Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt - Biography

Biography

Hans Gerhard Creutzfeldt was born into a medical family in Harburg, which was incorporated into Hamburg in 1937. In 1903, at the age of 18, he was drafted into the German army and spent his service stationed in Kiel. Afterwards, he attended the School of Medicine of the Universities of University of Jena and University of Rostock, receiving his doctorate at the latter in 1909. Part of his practical training was undertaken at St. Georg - Hospital in Hamburg. After qualification he sought adventure as a ship's surgeon, voyaging the Pacific Ocean, taking the opportunity to study local crafts, linguistics, and tropical plants.

After returning to Germany, Creutzfeldt worked at the Neurological Institute in Frankfurt am Main, at the psychiatric-neurological clinics in Breslau, Kiel and Berlin, and at the Deutsche Forschungsanstalt für Psychiatrie in Munich. He was habilitated at Kiel in 1920, and in 1925 became Extraordinarius of psychiatry and neurology. In 1938 he was appointed professor and director of the university psychiatric and neurological division in Kiel.

Creutzfeldt was 54 years old when the Second World War broke out. He was unmoved by the Nazi regime and was able to save some people from death in concentration camps and also managed to rescue almost all of his patients from being executed under the Nazi Action T4 euthanasia program. During the war, bombing raids destroyed his home and clinic.

After the war he was director of the University of Kiel for six months, before being dismissed by the British occupation forces. His efforts to rebuild the university caused a series of conflicts with the British because he wanted to allow more former army officers to study there. In 1953 he moved on to Munich to work scientifically. He died in 1964 in Munich.

He was married to Clara Sombart, a daughter of Werner Sombart. They had 5 children, among them Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt and Werner Creutzfeldt (1924–2006), a renowned German Internist.