Hermann Dietz

On April 18, 2016, a heart stood still, a heart that for decades had beat tirelessly for German neurosurgery. The Latin epitaph by Samuel Johnson for the poet Oliver Goldsmith in Westminster Abbey, Nullum quod tetigit non ornavit (“He touched nothing that he did not adorn”), applies perfectly to Hermann Dietz.

Hermann was sincere, loyal, modest, helpful, warmhearted, and humorous. Impossible to say which of these qualities was predominant. He always had an open ear for his patients as well as his coworkers. I never saw him in a hurry.

He was Sunday's child. How could it have been otherwise? Born on February 15, 1925, in Kaiserslautern, he was named after his father, who ran a tavern together with his wife, Emma, in Pirmasens. Hermann remained their only child.

After graduating from Classical High School in Zweibrücken, he was drafted into the army in 1943 and returned from war captivity in 1945.

From 1946 to 1950 Hermann studied psychology and philosophy at the University of Mainz and was certified as a psychologist on April 24, 1950. During this period he also began studying medicine at the University of Mainz, where he obtained his medical degree in 1953. He was a resident in the Department of Surgery at the University of Mainz (1954–1957) and subsequently became a resident in the Department of Neurosurgery, created in 1955 under the chairmanship of Kurt Schürmann, one of the distinguished disciples of Wilhelm Tönnis. He was appointed associate professor (Oberarzt) in 1962 and obtained his PhD with the thesis “Die Frontobasale Schädelhirnverletzung” (Frontobasal Head Injury). It was published by Springer in 1970 and is still a classic. Its bibliography contains 1,021 publications.

In 1969 Hermann was appointed full professor and chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery at the newly founded Hannover Medical School (Medizinische Hochschule Hannover), at that time one of the largest and most modern hospitals in Europe. He assumed his duties as chairman on March 31, 1970. This was to be the beginning of a success story that lasted for 23 years.

Although reserved, Hermann was sociable. Germany was divided, but supporting our colleagues on the other side of the wall had a very special place in his heart. He never accepted the division of German neurosurgery. He helped whenever he could and never tired of stressing the importance of “inner German neurosurgical contacts.”

The department headed by Hermann Dietz had a very high international standing, as was impressively demonstrated and documented by the vast number of foreign visitors, scholarship holders, and staff members—mainly from Brazil, Japan, and Middle Eastern countries—as well as by numerous international congresses and symposia. The University of Teresina (Brazil) appointed him doctor honoris causa in 1979.

Hermann Dietz was always ready to assume responsibility, be creative, and participate as part of a team. He was medical director of the Hannover Medical School from 1981 to 1989, secretary of the German Society for Neurosurgery (1974–1980), its vice president (1980–1982), and its president from 1982 to 1984. In 1994 he became the founding chairman of the Neurosurgery Research Foundation (Stiftung Neurochirurgische Forschung), which has since supported so many scientific research projects of young neurosurgeons in Germany.

Hardly any other German neurosurgical chairman has contributed to our specialty with so many leading neurosurgeons in Germany and abroad. Probably no other department in Germany has produced so many PhD theses and publications under one single chairman.

When during the last years of his life, his hip joints painfully refused to work and walking had become intolerable, Hermann Dietz endured his fate with courage, patience, defiance, and no complaints. His loving wife Elfrun, whom he had married on May 24, 1958, and his daughter Stephanie, born April 14, 1968, were of decisive help during this somber period of time (and not only then).

Hermann Dietz was an outstanding personality and a “chief one could rub shoulders with.” He was so very different from any others one may have encountered.

Perhaps things were better in former times. All of us will miss Hermann Dietz very much.

Fig. 1 Hermann Dietz.