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Ludwig Edinger

Ludwig Edinger (Born 13 April 1855, in Worms, died 26 January 1918, in Frankfurt am Main), was an influential German anatomist and neurologist and in 1914 co-founder of the University of Frankfurt. In 1914 he was also appointed the first German professor of neurology by the King of Prussia.

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Ludwig Edinger grew up in Worms, where his father was a successful textile salesman and democratic congressman in the state parliament of Hesse-Darmstadt. His mother was the daughter of a physician from Karlsruhe. He was not ashamed that he started his career as a poor man. Indeed, he proposed free schooling for all children in 1873, but without success.

Edinger studied medicine from 1872 to 1877 in Heidelberg and Strasbourg. His studies into neurology began during his time as an assistant physician in Gießen (1877 - 1882). His habilitation was in 1881 about neurological researches. He became a docent for these themes. He worked in Berlin, Leipzig and Paris and opened his own practice for neurology in Frankfurt am Main in 1883.

Due to Edingers initiative in 1885, the pathologist Carl Weigert became director of the Dr. Senckenbergischen Anatomie in Frankfurt am Main. Weigert had had problems in other places with antisemitism. Weigert gave his friend Edinger a place to work in his institute. In 1902, Edinger got enough space to start his own neurological department.

In 1909, after a dispute between Edinger and the Senkenberg foundation about the finances of the neurological institute, Edinger moved to Frankfurt University. In his certificate of appointment as professor, was the clause that he was responsible for the financing of the department. His problems had eased in 1886, when he married Anna Goldschmidt, the daughter of an old family of traditional Jewish bankers in Frankfurt; she received a large inheritance in 1906.

On January 26 1918, Ludwig Edinger died suddenly of a heart attack. He had instructed that his brain was examined in his institute. The institute continued with the introduction of a foundation set-up by Erdinger. The neurological department of the medicine faculty of the Goethe-University is named after him.