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- Musician and writer John Erskine was born in New York City on October 5, 1879. As a child he had a strong interest in music, taking piano lessons for many years; for a time he was being taught by noted composer Edward MacDowell.
Erskine graduated from Columbia University in 1900 and received his PhD in 1903. He was an English instructor at Amherst College and became an Associate Professor there. In 1909 he accepted a position on the faculty at his alma mater, Columbia, and became a full professor there in 1916. He was at Columbia for 28 years and gained a reputation as a highly respected and influential teacher; among his students were future authors Mark Van Doren, Clifton Fadiman, Rexford Tugwell and Mortimer J. Adler.
Erskine also kept up his interest in music, often performing at private functions and on occasion at public concerts. He was a trustee at the prestigious Juilliard School of Music from 1927 and was president of the institution from 1928 to 1937. He also published numerous books, mainly scholarly studies and poetry volumes. He surprised many with his 1928 novel "The Private Life of Helen of Troy", his humorous version of the classic legend set in the contemporary Jazz Age. It was hugely successful, being translated into 16 languages and even turned into a film (The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927)).
In 1937 he retired from academic life and took up writing full-time. He published a variety of non-fiction works, two biographies (of Walt Whitman and American revolutionary figure Patrick Henry) and three volumes of memoirs.
He died in New York City on June 2, 1951. - Ernst Pittschau was born on 5 October 1883 in Altona, Germany. He was an actor, known for Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (1917), Germany Year Zero (1948) and Pique Dame (1918). He died on 2 June 1951 in Berlin, Germany.
- After his father's death in 1877, he grew up in poor conditions in his grandfather's house. From 1895 to 1902 he studied medicine in Marburg, Jena and Göttingen. Sauerbruch's sister and his mother continued the craft business after his grandfather's death and enabled him to receive training. In 1901 he was admitted as a general practitioner. In 1902 he received his doctorate in medicine. Sauerbruch worked in Berlin, Erfurt and Kassel until 1903. From 1903 to 1905 he worked as a volunteer doctor at the Surgical University Clinic in Breslau. Even before his habilitation in medicine in 1905, he presented the pressure difference method he had developed on June 6, 1904 at the 33rd "Congress of the German Society for Surgery" and thus provided the basis for surgery in the chest cavity. Until then, the opening of the thorax caused the lungs to collapse, so that the patient's life was in acute danger due to inadequate breathing.
In 1905, Sauerbruch was appointed senior surgical physician at the Greifswald University Hospital. From 1907 to 1908 he became head of the polyclinic in Marburg. Sauerbruch primarily researched the possibilities and limitations of organ transplantation. Sauerbruch married on January 3, 1908. Five children were born from this marriage. In 1910, Sauerbruch received a professorship at the Zurich University Hospital and was appointed director of the surgical clinic and polyclinic of the Zurich Cantonal Hospital. He also founded a private clinic, which was managed by his wife. During this time, Sauerbruch succeeded in optimizing the surgical treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Sauerbruch volunteered for military service. He joined this as an advisory surgeon to the XV. Army Corps.
The following year he submitted a request for leave of absence through the University of Zurich, which the German government approved. He then devoted himself to the development of the "Sauerbruch Hand" for war disabled people. It allowed hand movements using muscle strands. From this research he published the first part of his publication "The arbitrarily movable artificial hand" in 1916. In 1918 he was appointed professor at the University of Munich. Here Sauerbruch developed the tipping plastic that is named after him: After removing a thigh bone that has been destroyed by cancer, for example, the healthy lower leg bone is transplanted into the hip joint socket. The lower leg is replaced with a prosthesis. In 1920 and 1925 he published the two-volume work "Surgery of the Chest Organs" and the second part of "The Arbitrarily Movable Artificial Hand".
In 1923 he met Erna Hanfstaengl, with whom he later had a temporary romantic relationship. From 1928 Sauerbruch became professor of surgery at the Berlin Charité and head of the Surgical University Clinic. The doctor, who was Max Liebermann's neighbor in Berlin, was portrayed by Liebermann in the story "The Surgeon". In 1931, Sauerbruch was the first to remove a bulge in the heart wall after a heart attack. After 1933, Sauerbruch rejected National Socialist values, but in 1934 he was appointed State Councilor by Hermann Göring. In addition, he was awarded the NSDAP National Prize in 1937. From 1938 Sauerbruch became editor of the specialist magazine "Neue Deutsche Chirurgie". From 1941 he took part in the so-called "Wednesday Society" and protested against the NSDAP's euthanasia programs.
After the end of the Second World War, he took part in the reconstruction of Berlin's health care system. After the re-establishment of the "Chirurgical Society in Berlin" he was re-elected chairman. Despite age-related impairments in his surgical safety and mental resilience, Sauerbruch continued to operate until old age. On December 3, 1949, he submitted his application for retirement. In 1950 he gave in to the requests of West Berlin private clinics and worked as a surgeon again. In 1951 Sauerbruch published his autobiography entitled "That was my life".
Ferdinand Sauerbruch died on June 2, 1951 in Berlin.