i
More and different places of origin than one
Gerd Krüger born in 1943 in Reutlingen grew up in Schwetzingen, temporarily in Lichtenstein (1), called after the castle in the novel by Wilhelm Hauff (1802-1827) (2) near the location of his birth. Lichtenstein is the hometown of his mother Emma Haid (1919-1976) and grandparents on the maternal side whose Jewish origin was able to be declared. An intensive search after his grandmother´s name of birth Hartstein and her ancestors has been done. You could feel, even as a child, the palpable aura of mixed orthodox/pietistic spirituality living in the so-named “Hohen Haus”, the highest building compared with the buildings of the neighbors along the “Dorfstrasse” (village road). Nor or less important for his development of having grown up in Postwar Germany 1945-1949 and later on was the annual staying with his father`s parents in Ziethen near by the old Pomeranian Hanse town Anklam during the great summer holidays (3/4). A symbolic unification of the both so different homes of ancestors, the Suebian and the Pomeranian, he found later the “Schlösschen Klein Lichtenstein” as miniature on the island in Ummanz and as replica in Lietzow on the main island Rugen (5). This time was part of vivid historical experience as contemporary witness till the Berlin Wall building in 1961. His grandparents lived there at GDR times. Before the end of the war, Ziethen was the well of one of the Pommerian counts von Schwerin. The count Gerhard von Schwerin was later known as “active member in Resistance against Hitler” by a congratulation article to his 80.birthday by Marion Countess Dönhoff (1909-2002) (6) as DIE ZEIT editor-in-chief of that time. The dissent about this came up in heavy academic disagreement by the Historian Peter Quadflieg having “dispelled the myth of Count Schwerin”. The family of the counts von Schwerin has lost their well at the expense of the socialists Bodenreform before the implementation of the LPGs, probably translated as ”farmers productive communities”, later on. The countess has visited Ziethen in the 80s or so. A bad minded reaction in the SED journal “Neues Deutschland” could be just painfully read responded with shame (7).https://www.quora.com/What-happened-to-the-British-ambassador-in-Berlin-WW2. We can add: What happened to the British military ambassador Count Gerhard von Schwerin in London?
(1) Castle Lichtenstein: Wilhelm Hauff Museum/Community Lichtenstein Unterhausen Rathausplatz 17 72805 Lichtenstein; Family names: Haid /Hartstein
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichtenstein_Castle_(Württemberg)
(2) Wilhelm Hauff: Lichtenstein – Romantical Saga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Hauff
in German: Wilhelm Hauffs Werke hrsg. von Dr. Karl Macke Berlin SO.16
(3) The lowland of the river Peene is bordered by the community of Ziethen nearby Anklam on the south.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peenetal
(4) The evangelical church St. Marien was made out of cobblestone. The church in Ziethen was raised in the thirteenth century in Gothic architecture. The wrought ironwork has been made by my grandfather Richard Krüger.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziethen_(bei_Anklam).
(6) Marion Gräfin Dönhoff (1909-2002) DIE ZEIT editor-in-chief of that time, 22.06.1979. “Forty years ago: A German General wanted to save the peace himself independently: Gerhard von Schwerin.” Source DIE ZEIT 22.06.1979 Nr. 26 entitled: “Hut ab vor dieser Courage - Ein deutscher General wollte den Frieden retten.“
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marion_Gr%C3%A4fin_D%C3%B6nhoff
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerhard_von-Schwerin citations 5/6/7/8
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_M._Quadflieg
…the following biographical scenario has been only described in an English Wikipedia version: “Frank Roberts, an official in the Foreign Office's German Department who also dealt with the issue, lightly-heartedly - in spite of the risk that Schwerin had taken in making such a move on the eve of war, which would constitute high treason and a capital crime in the Third Reich's jurisdiction if it was discovered - dismissed the subject-matter of Schwerin's approaches as being an internal matter for the German generals.”
