Prof. Dr. med. Wolfgang Uwe Eckart (1952-2021)

Prof. Dr. med. Wolfgang Uwe Eckart, born on February 7, 1952, passed away in Heidelberg on August 16, 2021. He was the first full director of the Institute for the History of Medicine at Hannover Medical School from 1988 to 1992. Wolfgang Eckart was considered a committed advocate of the topicality of medical history beyond the boundaries of the discipline, a fact that was particularly emphasized in the obituaries in national media.

His academic career began at the University of Münster, where he studied medicine and then went on to study history. His teachers in the history of medicine were both Karl E. Rothschuh (1904-1984) and Richard Toellner (1930-2019). After Wolfgang Eckart's habilitation in 1986 on the topic of "Medicine as an instrument of German cultural influence in East Asia - German physicians in China and Japan", he was appointed to the newly founded Chair of History of Medicine at the MHH in 1988. Building on the short textbook Medizingeschichte GK2 for the original examination questions, which he had already written in Münster, the first edition of his influential textbook Geschichte der Medizin [8th revised edition 2017] was published during his time in Hanover in 1990. Together with his assistant at the time, Christoph Gradmann, the publication of the Ärztelexikon was also prepared here. In the four years he headed the Institute for the History of Medicine, 18 further publications appeared. His lifelong commitment to an education that would convey to future physicians their socio-political responsibility is also reflected in his appointment as Dean of Studies in 1990.

In 1992, Wolfgang Eckart was appointed to Heidelberg, where he continued his internationally recognized research. Until his retirement in 2017, he was full professor of the history of medicine at Heidelberg's Ruprecht Karls University. As a researcher and teacher and as an organizer of important interdisciplinary conferences [including Hermann von Helmholtz 1994; History of Cancer Research 2000], Wolfgang Eckart was known beyond the narrow confines of the discipline and contributed to bringing the debate on medicine under National Socialism, colonial medicine and the complex topic of medicine and war to the public. He was elected a member of the Leopoldina in 2009 and received the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2016. As an editor and author, his scientific oeuvre includes 37 books and over 250 articles. In more than 100 radio interviews, Wolfgang Eckart has also highlighted the topicality of the history of medicine in order to contribute to reflection on current issues in the field of health policy. In the legal short time that he headed the Institute at the MHH, he laid the foundation stone for its existence to this day. As he assured me in our last conversation, he had fond memories of his time in Hanover. With his passing, the discipline has lost one of its most important representatives.

Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Dr. med. habil. Brigitte Lohff
Head of the Institute of History, Ethics and Philosophy of Medicine 1994-2013