[Alfred Hauptmann - the fate of a german neurologist of jewish origin].

The pathway through life of the German psychiatrist and neurologist Alfred Hauptmann (1881 - 1948) and his work is described. It is exemplary for so many of his contemporaries of Jewish origin, who were forced to emigrate under the National Socialist dictatorship. Hauptmann's career was most of all marked by the short, but to him formative time with Max Nonne. Throughout his life his research focused on neurological topics. In 1926, Hauptmann got the chair of psychiatry at Halle University in order to continue the important neurological tradition of Eduard Hitzig, Carl Wernicke and Gabriel Anton. Until 1935, he worked as the director of the psychiatric clinic in Halle, but in the course of the Reichsburgergesetz he had to give up his chair and his work as a doctor. The way into emigration, which was accelerated by the temporary imprisonment in the concentration camp Dachau, is described considering personal documents. After his emigration into the United States, Hauptmann was not too successful in starting new as a scientist. His most important contribution is still the article on the efficacy of Phenobarbital as an antiepileptic, which had been written already in 1912. For this reason, the Alfred-Hauptmann-Award for epilepsy research is awarded. In 1941 - after his emigration - he and Siegfried Joseph Thannhauser described the autosomal dominantly transmitted myopathy for the first time, which is today described as Hauptmann-Thannhauser myodystrophy. The name of Alfred Hauptmann should be unforgettable not only because of the entrance into medical nomenclature, but it should also remind of the man Alfred Hauptmann, standing for all those whose similar fates are still unknown until now.