(7) “A bad minded reaction in the SED journal “Neues Deutschland” could be just painfully read responded with shame”, my grandmother has sent me the press cutting. Never mind, but this was never mentioned in the newspaper nowadays, certainly not in the latest issues.
https://www.neues-deutschland.de/ausgabe/2019-11-26
Human consciousness
Since the 70s and 80s Gerd Krüger was interested in the mystery of human consciousness from sides, the neuroscientific and psychological one, as the inner way to discovery of the self within a process identity-forming and orientation in his life. He got familiar with Karlfried Graf Dürkheim (1896-1988) (8), whose way of life and search for verities in a spiritual sense of mind plus with Carl Ludwig Schleich (1859-1922). This last mentioned writer was as physician educated at the Ernst-Moritz-Arndt University Greifswald and wrote about “the soul” (Von der Seele, 1920) in a holistic drawing of both, the mind and the brain, early in the 1920s. Though, in this book he named “consciousness” a complex of feelings which exerts the whole of our nervous device to perceive and orientate in the sum of all inner and outer irritant stimuli (9). Astonishing enough that his scientific work has been recently reevaluated in the new research recoveries about the Neuroglia besides the never forgotten work of Rudolf Virchow (10): “The mechanism is surrounding the ganglion cells related to the in between the neuroglia and the neurons itself”. Schleich wrote further: “we think this substance, the Neuroglia, so far after being misconceived as simple structural support substance, is actively circulating with ups and downs inert the streams interrupting or bring about the associations between the cells”.
(8) Karlfried Graf Dürkheim (1896-1988)
Karlfried Graf Dürkheim is buried in the family tomb Johanneskapelle Steingaden Dürckheim-Montmartin (Karl Friedrich Alfred Heinrich Ferdinand Maria Graf Eckbrecht von Dürckheim-Montmartin is his full name) nearby the Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche). There, he experienced his first inner spiritual event as a child.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlfried_Graf_D%C3%BCrckheim
(9)Carl Ludwig Schleich (1859-1922)
Von der Seele. Essays. S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1910
Die Wunder der Seele. Mit einem Geleitwort von C. G. Jung. S. Fischer Verlag, Berlin 1934
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Ludwig_Schleich
(10)As medical student, famulus, Schleich has been doing clinical training with Rudolf Virchow.
Review Historical Perspective| Volume 31, ISSUE 12, P653-659, December 01, 2008
Neuroglia: the 150 years afterHelmut Kettenmann and Alexei Verkhratsky
Purpura V and Verkhatsky A: Neuroglia at the crossroads of homeostasis, metabolism and signaling: evolution of the concept ASN NEURO 4(4) art: e00087. Doi:10.1042/AN2012019
October 21, 2008 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tins.2008.09.003
“One hundred and fifty years ago on 3 April 1858, at 37 years of age, Rudolf Virchow promulgated the concept of neuroglia in a lecture delivered at the New Pathology Institute of Berlin University. This lecture was part of a series of 20 lectures for colleagues and medical practitioners, and the 13th was entitled ‘Spinal cord and the brain’. In that lecture, Virchow made public his earlier thoughts on the brain connective tissue, the ‘nervenkitt’ or nerve-cement, which he termed ‘neuroglia’; he had coined the term already in 1856 in a comment to an earlier article from 1846 when his collected works were republished. The lecture series, however, was a landmark because it was stenographed by one of his students and published, almost without changes, in the same year. The resulting book, which appeared under the title Cellular Pathology, is one of the most influential medical publications in the 19th century. From there, the term neuroglia and the concept behind them spread around the world.”
In Gerd Krüger´s opinion his Pommerian compatriot of his father`s side has predated the recent hypothesis of the “Astrocyte-Lactate-Neuron-Shuttle” (11/12) in the brain. This hypothesis shows not only the symbiotic relationship between astrocytes and neurons but provides substrate (i.e. lactate) for energy generation via oxidative phosphorylation (reverse Warburg effect) (13). The breakthrough to combine science and spirit succeeded with his becoming attentively of the New Alchemy of Science and Spirit in Mind and Matter with Fred Alan Wolf, the American Book Award-winning author of Taking the Quantum Leap and The Spiritual Universe. It is Wolf´s opinion about the relationship relating matter from mind that bears always repeating in Gerd Krüger`s mind to be persuaded. Fred Alan Wolf (14) is helping him with explanations like: ”a vast field of influence envisioned as the Mind of God”. He said that “asking a human being to explain what God is is similar to asking a fish to explain the water in which the fish swims”. But the following perspective will help to build up a bridge to understand the metabolic reactions in brain and overall body energetic:
“When an electron scatters from a collision with a proton in a typical high-energy event, its position in space becomes dependent on its history: How fast did it move? How close come it to a dead-center hit? Also, the proton`s behavior is dependent on the collision. Although quantum mechanics does not allow us to determine the exact location of the electron or proton, it specifies exactly how the particles influence each other in a mathematical and lawful manner. So, even though we don´t know where the particle is for sure, we could say that the situation is “automated”.
