[Friedrich Kraus--originator of functional diagnosis and electrocardiography in Germany]

The 50th anniversary of the death of Friedrich Kraus (31 May 1858 to 1 March 1936) was the occasion to remind of the merits of this internist for the development of the functional diagnostics and the spreading of the electrocardiography in Germany. After the first professorship in Graz (foundation of the constitution research) he was appointed director of the 2nd Medical Clinic of the Charité in Berlin 1902, where he worked up to his discharge from the active service in 1927. From 1906 he dealt with electrocardiological problems, mainly together with G.F. Nicolai (1874-1955). In 1910 the first monography on "The Electrocardiogram of the Healthy and Ill Man" was published. After World War I Kraus dealt with the "Special Pathology and Therapy of Internal Diseases" and the "General and Special Pathology of the Person". In the theory of the depth person, being ahead of the time, psychosomatic connections were explained. A selective bibliography of the most important works of Kraus is added to the paper.