Gerhardt Katsch (14 May 1887 – 7 March 1961) was a German internist. Between 1928 and 1957 he served as Professor of Internal medicine at the University of Greifswald. It was on the initiative of Katsch that in 1930 a residential facility providing clinical and socio-medical care for Diabetic patients was established at Garz on the Island of Rügen. It was the first institution of its kind in Germany. Gerhardt Katsch is widely regarded – alongside Oskar Minkowski and Karl Stolte – as one of the three principal pioneers of modern diabetes management in Germany.
As head of the Greifswald University Hospital (as the University Clinic has subsequently been renamed) and the longest serving medical officer at Greifswald, at the end of April 1945 Katsch was involved, together with Rudolf Petershagen, the local military commander, in a speculative visit to what remained of Anklam, where the rapidly advancing Red army was encamped. They successfully engaged in negotiations with Soviet officers, as a result of which Greifswald was surrendered bloodlessly to the Soviets on 29/30 April 1945.Heinz Zehmisch: Erinnerung an einen mutigen Mann: 120. Geburtstag von Rudolf Petershagen. Ärzteblatt Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 6/2021, pp. 240–241.
After the war ended, between 1947 and his death in 1961, Gerhardt Katsch headed up the "Institute for Diabetes Research and Treatment" in the former "Schloss" at Karlsburg (just outside Greifswald), which quickly became one of the most important clinical and academic institutions in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany). After he died the institute was renamed in his honour, "Institut für Diabetes „Gerhardt Katsch“".
Life Provenance and early years The eldest of his parents' four recorded children, Gerhardt Alexander Ferdinand Katsch was born in Berlin. An elder brother, Johannes, had been born on 21 May 1886, but died after a few days. Notwithstanding speculation that emerged during and after the Hitler years in respect of his reportedly Jewish ancestry, sources citing contemporary information indicate that Gerhardt Katsch was born into a Protestant family. Hermann Katsch (1853-1924), his father, was an author-playwright and painter. His mother, born Elisabeth Beutner (1864–1908), was an opera-dramaturge.
Through his paternal grandmother, born Caroline Helene Antoinette Auguste Andrée (1832-1916), Katsch had a family connection with Nîmes: he attended the francophone "French school" in Berlin. When he received his "school [graduation] certificate" on 30 August 1905 it came with a rare "höchstem Prädikat" commendation. That same year he enrolled at the Sorbonne university in Paris where he studied Biology, Physics and Philosophy. By the end of what might have been the first year of a longer study period, he had decided to pursue a career as a physician. In 1906 he returned to Germany and embarked on a degree course in Medicine at Marburg University. Later he transferred to the Friedrich Wilhelm University of Berlin (as it was known at that time) in Berlin, possibly in order to be closer to his parents. His father had lost most of his wealth in 1906 after providing a three million mark financial guarantee for a friend who had been murdered, on account of which the whole amount had fallen due for payment. His parents' troubles were compounded by his mother's illness. Elisabeth Beutner Katsch was just 44 when she died of heart failure on 17 July 1908.
Graduate study, medical traineeship and war service Katsch passed his state medical exams on 24 January 1911. This was followed by a six-month internship in the Experimental Biology Department at the Pathology Institute attached to the Charité (hospital in Berlin). He received his medical practicing certificate on 9 January 1912. A couple of weeks later, on 22 January, he received his post-graduate doctorate from the Charité Pathology Institute. His doctoral dissertation, published later that year, was supervised by Adolf Bickel and dealt with "Magenbewegung" ("movements inside the stomach").Beitrag zum Studium der Magenmotilität. Dissertation an der Medizinischen Fakultät der Universität Berlin, 1912 In the ensuing months relevant learned journals contained a number of follow-up specialist articles, authored jointly by Bickel and Katsch, in which the authors elucidated further the research methods and findings applied by Katsch in undertaking his doctorate. By this time Katsch had moved to Hamburg where in February 1912 he accepted a position as a doctor's assistant and then as a junior doctor in the medical department at the Altona City Hospital ("Stadtkrankenhaus Altona"). Here he worked with the internist Gustav von Bergmann, who would later recall Katsch as his "best colleague" and "most impressive student". During 1913 he volunteered for a year of military service, undertaken with Infantry Regiment 91. Through the war years, Between August 1914 and January 1917, and again between August 1918 and November 1918, he served as an army doctor with Reserve Infantry Regiment 84. He remained listed as an assistant doctor ("Assistenzarzt"), and after 1914 as a senior doctor ("Oberarzt") at the hospital in Hamburg-Altona, indicating that he was able to combine his hospital duties with his military service. He also served on the so-called Western Front, during which time he was awarded medals including the Iron Cross Class II. Early in 1917 he was badly wounded in the Battle of the Somme and, in consequence, given a temporary leave of absence.
