Dr. med. Walter Wolff
- Berlin, 27.11.1878
- Tübingen, 01.03.1958
- Member since 1927
- Berlin
- Specialist in internal medicine
Education and Places of Work
Wolff studied medicine in Berlin, Freiburg, Munich, and Breslau after graduating from the Königliches Wilhelms-Gymnasium in Berlin in 1896. He passed the state examination in Berlin in 1902. He received his doctorate from the Royal University of Greifswald in 1903 with the thesis “Beitrag zur Kenntnis von Lymphosarkomen”.
Wolff initially worked at the Greifswald University Institute of Pathology under Paul Albert Grawitz. He then moved to the Bethanien Hospital in Berlin to work with the internist Wilhelm Zinn and Hermann Senator at the III Medical Clinic of the Charité, followed by a position as senior physician and close colleague of Carl Anton Ewald at the Augusta Hospital in Berlin, where he had taken lectures on digestive diseases during his studies.
Ewald, who had published the first multi-volume textbook on digestive diseases and was Ismar Boas‘ mentor, sparked Wolff’s interest in gastrointestinal diseases. Wolff’s publication on the development and treatment of round peptic ulcer dates from this time.
Wolff was the physician in charge of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Königin-Elisabeth-Hospital, Berlin-Oberschöneweide (now the Evangelical Hospital Königin Elisabeth Herzberge, Berlin) from 1915.
1933
Wolff had been the editor for the lectures section of the “Medizinische Klinik” from 1912 until 1933, when he was forced to leave the editorial office on account of his Jewish ancestry.
Wolff was removed from his post by the National Socialists in 1936 as a result of the Nuremberg Race Laws of 1935 (his grandfather, the lawyer Eduard von Simson was born into a Jewish family in 1810 and had been baptised as a Protestant at the age of 13).
Wolff had been licensed as a so-called “Krankenbehandler” in Berlin in 1939, which permitted him to treat Jewish patients only. He survived the Holocaust in Berlin. Two brothers had fled to England. Both returned to Germany in 1945 and worked as prominent lawyers.
After 1945
Walter Wolff was reinstated as head physician of the department of internal medicine at the Königin-Elisabeth Hospital, Berlin-Oberschöneweide in 1945, which he headed until 1953. Wolff left what was then the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in February 1953 and, after a short stay in Alzenau Lower Franconia, moved to Tübingen in March 1953. Wolff and his wife, Dr Elisabeth Bartholdi-Wolff, found accommodation here with Hedwig Maier-Reimer, a lawyer who was related to Wolff.
Walter Wolff died in Tübingen on 1 March 1958 at the age of 79. His grave is located at the Bergfriedhof in Tübingen.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Ina Herbell, Historical Archive at the Protestant Hospital Königin Elisabeth Herzberge, Berlin, Prof. Dr. Michael Goerig, Hamburg, and Dr. Georg Maier-Reimer, lawyer, Cologne, for important information on Dr. Walter Wolff’s biography.
Article by Harro Jenss, MD, Worpswede, Germany. As of 4.4.2022
Translation by Rachel Hinterthan – Nizan. As of 22.7.2022
Sources and Further Reading
Sources
