Abstracts

Rationale: To bring Otto Löwenstein (in the US: Lowenstein), a widely forgotten neurologist and psychiatrist with Jewish descent back to public awareness. Regarding to epilepsy, his pioneering work on the use of cinematographic seizure documentation as precursor of video-monitoring is of special interest. Methods: Research in libraries and institutions as well as personal contacts with his nephew (living in Bonn, Germany, and his two daughters, living in the US). Results: After his studies in medicine and his MD thesis (1914) the residency in Neurology and Psychiatry at the University of Bonn was interrupted by military service (as physician) in WWI. There Löwenstein was confronted with normal and pathological fear states whose conventional medical assessment as "cowardice" (with according military criminal prosecution) was inappropriate in his opinion. He focused on this topic in his Ph.D. thesis (1923), was promoted to Associate Professor in 1926 and Head of the newly founded "Rheinische Provinzialkinderanstalt für seelisch Abnorme" (the first Child Psychiatry Unit in Germany). In 1931 he received an endowed Professorship and became Director of the Pathophysiological Institute of the Bonn University. In March 1933 he was forced to escape to Switzerland from Germany after 100 SA ("Sturm-Abteilung") men stormed his institute. In the same year he published the first systematic study of "seizure monitoring" by continous cinematographic recording of ictal events for diagnostic reasons (epileptic vs. psychogenic) in a Swiss journal (in German). Until 1939 he was Consultant for Neurology and Psychiatry at the Clinic "Ma Metairie" in Nyon near Geneva, Switzerland. In 1939 he emigrated to the US, became Professor at the New York University and 1947 at the Columbia University. There he specialized in autonomous neurology and neuro-ophthalmology. In 1949 he was the founding director of the Laboratory of Pupillography at Columbia, where he - together with his coworker Irene Loewenfeld - developed electronic pupillography. From 1962 onwards he was Professor Emeritus, and died on March 25, 1965 in New York. Conclusions: Otto Löwenstein was a pioneer not only in child psychiatry, but also in neuro-ophthalmology and epileptology. He was displaced from his position at the University of Bonn by the Nazis in 1933 because of his Jewish descent. A special recognition by the Department of Epileptology of the University of Bonn Medical Centre is planned for 2015.