(11) George B. Brooks,
Department of Integrative Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA,
Lactate: Link between Glycolytic and Oxidative Metabolism,
Sports Med 2007; 37 (4-5): 341-343CONFERENCE PAPER0112-1642/07/0004-0341/$44.95/0
J Physiol. 2009 Dec 1; 587(Pt 23): 5591–5600. Published online 2009 Oct 5. doi: 10.1113/jphysiol.2009.178350 PMCID: PMC2805372 PMID: 19805739
Cell–cell and intracellular lactate shuttles
(12) Gladden LB
J Physiol. 2004 Jul 1; 558(Pt 1): 5–30.
Published online 2004 Apr 30. doi: 10.1113/jphysiol.2003.058701
PMCID: PMC1664920
PMID: 15131240
Lactate metabolism: a new paradigm for the third millennium
(13) Maria V. Liberti and Jason W. Locasale
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics, Graduate Field of Biochemistry, Molecular and Cell Biology, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
January 05, 2016DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tibs.2015.12.001
The Warburg Effect: How Does it Benefit Cancer Cells?
“Cancer cells rewire their metabolism to promote growth, survival, proliferation, and long-term maintenance. The common feature of this altered metabolism is the increased glucose uptake and fermentation of glucose to lactate. This phenomenon is observed even in the presence of completely functioning mitochondria and, together, is known as the ‘Warburg Effect’. The Warburg Effect has been documented for over 90 years and extensively studied over the past 10 years, with thousands of papers reporting to have established either its causes or its functions. Despite this intense interest, the function of the Warburg Effect remains unclear. Here, we analyze several proposed explanations for the function of Warburg Effect, emphasize their rationale, and discuss their controversies.”
(14) Fred Alan Wolf
Taken from the free Wikipedia and cited
“… (born December 3, 1934) is an American theoretical physicist specializing in quantum physics and the relationship between physics and consciousness. He is a former physics professor at San Diego State University, and has helped to popularize science on the Discovery Channel. He is the author of a number of physics-themed books including Taking the Quantum Leap (1981), The Dreaming Universe (1994), Mind into Matter (2000), and Time Loops and Space Twists (2011).[1"Australian Broadcasting Corporation biographical sketch". ABC Online. Archived from the original on November 14, 2007. Retrieved 2007-02-27.]“
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Alan_Wolf
Often Gerd Krüger felt that the opposite direction of life returned to dominance and became that which he didn´t want to do being expressed in his individual environment. It was and is the never ending battle between destiny and will. There were a lot of feelings with inferiority and shame to cope with in everyday life. Starting with psychotherapy in 70s his feelings culminated in London, during this half year in 1976 (see below). He wanted to succeed in finding a balance in his inner soul combining both mind and body how Fred Alan Wolf (14, page 9) wrote in his already mentioned book titled Mind into Matter “to show that within our own mind lies a majestic story filled with drama, pathos, humor, intelligence, fantasy, and fact”. To that time, he has observed an invitation to Frankfurter Kamingespräche with the journalist Gert Scobel and the writer Bodo Kirchhoff. The location of this talk was the Holzhausen Park in the City of Mainhattan which becomes to be a present symbolic place of his own biography as a novel, the title <The life as a novel> because his twin sons Christoph and Matthias wrote their abitur and succeeded very well just at the same time and place in the spring and beginning hot, but golden summer of 2018.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gert_Scobel
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bodo_Kirchhoff
Yesterday and now: the blacksmith grandfather and the horseman father
Back to his father, Kurt Krüger was born at the above mentioned well Ziethen in 1920. There, his grandfather Richard Krüger was a blacksmith on the Count von Schwerin’s well with a lot of workhorses and carts. He had been very busy to fulfill the orders instructed by the count or the wells around in this Pommerian area called “Grafenwinkel” (the corner of counts). There is the story not so often told about him. After the First World War, in the chaotic revolutionary times at the end of the war in 1918, he has illegally left the troup at the west front to marry his spouse Martha. At the same time Richard Krüger absolved the Master exam in the craft makes blacksmith. He was famous around the Pommerian area as “man of the black art” being able in shoeing the most stubborn horses. These grandparents of Gerd Krüger invented a gas station combined with a colonial goods store predating the tank and rest places nowadays. Till today, the location looks as a contemptible place on the way to Greifswald, Stralsund, and Rugen with the diversion to Gutzkow. In the 20s and 30s, right on the spot of that time, a lot of wealthy Berlin inhabitants, having owned automobiles, traveled to the seaside resorts on the Usedom and Rugen isle lands. The Baltic Sea was called “unsere Badewanne” (“our bathtub”) by the Berliners.
