[Hermann Oppenheim (1858-1919) -- an excellent neurologist without academic recognition: 150th anniversary of his birthday, January 1, 2008]

Hermann Oppenheim (1858-1919) had a financially modest upbringing and studied medicine in the German cities of Göttingen and Bonn. At the Berlin Charite Hospital, where he had become a lecturer, and as an established neurologist he eventually cofounded the Association of German Neurologists. It was his life's goal to establish neurology as a special field of medicine. At the height of his teaching career, he spent a decade (from 1891 to 1901) trying to attain full professorship. His efforts eventually fell prey to arrogant and delaying decisions at the administrative level, which he countered by resigning from the medicine faculty of Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. Internal antisemitic tendencies could be seen in these difficulties. Oppenheim himself was a member of the Central Association for Citizens of the Jewish Faith, an association for strengthening Jewish identity and Jewish awareness. His possibilities were exhausted at the university level. There remains the question of how much he could have achieved, had the full range of opportunities been made available to him.