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J Neurol Surg A Cent Eur Neurosurg 2025; 86(S 01): S49-S58
DOI: 10.1055/a-2558-3390
Original Article

Wilhelm Tönnis and His Network around 1950: His National and International Impact

Ulrike Eisenberg
1   Historian of the German Society of Neurosurgery, Berlin, Germany
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Abstract

Wilhelm Tönnis is considered the founder of postwar neurosurgery in West Germany. He was able to draw on a network of prewar and wartime colleagues and trained young colleagues who took up most of the leading neurosurgical positions in the first postwar decades. Interdisciplinary collaboration was important to him, especially with pathologists, radiologists, and neurologists. He was unable to reconnect with the broad international network of the prewar period. However, he maintained contact with his teacher Olivecrona in Sweden, other Scandinavian colleagues, and students from Italy, southeastern Europe, and South America. The network is illustrated by the description of his clinical and research staff and his colloquia, the authors of the Handbuch der Neurochirurgie (Handbook of Neurosurgery), which he co-founded, and the editors of the neurosurgical journals Zentralblatt für Neurochirurgie and Acta Neurochirurgica. Tönnis' significant influence on the emancipation of neurosurgery in the postwar decades becomes evident.

Keywords

Wilhelm Tönnis - Max Planck Institute for Brain Research - Cologne - Zentralblatt für Neurochirurgie - Handbook of Neurosurgery


Publication History

Article published online:
21 May 2025

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