Since 1937 Kurt Krüger, seventeen years old, belonged to the Cavalry-Regiment 5 (15) in Stolp/Pomerania on the half distance between Swinemünde and Stettin. Throughout the Second World War he was a riding master and instructor of recruits with a lot of young recruits of the Pomeranian aristocracy. He stayed in combat in Russia till his injury there in 1942. After veteran hospital break in Schwäbisch Gmund he came back to his unit which hangs around in France near Paris at the Fontainebleau racetrack (16). This time was just before the allied landing in Normandy. But in between the story of his father as Horse Whisperer was told. When his horse named Schwerthieb (“sword cut”), this horse was of biggest height, sank in the swamp which is widely common in the Normandy region. Normally, this must be the end of the horse given him the coup of grace. But his rider was able to interact with his animal companion to pull him out of the mud.
The regiment was used militarily at the frontline in Hungary as part of the Late Battle of Vienna till its solution in June 1945 in Sanct Michael near the Tauern Path in the Austrian Alps (17). After a short time as prisoner of war in Rheinau /Mannheim he worked as a driver for transporting delicates and patries on behalf of the officer´s mess at Headquarters of the American occupation army in Heidelberg. There has been a critical situation confronting the MP – military police - to this after war Christmas times when all were having the munchies (“Kohldampf schieben”). Each person was in concern terms to satisfy hunger as he has organized a goose for the fest meal. The goose under the bed was not discovered by the MP, and Christmas has been saved. His job as a driver in the service of the Americans was saved, too.
He used later on his familiarity in carriage driving around for a bank in Mannheim. There he stayed in continuous conflict with the new after war generations of bankers forcing him to carry the chauffeur’s cap which he didn´t like as buffeted veteran of the war. But altogether he didn´t forget to have ever been a horseman and founded with others, especially young farmers, the rural riding club in Schwetzingen. This task as a riding master and instructor was his compassion and corresponded to his real life. A lot of the young farmers became excellent riders and contributed for laying the cornerstone of the today riding club of Schwetzingen at peripheral forest near by Oftersheim, Hockenheim, and Walldorf. In the youth of Gerd Krüger in the fifties and early sixties, the rural living with animals and predominatly horses was forming his mind in both directions politically and scientifically. The first imaging mind has built up a phantasy to come back, basically a pious wish, to the place of his father`s birth Ziethen to have been studied veterinar medicine and agriculture. It stayed with this dream. The second came up with pure history. The 13. august, 1961, one year before having been qualified with the abitur, was the date of the wall building in Berlin and along the entire zone boundary.. This date erased all hope of a reunion with this part of Germany which he felt as his homeland. We know that the German reunification will have been happened in 1990 when he traveled in a completely different way regarding his career in clinic and science.
