Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Pathology - Research and Practice journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/prp Edgar von Gierke (1877-1945) – Eponym of “von Gierke disease” and double victim of National Socialism Stephanie Kaiser*, Janina Sziranyi, Dominik Gross Institute for History, Theory and Ethics in Medicine, Medical Faculty RWTH Aachen University, 52074 Aachen, Germany ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Von Gierke disease Jewish pathologist National Socialism Nazi victim Political repression ABSTRACT As recent studies on the Third Reich have shown, a three-digit number of Jewish pathologists fell victim to National Socialist repression. One of them was Edgar von Gierke. His name is nowadays best known in medicine for discovering the “von Gierke disease”– also classified as “Glycogen storage disease type I”– which he first described in 1929. This article deals with the role of von Gierke as a persecuted and disenfranchised Jew. Accordingly, the focus is on von Gierke’s repressive experiences in the Third Reich, which were quite different from other cases. It is based on (1) previously partly unnoticed archival sources and (2) a re-analysis of the relevant research literature. The paper shows that Edgar von Gierke was a double victim of Nazi Germany, even though he was able to maintain his professional position for a comparatively long time: In contrast to other Jews who were dismissed in 1933 on the basis of the „Aryan paragraph“, von Gierke benefited from a legal exception as a decorated front fighter in the First World War. It was not until 1937 that he was released from public service. Even more striking is the fact that von Gierke was ordered back to his old position twice between 1939 and 1944 due to a lack of personnel. The evaluation of archival files leads to the conclusion that von Gierke was recalled to work under pressure from leading National Socialists and that this ordered reappointment had a devastating effect on his health status. At that time the pathologist was already suffering from a progressive heart disease, to which he suc- cumbed in autumn 1945 – fatally only a few month after the fall of the Third Reich. 1. Introduction Recently, the first quantitative studies on the persecution of pa- thologists in the Third Reich was presented [1,2]. From a biographical perspective German speaking pathologists who lived and worked inside the borders of the Third Reich, can be divided into three groups: (1) Pathologists who, for political and racial reasons, were forced to give up their careers and were able to emigrate to destinations outside the Nazi access area. (2) Pathologists who were not (or no longer) able to leave the Reich – or did not want to – and ultimately died there. And (3) pathologists who remained within the borders of the (Greater) German Reich and were able to survive. In the latter group Edgar von Gierke (Fig. 1) stands out. Best known for the discovery of the eponymous “von Gierke disease”, today also described as “glycogen storage disorder type 1" [3], he was considered by the Nazi racial laws as a “Mischling 1. Grades” (“half-breed 1 st de- gree”) and forced to bow to increasing repression by the National So- cialists. In 1937, he was coerced into retirement. In 1939, despite suffering from a progressive heart disease, von Gierke was ordered by the Nazi regime to return to the management of the Pathological De- partment at the Karlsruhe Municipal Hospitals, as otherwise no suitable medical staff was available. Von Gierke was barely able to carry out his duties. He died in autumn 1945 at the age of 68 of the consequences of his heart disease [4] – only a few months after the liberation of Nazi Germany by the Allied forces. Von Gierke’s scientific work is quite well examined. However, the circumstances surrounding his retirement and his professional come- back a short time later are not known in detail. How did Hitler’s seizure of power influence his career and impact his life? What was the cor- relation between his forced professional return and his deteriorating health, and what part did the Nazis play in his early death? It is pre- cisely these questions that are to be clarified in the following. 2. Material and methods This paper is based on partly unnoticed archival sources from the https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prp.2019.152696 Received 2 September 2019; Received in revised form 15 October 2019; Accepted 17 October 2019 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail address: skaiser@ukaachen.de (S. Kaiser). Pathology - Research and Practice xxx (xxxx) xxxx 0344-0338/ © 2019 Elsevier GmbH. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Stephanie Kaiser, Janina Sziranyi and Dominik Gross, Pathology - Research and Practice, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.prp.2019.152696