Theodor Brugsch


Theodor Brugsch was a German internist and politician.

Early life

Theodor Brugsch was born in Graz. Theodor Brugsch's father had been born in Berlin, and it was in Berlin that the son received his schooling and lived for most of his own life.

Career

He became an associate professor in 1910, and practiced medicine at the Charité Hospital in Berlin prior to and after World War I. In 1917–19 he served with distinction as a physician with the 9th Army in Romania.
From 1927 to 1935 he was a professor at the University of Halle. In 1935 Brugsch resigned from the university due to the political climate in 1930s Germany, subsequently opening a private practice in Berlin. Brugsch seems to have been a member of the Nazi party in 1930 and during 1937–1945 but eventually had been cleared by a denazification tribunal. After World War II, he returned to the Charité, which was now in East Berlin, and where he stayed for the remainder of his career. Brugsch died in Berlin.
With Friedrich Kraus, he published a 19-volume medical textbook titled Spezielle Pathologie und Therapie, and with Friedrich H. Lewy, he published Die Biologie der Person. He was the 1954 recipient of the Goethe Prize, and in 1978 was depicted on a 25-pfennig postage stamp issued by the East German government.
In addition to his medical work, in 1945–46 he took a political position with the embryonic East German state as departmental chief of the :de:Deutsche Verwaltung für Volksbildung|German Peoples' Education Administration.
He subsequently received various honours from the state: in 1953 he was named as an :de:Hervorragender Wissenschaftler des Volkes|Outstanding scientist of the people, and he received the silver Patriotic Order of Merit in 1954 followed by the gold version in 1958, In 1956 the state also honoured him with the National Prize of East Germany.
After retiring in 1957, he was appointed vice-president of the nation's Cultural Association.

Associated eponym

His father, Heinrich Karl Brugsch was a well-known German Egyptologist.

Selected written works