(15) Gerald Endres in: „Als der Osten noch Heimat war - Was vor der Vertreibung geschah: Pommern, Schlesien und Westpreußen: „Pommern war die Heimat der nach <<Fürst Blücher von Wahlstadt Nr.5 >> genannten Blücherhusaren. Das Regiment (Kavallerieregiment 5) war ein wichtiger Wirtschaftsfaktor in Stolp und gleichzeitig gesellschaftlicher Mittelpunkt der Region.“ S.239 ff. im Teil <Gutsherren- und Pferdeland, Kartoffelacker und Reichsluftschutzkeller> mit den Abschnitten wie <<In der Mitte ein goldenen Stern, damit das Unglück stets bleibt fern>> und andere, aber ab S.237 <<Kerle, sitzt gerade! >>: .... This part has been reported in German and I have to apologize that I chose the other way round as the English native speaker has done in his book review: “Sorry!(sic) for the use of English but my ability to write in German is not as good as my ability to read German.” But his description of this book covers the whole at once:
“Of an useful book for filling out the histories of Pomerania, Silesia, and West Prussia during the period of time mainly from the end of the First World War through the end of the Second World War. There is a wealth of personal accounts from people who lived through this period of what everyday life was like both in peace and in war. Lots of little-known aspects of the interwar period in these provinces are covered, especially the fallout from the Treaty of Versailles. The only downside to the book is that the middle section on West Prussia seems to focus almost exclusively on the Goethe School including details on its founding, faculty, students, and more. I would have liked to seen more about the rest of West Prussia and Danzig during this time period and not just from the perspective of people who were involved with just one school in particular. The maps inside the front and back covers showing first the German then the Polish place names for the same cities are helpful.”
(15) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Endres
(16) The Regiment of Prussian Horse Guards: Cavalry Regiment 5 (“Blücher Husars“) as traditional name: The tradition of the both hussars regiments known as “Leib-Husaren-Regimenter Nr.1 und 2, Totenkopfhusaren” of the old army. Gerd Stolz, Eberhard Grieser: Geschichte des Kavallerie-Regiments 5, Schild Verlag, München, 1975.pages 103 – 109:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gebhard_Leberecht_von_Bl%C3%BCcher
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Bl%C3%BCcher_brothers Read this article and you will brooding about this topic. For, Gerd Krüger´s "Doctor father" Günter Quadbeck jumped also as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallschirmj%C3%A4ger Fallschirmjäger (Airborne) in this battle and survived in contrast to the Blucher Brothers (Battle of Cresta and death).
(17) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthias_Maierbrugger
Das Tausendjährige Mauterndorf Hg. Marktgemeinde Mauterndorf 1976; Samson-Druck St.Michael im Lungau; Oberweißburg 122:
Between the 8th May and the 12- 15.th June in 1945, the last days of this regiment, disarmed by the British, were described by Mauterndorf`s chronist Matthias Maierbrugger. This time was just before they will have a march passing the Tauern Pass to Radstadt. Thus, the regiment had finally ceased to exist. A final appeal occurred at the 9. June 1945 in front of the GIs, who followed the English, observed this spectacle with rapt attention. The curious picture seemed like coming back from a time, say decades or centuries ago.
https://www.tripsite.com/bike/tours/tauern-bike-path/
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauterndorf
Golden Abitur 2012
One Year after the Berlin Wall Gerd Krüger left school with the Abitur diploma at the Johann Peter Hebel Gymnasium of his hometown. It takes a long time to find back in the class companion in the 90s and not coincidently, but after the death of his father in 2006, with an inner coming home to Schwetzingen (18). It was the event, the 50th annual in 2012, called golden abitur. Helmut Mehrer (75) (19) took the initiative to stay in touch with each other and get together to reminisce about the old days and their latest experience. This classmate was honored with the Stauffer Medallion for his engagement in solidarity, Christian charity, and helpfulness by his hometown Brühl nearby Schwetzingen in 2015. Norbert Dieringer (77)(20), Ludwig Maximilians-University of Munic /LMU Faculty of Medicine, Physiology, who has studied veterinary medicine in Munic to that time, when Gerd Krüger stayed there at the officers’ school and medical academy of the Bundeswehr. Norbert had been often absent at the meetings of the old classmates. But it must be stated that he is the only one of all companions who becomes a professor, even holding a chair in physiology within the medical faculty. Nevertheless, Klaus Schmitt (76) was always full of activity as general practioner in Oftersheim near by Schwetzingen and Peter Bayer (76) has retired as surgeon chief at a large general hospital. All the classmates together are eight teachers, four physicians/surgeons, two lawyers, respectively one engineer, translater, air force officer, and last not least Jochen Kissel (75) as astrophysist within his astronomical job, e.g. at the observatory station Heidelberg, who has published a most interesting paper about Biogenesis by Cometary Grains – thermodynamic aspects of self-organization in the Journal Naturwissenschaften in 1987 cited besides other publications by Jochen in the book Comets in the Post-Halley Era edited by R.L. Newburn, J. , M. Neubauer, and J. Rahe in 1989 (21).
