Borggreve, Joseph

Orthopaedist

born: 01.06.1887 in Kreuznach

died: 27.05.1963 in Salzburg

From 1905, Joseph Borggreve studied medicine in Heidelberg, Munich and Berlin. He received his license to practice medicine in 1911 and obtained his doctorate in 1911, after which he worked as an assistant physician to Prof. Siegfried Oberndorffer at the pathology department of the Munich-Schwabing Hospital until 1913. From 1913 to 1919, he initially devoted himself to further training at the Orthopaedic Clinic in Munich under Prof. Fritz Lange. His medical assignments during the First World War confronted him with related tasks, such as the plaster-technical and surgical treatment of numerous gunshot fractures, the organization of a factory for bandage splints, first in Lille and later in Cambrai, as well as the management of the medicomechanical outpatient clinic of the Munich K reserve hospital in the National Museum. In 1919, he married the daughter of city councillor Wilhelm Arntz in Wiesbaden.

From 1920 to 1922, he gained experience in sunlight and high-altitude sun therapy as well as X-ray irradiation of bone, joint and glandular tuberculosis in a leading medical position at the "Sonnenschein" and "Kurhaus Kainzenbad" sanatoriums near Partenkirchen. At the same time, he worked in his private orthopaedic practice. In 1922, he moved to Wiesbaden and worked under Dr. Paul #Guradze as a secondary physician in the #Orthopaedic Clinic ("Alfred-Erich-Heim") of the Nassauische Krüppelfürsorge. After the death of Dr. Paul Guradze, he was promoted to chief physician and took over the management of the Wiesbaden sanatorium. He held this position from 1924 to 1937 and then again from 1939 to 1946.

Despite the heavy demands of this position and his duties as a state cripple doctor and head of the city's cripple provision, he also made a name for himself with a series of scientific publications. A communication published in 1930 on a surgical method he used for the first time, the "knee joint replacement through the ankle rotated by 180° in the longitudinal axis of the leg", attracted particular attention. As a long-standing board member of the German Orthopaedic Society, he was particularly concerned with economic issues and quality assurance in specialist training. In recognition of his achievements in this area and his diplomatic skills, he was appointed President of the Orthopaedic Congress in Wiesbaden in 1952. Towards the end of the 1950s, he moved to Partenkirchen, where he continued to practise medicine.