Berthold Ostertag

Berthold Ostertag (born February 28, 1895, in Berlin; died November 14, 1975, in Tübingen) was a German pathologist.

Life Berthold Ostertag was the son of veterinarian Robert von Ostertag and his wife Margarete, née Hertwig. He completed his schooling in 1913 with the Abitur and then completed his six-month military service. He then began studying medicine at the University of Tübingen. During his studies, he became a member of the Corps Rhenania Tübingen in 1914 and later in 1919 a member of the Corps Marchia Berlin. Due to the outbreak of World War I, he had to interrupt his studies as he was conscripted as a medical non-commissioned officer in the German Army. He was able to resume his studies in Tübingen in 1915 for the Physikum.

After the war, Ostertag organized a student company in Tübingen and participated in combat against revolutionary Spartacists with a Freikorps. After resuming his studies again, Ostertag completed his medical degree in 1920 and received his Dr. med. in Tübingen. He then worked as a volunteer doctor at the Pathological Institute of the University of Tübingen and from 1921 at the Berlin Pathological Institute. Other stations included a guest assistantship under Walther Spielmeyer at the German Research Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, heading the laboratory of the University Neurology Clinic of the Charité under Karl Bonhoeffer, and eventually returning to the Pathological Institute of the University of Tübingen. From 1925, he was prosector of the Heil- und Pflegeanstalt Berlin-Buch. He married Ilse Kobel in 1924, with whom he had two daughters and a son. In May 1934, he moved in the same capacity to the Pathological Institute of the Rudolf Virchow Hospital, where he remained until the end of the war in the spring of 1945. On August 1, 1935, he became a member of the NSDAP (membership number 3,669,462). Ostertag had a significant conflict with the brain researcher Oskar Vogt, which led to the withdrawal of his SA membership in 1937.

During World War II, he was called up as a medical officer to the Wehrmacht at the end of 1940 but was able to continue living and working in Berlin. He was also responsible for brain injury hospitals of the Army. After the war-related destruction of his institute in September 1943, parts of the institute were relocated to Hohenlychen. Subsequently, he was stationed in Teupitz, Bad Nauheim, and in early 1945 in Tübingen.

After the war, he was denazified. From 1950, he headed the Neuropathological Laboratory at the University Neurology Clinic in Tübingen and established the Institute for Brain Research there. In 1960, he was appointed associate professor of neuropathology and in 1964 retired. Ostertag was awarded the Grand Federal Cross of Merit in 1964. As a neuro- and tumor pathologist, Ostertag's research focus was on constitutional pathology.

Selected works Einteilung und Charakteristik der Hirngewächse: Ihre natürliche Klassifizierung zum Verständnis von Sitz, Ausbreitung u. Gewebsaufbau. Fischer, Jena 1936. Pathologie der raumfordernden Prozesse des Schädelbinnenraums. Enke, Stuttgart 1941. Die Sektionstechnik des Gehirns und des Rückenmarks nebst Anleitung zur Befunderhebung. Springer, Berlin 1944. Anatomie und Pathologie der raumfordernden Prozesse des Schädelinnenraumes. In: Chirurgie der Gehirnkrankheiten (= New German Surgery. Volume 50). Volume III. Enke, Stuttgart 1949.