1917 Katsch made good use of his time away from the frontline. His boss at the Hamburg-Altona hospital, Gustav von Bergmann, had already played a decisive role in developing his career, and he would do more. Von Bergmann had accepted a professorship at Marburg University in 1916, and it was here that Katsch was able to lay the groundwork for his post-war career. On 26 February 1917 he was awarded a habilitation (higher-level degree) from Marburg University and the corresponding "Venia Legendi" (university-level teaching rights) in respect of Internal medicine, which opened the way to a life-long career in the universities sector. A titular professorship followed in 1918. It appears that the degree was awarded without the usual requirement for a substantial body of research work and dissertation having been imposed, which reflected the war-time conditions and recognition of work that Katsch had already undertaken during the five years since receiving his doctorate.
In Hamburg Gerhardt Katsch had come to know Irmgard von Holck (1893-1977), daughter of the businessman and sometime vice-consul Carl von Holck (1854–1926). Some of the letters they exchanged while Katsch was away fighting have survived, and provide a record of an increasingly amorous relationship between them. Irmgard was daughter of a still wealthy family of minor aristocrats. They married on 3 September 1917 close to the bride's home at Ottensen (which had still not, at that time, been subsumed into Altona and the Hamburg conurbation). The couple's only recorded (as birth-parents) child, Hermann Burchard Katsch, was born on 13 November 1919. The family were also joined at an early stage by Eberhard Katsch, Gerhardt's nephew, born in 1919 or 1920. Later there would be several grandchildren.
Marburg and Frankfurt After the war Katsch remained at Marburg University, working in the department focused on war injuries and convalescence between July and November 1918, employed as a senior doctor at the university clinic, until 1920. In 1920, when an offer from the University of Frankfurt am Main persuaded Gustav von Bergmann to move on again, Katsch and his family made the same move. In 1921, Katsch accepted an extraordinary professorship at the University of Frankfurt am Main, while working, until 1926, as a senior doctor at the University Clinic. In 1926/27, von Bergmann moved on again, this time to the Charité in Berlin. But this time, Katsch stayed behind, taking on the role of Chief physician at the Clinic for Internal Medicine at the venerable Holy Ghost Hospital. It was the first time he had been given charge of his own department.
Both in Marburg and, after 1920, in Frankfurt, Katsch engaged in studies both of illnesses and of illness investigation methods involving the stomach, the pancreas and the intestines. As a physician and as a researcher he acquired, very early on, a particular interest in Diabetes mellitus. Just one year after the discovery of insulin by the Canadians Frederick Banting and Charles Best in 1921, Katsch began his investigations into the clinical use of insulin for treating diabetics.
Greifswald In 1928 Gerhardt Katsch relocated to Greifswald, accepting a position as director of the University Clinic and as Professor for Internal medicine. Diabetes treatment and research remained his central focus for more than another three decades, till his death in 1961. They were therefore also the dominating theme in the clinical research at Greifswald. On 30 March 1930, with his strong support, the "Arndt-Stiftung Garz – Diabetikerheim" (subsequently renamed and repurposed) was founded. This was a residential treatment facility, initially with accommodation for thirty patients, at Garz on the Island of Rügen. He was also an enthusiastic backer of the establishment of the German Diabetic Association, with occurred less than a year later. On 1 September 1930, five months after the opening of the "Arndt-Stiftung Garz – Diabetikerheim", the first facility for the socio-medical treatment of diabetics anywhere in Europe was opened at the same premises. It became a template for other similar institutions elsewhere, for instance when a similar facility opened in Copenhagen. In 1937 Katsch published the "Garzer Thesen", one of his best known and most important pieces of writing. In it he set out, for the first time, his principles for the treatment of Diabetes mellitus. He postulated and outlined his principle of "produktive Fürsorge" (loosely, "constructive care") of Diabetes patients, and robustly rejected the general view within the medical establishment that diabetics were "unheilbare Stoffwechselkrüppel" ("incurable metabolic cripples"), substituting a more encouraging concept of "bedingt Gesundheit" ("conditional health"). He identified an optimal Diabetes Therapy, combining diet, insulin injections, physical exercise and appropriate education. Taken together in an appropriate balance, these should enable patients to enjoy a full working life.
Twelve years of Hitler