leinenhaus Bielschowsky
Religion: Jewish
Burial: Place: Lohestrasse Jewish Cemetery, Breslau, , Dolnoslaskie, Poland
Individual Notes
Note for: Max Bielschowsky, 19 Feb 1869 - 15 Aug 1940
Index
Education: M.D.
Occupation: Prof., Neurologe
Place: Breslau, , Dolnoslaskie, Poland
Occupation: Prof., Neurologe at University Kaiser Wilhelm Institute
Place: Berlin, , Berlin, Germany
Note: Lost his job in 1933
Occupation: Prof., Neurloge at Wilhelmina Gasthuis
Date: 1933
Place: Amsterdam, , Noord-Holland, Netherlands
Note: Lost in 1933 his job on the University Kaiser Wilhelm Institute und went first to Amsterdam in Wilhelmina Gasthuis. Later on he moved to Utrecht. In 1935 he visited Madrid and returned to Berlin in 1936 where he had his first major attack. Shortly before start of WW II he went to London
Occupation: Prof., Neurloge
Place: Utrecht, , Utrecht, Netherlands
Immigration: Date: 1935
Place: Madrid, , Madrid, Spain
Immigration: Date: 1936
Place: Berlin, , Berlin, Germany
Immigration: shortly before WWII
Place: , , England, United Kingdom
Religion: Jewish
Burial: Place: London, Greater London, England, United Kingdom
Individual Note: Biography:
Max Bielschowsky was born in Breslau, now the Polish city of Wroclaw, where his father was a merchant. He attended the universities of Breslau, Berlin, and Munich, and was conferred doctor of medicine at Munich in 1893.
Bielschowsky, who had been interested in the brain since childhood, now moved quickly in medical circles. He was invited by Ludwig Edinger (1855-1918) to join the staff of the famous Senckenberg Pathologisches Institut in Frankfurt am Main. The institute was then headed by Carl Weigert (1845-1904), by whom he was influenced on staining techniques. From 1896 to 1904 he was assistant to the psychiatrist Emanuel Mendel (1839-1907) in Mendel's laboratory in Berlin, and it was here he began to contribute to neurological literature.
His first work, written with Paul Schuster (1867–), on the histopathology of disseminated sclerosis, appeared in 1896. His fundamental studies on the silver impregnation of nerve fibres led to a new method, replacing Santiago Ramon y Cajal’s (1852-1934) method on which it was based. In 1924, with Stanley Cobb, he applied intravital staining.
In 1904 Bielschowsky joined Oskar Vogt (1870-1959) at the Neurobiologisches Universitäts-Laboratorium in Berlin, where he spent the next 30 years. From 1925 he was scientific member of the institute of brain research at the Kaiser Wilhelm-Gesellschaft. In 1931 the Institute moved to new quarters at Berlin-Buch. However, Bielschowsky had problems working with Oskar Vogt, the director of the institute.
In 1933 he resigned and the following year he worked in the laboratory of the psychiatric clinic of the Utrecht University supported by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation., and in 1935 spent some time at the Cajal Institute in Madrid. He moved back to Berlin in 1936.
In 1939 Bielschowsky moved to London with one of his three sons in 1939, working in the laboratory of professor Green of Sheffield.
The following year he died from a stroke. His ashes are buried in Golders Green Cemetery, next to those of his old friend, Paul Schuster, with whom he had worked in Frankfurt more than 40 years previously.
During his productive career he published more than 180 medical articles and he received recognition by election to the fellowship of the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft. In his personal character Bielschowsky was a quiet, intelligent, diligent man.
Bibliography:
Myelitis und Sehnerventzündung. Berlin, 1901.
Die Silberimprägnation der Achsencylinder.
Neurologisches Zentralblatt, Leipzig, 1902, 21: 579-84.
Neurologisches Zentralblatt, Leipzig, 1903, 22: 997-1006.
Bielschowwsky stains.
Allgemeine Histologie und Histopathologie des Nervensystems. In: Max Lewandowsky (publisher), Handbuch der Neurologie. Volume 1, Berlin, 1910.
Herpes Zoster. In: Max Lewandowsky (publisher): Handbuch der Neurologie. Volume 5, Berlin, 1910.
Über spätinfantile familiäre amaurotische Idiotie mit Kleinhirnsymptomen.
Deutsche Zeitschrift für Nervenheilkunde, 1914, 50: 7-29.
Bielschowsky’s amaurotic idiocy.
Nervengewebe, Morphologie der Ganglienzelle.
Zentrale Nervenfazern.
Übersicht über den gegenwärtigen Stand der Neuronenlehre und die gegen sie erhobenen Einwände.
Handbuch der mikroskopischen Anatomie der Menschen. Volume 4, Berlin, 1928.
F. H. Lewy:
Max Bielschowsky. Transactions of the American Neurological Association, New York, 1941, 67: 243-244.
B. Ostertag:
In Memoriam, Max Bielschowsky.
Deutsche medizinische Wochenshrift, 1959, 84: 765-766.