Kleinschmidt, Otto August Aloys

Surgeon

born: 31.07.1880 in Darmstadt

died: 26.05.1948 in Wiesbaden

Kleinschmidt studied medicine in Berlin, Freiburg, Munich and Heidelberg. He was awarded his doctorate in Leipzig in 1908. He then trained in pathological anatomy under Karl Albert Ludwig Aschoff (1866-1942) in Freiburg and in surgery under Erwin Payr (1871-1946) in Königsberg and Leipzig, where he qualified as a surgeon in 1915. He was deployed as a staff surgeon during the First World War and was awarded the Iron Cross I and II. Class. In 1920, he was appointed associate professor of surgery in Leipzig. From April 1927, he was Director of the Surgical Department at Wiesbaden Municipal Hospital.

In 1927, his description of the clinical application of mammography on a patient was published in the textbook "Die Klinik der bösartigen Geschwulste". Kleinschmidt published numerous other scientific studies, including a work on operative surgery, which went through four editions until 1945. Kleinschmidt was also co-editor of the prestigious journals "Der Chirurg" and "Ergebnisse der Chirurgie".

He joined the NSDAP in 1933 but left the party again in 1938, as his wife Anita (née Springer) had a Jewish grandfather. He saved a Jewish patient from imminent deportation by certifying that she was unfit for transportation due to an operation. After the war, he was briefly relieved of his post by the Americans due to his membership of the Nazi party, but was reinstated as Medical Director of the Wiesbaden Municipal Hospitals in 1947 and elected Chairman of the Middle Rhine Surgeons' Society in the same year.