hope, forgive me this short excursion into the urogenital tract – I can see I will have to cut out these jokes; for a surgeon the unkindest cut of all.’ He nodded to the group of doctors and patted his upper lip with his signet ring again. ‘You will note, gentlemen, that I am borrowing the principle of covering myself from our beloved colleagues in Internal Medicine.’ A hint of mockery flashed across the faces of some of the doctors. Christian had worked in hospitals as a nursing auxiliary often enough to know about the differences between the two main branches of medicine. Müller became more serious.
‘Bornthe eldest son of a clockmaker in Glashütte, a small town in the eastern Erzgebirge, Richard Hoffmann grew up during the years of Hitlerite fascism and as a twelve-year-old – he was an auxiliary in an anti-aircraft battery – experienced the Anglo-American air raid on Dresden. On the night of the air raid, he suffered severe burns from phosphorus bombs and had to undergo lengthy treatment in Johannstadt Hospital, the present Medical Academy – in the same clinic, moreover, which he is in charge of today. It was then that his desire to study medicine took shape. Now it is true that such youthful dreams are often not realized. I remember, for example, that twenty years ago’ – he wrinkled his brow and pursed his lips – ‘all the boys suddenly wanted to be astronauts, Gagarin and Vostock and Gherman Titov; not me, I was too old already, although my wife is always telling me that the training in Baikonur, together with anchovy paste out of a tube’ – he looked down at his body and spread his arms in mock incomprehension – ‘would have done me no harm, but I think that is the too one-sided view of a dietary cook.’ Müller’s wife, who was sitting next to Anne, sent embarrassed looks in all directions and blushed sufficiently. Wernstein, one of the junior doctors in the clinic for trauma surgery, leant over with a grin to a colleague and whispered something.
‘Ah,’ Müller cried with an ironic undertone in his voice, stretching out his arm theatrically, ‘at least our junior colleagues do not take the view that I would interpret a relaxation of their attempts to restrain the risorius as disrespect for, or even mockery of, my physical constitution. Very bold, gentlemen. Thank you. And others among us perhaps wanted to be atomic scientists, an Indian chief like Winnetou or, dear ladies, a second Florence Nightingale, but as the years passed, elementary particles and the struggle for the rights of the Apache nation were perhaps no longer so interesting. However, surgery, the youthful dream of the man whose birthday we are celebrating today, retained its interest and since that stay in hospital he never – this I have from his own lips – lost sight of his goal of becoming a surgeon. He attendedthe high school in Freital, completed an apprenticeship as a fitter and then went to Leipzig to study medicine in the hallowed halls of the
alma mater lipsiensis
that for some of us was, to use a good old Prussian expression, the seedbed of our medical career. It was there, in the unforgettable anatomical lectures of Kurt Alverdes and later in the
Collegium chirurgicum
of Herbert Uebermuth, that his decision to become a surgeon was strengthened and confirmed. However, the great clinician Max Burger almost made him reconsider, which would have robbed us of one of the best trauma surgeons we have in the country, when he became aware of Richard Hoffmann’s exceptional talent for diagnosis and suggested that he should do his doctorate under him. Not that our friend was unfaithful, in his heart, to surgery. It was above all the after-effects of his injuries during the air raid on Dresden that made him hesitate; deformities of his right hand made it difficult, at times impossible, for him to clench his hand – and that is, naturally, a fundamental problem for a person who wants to specialize in the surgical
‘Bornthe eldest son of a clockmaker in Glashütte, a small town in the eastern Erzgebirge, Richard Hoffmann grew up during the years of Hitlerite fascism and as a twelve-year-old – he was an auxiliary in an anti-aircraft battery – experienced the Anglo-American air raid on Dresden. On the night of the air raid, he suffered severe burns from phosphorus bombs and had to undergo lengthy treatment in Johannstadt Hospital, the present Medical Academy – in the same clinic, moreover, which he is in charge of today. It was then that his desire to study medicine took shape. Now it is true that such youthful dreams are often not realized. I remember, for example, that twenty years ago’ – he wrinkled his brow and pursed his lips – ‘all the boys suddenly wanted to be astronauts, Gagarin and Vostock and Gherman Titov; not me, I was too old already, although my wife is always telling me that the training in Baikonur, together with anchovy paste out of a tube’ – he looked down at his body and spread his arms in mock incomprehension – ‘would have done me no harm, but I think that is the too one-sided view of a dietary cook.’ Müller’s wife, who was sitting next to Anne, sent embarrassed looks in all directions and blushed sufficiently. Wernstein, one of the junior doctors in the clinic for trauma surgery, leant over with a grin to a colleague and whispered something.
‘Ah,’ Müller cried with an ironic undertone in his voice, stretching out his arm theatrically, ‘at least our junior colleagues do not take the view that I would interpret a relaxation of their attempts to restrain the risorius as disrespect for, or even mockery of, my physical constitution. Very bold, gentlemen. Thank you. And others among us perhaps wanted to be atomic scientists, an Indian chief like Winnetou or, dear ladies, a second Florence Nightingale, but as the years passed, elementary particles and the struggle for the rights of the Apache nation were perhaps no longer so interesting. However, surgery, the youthful dream of the man whose birthday we are celebrating today, retained its interest and since that stay in hospital he never – this I have from his own lips – lost sight of his goal of becoming a surgeon. He attendedthe high school in Freital, completed an apprenticeship as a fitter and then went to Leipzig to study medicine in the hallowed halls of the
alma mater lipsiensis
that for some of us was, to use a good old Prussian expression, the seedbed of our medical career. It was there, in the unforgettable anatomical lectures of Kurt Alverdes and later in the
Collegium chirurgicum
of Herbert Uebermuth, that his decision to become a surgeon was strengthened and confirmed. However, the great clinician Max Burger almost made him reconsider, which would have robbed us of one of the best trauma surgeons we have in the country, when he became aware of Richard Hoffmann’s exceptional talent for diagnosis and suggested that he should do his doctorate under him. Not that our friend was unfaithful, in his heart, to surgery. It was above all the after-effects of his injuries during the air raid on Dresden that made him hesitate; deformities of his right hand made it difficult, at times impossible, for him to clench his hand – and that is, naturally, a fundamental problem for a person who wants to specialize in the surgical
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