Wegener, Friedrich

April 7, 1907 in Varel; † July 9, 1990 in Lübeck.

Friedrich Wegener was the son of the physician and surgeon Friedrich Wegener, who practiced at the St. Josefsstift Hospital in Varel, and his wife Thyra Cecilia (Thydén). After completing high school in Wilhelmshaven and Jever (1926), Wegener studied human medicine in Munich up to the Physikum. He then moved to the University of Kiel. In 1932 he passed his state examination there. He then worked as a medical trainee at the local Institute of Pathology until the spring of 1933.

Wegener joined the SA in September 1932, eight months before Hitler seized power. After Hitler's seizure of power on May 1, 1933, he joined the NSDAP on the same day. That year he accepted an assistant position in the Department of Pathology at Kiel University. Wegener was organized in the Nazi Medical Association and later became a Sanitätsobersturmbannführer in the SA. His teacher and mentor was Dr. Marin Staemmler, who had close ties to the regime and published on racial hygiene. In 1935 he then followed Martin Staemmler to the University of Breslau. He worked there as first assistant until 1939 and was deputy head of the prosecture at Wenzel Hanke Hospital and All Saints Hospital. Wegener later served as an army pathologist in Lodz, where he arrived on September 19, 1939, 18 days after the German invasion of Poland began. His political role during his time in Lodz has not been definitively determined. Wegener's name did appear in a Polish Interior Ministry register of war criminals, but he was never charged. His files could no longer be found. Wegener fell ill with diphtheria in 1944 and had to interrupt his work for a year. He then took on the role of field surgeon until he was captured by American forces. He spent a short time as a prisoner of war, after which he worked in agriculture and later resumed his work as a pathologist in Lübeck.

During his time in Breslau, he wrote the first paper on the observation of a previously unknown granulomatous disease (rhinitis, renal failure, systemic vasculitis) in three patients, which has been called Wegener's granulomatosis since the 1960s. The results of his investigations were first presented in September 1936 at the 29th meeting of the German Pathological Society in Breslau.In 1976, the Medical University of Lübeck awarded him an honorary doctorate. In 1986, he received the Badge of Honor from the Mayo Clinic and Foundation, Rochester (USA), and in 1987, an award from the city of Milan (Ambrogino). The American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) awarded Wegener a "Master Clinician" award in 1989. After his Nazi past was revealed in 2000, the ACCP withdrew the award and lobbied for Wegener's granulomatosis to be renamed ANCA-associated granulomatous vasculitis. More recently, several professional societies, including the American College of Rheumatology, the European League Against Rheumatism, and the American Society of Nephrology, proposed the name "granulomatosis with polyangiitis" in a 2011 editorial. The new name for the disease is now widely adopted in the scientific literature .

Wegener's other publications include brown lipoma, pathological manifestations in female genital organs (in leukemias and in periarteritis nodosa), metastatic cancerous liver cirrhosis, acute fatty liver in pregnancy, artificial postmortem fat embolism, and the problem of hepatotoxicity of caffeine and theophylline.

1. Woywodt A et al (2006) Wegener's granulomatosis: probing the untold past of the man behind the eponym. Rheumatology 45: 1303-1306
2. Woywodt A et al (2006) Wegener's granulomatosis. In: The Lancet. 367, 2006, pp. 1362-1366 doi:10.1016/S0140-6736(06)68583-8. PMID 16631915.
3. Wegener F (1937) On generalized septic vascular disease. In: Verh. Dtsch. Pathol. Ges. 29: 202.
4. Wegener F (1939) On a peculiar rhinogenous granulomatosis with special involvement of the arterial system and kidneys. Beitr Pathol Anat Allg Pathol 102: 36.
5. Grzybowski A et al. Jens Martin Rohrbach: Should we dispense with the eponym "Wegener's granulomatosis"? A historical digression. Klinische Monatsblätter für Augenheilkunde 228: 641-643.