(18) https://www.schwetzingen.de/pb/schwetzingen/Startseite.html
(20) Norbert Dieringer Home Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich
(21) Jochen Kissel https://www.panspermia.org/kissel.htm
Recently, it could be found : "Astronomers have made a sweet discovery: simple sugar molecules floating in the gas around a star some 400 light years away, suggesting the posibility of life on the other planets."
SUGAR FOUND IN SPACE: A Sign of LIFE ? i.nationalgeographic.com
On this side written by Ker Than you can see a picture (IMAGE COURTESY L. CALCADA, ESO/NOAJ/NRAO), a picture showing "carbon (gray), oxygen (red), and hydrogen (white) sugar molecules are seen in an artist`s impression". This idea and fancy, at once, seems very similar to that ones which were transformed by Benedict Volk in part of this website ART in PSYCHOTHERAPY related to his impression as a neurophathologist working with wooden made pictures of neurons and astrocytes. Further on this line:
A first, extraterrestrial sugar found in space rocks
The team discovered ribose and other bio-essential sugars including arabinose and xylose in two different meteorites that are rich in carbon - NWA 801 and Murchison.
IANS|
Airborne in Nagold/Calw and dueling fraternity in Heidelberg/Graz
In 1962 Gerd Krüger served as one and only of his classmates voluntarily in the military, the young Bundeswehr of that time. As a schoolboy of 10 years, inspite of the fact this date was later on national holiday, he receipted emotionally the news about the workers` uprising on the June 17 in the GDR much different compared with his class companions. In service of the Bundeswehr he trained as parachutist. He is still proud of being an airborne till today. In addition, he was educated at the paramedical academy (Sanitätsakademie) in Munich. Having departed as first lieutenant he started to study medicine at the University of Heidelberg. Besides all, this was the beginning of his inner battle between the left and the right in political affairs, i.e. socialism against the supposed capitalism of the free western world. In most of his friends there was this question a case of displacement in the time of Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”) in West Germany. Not so few of them took the arguments forward like “rather living red as dead”. This political opinion was not the case within his time at Heidelberg being corporate in the Alte Leipziger Landsmannschaft Afrania, a dueling fraternity, where he met many students having been fled the DDR Regime in 1964. The relationship ended in the 70s parallel to his career as psychiatrist and neurologist being confronted with the big medical problem of alcoholism: You could not force a man to drink, not at all if this man is at risk to become an alcoholic. It`s a pity, but Gerd Krüger does not repent having left the fraternity. An inner revival with the Villa Lobstein, Schloßberg 55, in Heidelberg nearest to the castle happened literally. Gerd Krüger has found the biography of Stefan George by Thomas Karlauf in a book stall looking around in his hometown Frankfurt/M in 2010:
p 479 (4) Whitsun, Samedi, June 7, 1919, the friends have met one after another in the Villa Lobstein Am Schlossberg 55 in Heidelberg, the last house in front of the castle garden where George lived since the beginning of April……A large marmoreal hall skylight and vast terrace with a broad stairway leading to its own separate garden (Translation by the author).
Give up the one and start on other activity
He became a great admirer of the American literature from Hemingway to Steinbeck, not to forget Norman Mailer´s the Naked and the Death of that period. His raving for the American way of life was exclusive. The experience of the real all day life of the GI`s being black or white when he visited the clubs, especially the stories told under the officers ´mess brought him down to the earth about the American way of life. Being not in contrast to his interest of the Western literature he could benefit from his grandmother´s openness for the classical literature of Russian and French origin. She sent him all what he wished to read. How could it be different? Gerd Krüger’s first career aspirations were to study history, politics, German and English/American literature? The journalist Gerd Ruge (1928-2021) he admired as his role model. All these intentions were given up inert the time during his military service having been confronted with the critical situation in the Cold War, e.g. the Cuba Crisis on the brink of the nuclear war in 1962. He decided that he could write as a medical doctor as well as a professional in this field. To help solve his inner problems in politics and mental development to read and write is good enough.
Sports doctor and a fencing son
At this point in between the time at school, military service and university study it must be underlined the interest in sports of every generis but almost running and athletics aiming to hold fitness and endurance. He was a passable mid-distance runner but nobody has had the profit of modern surroundings in training skills to that time. But he never gave up the near distance to sport and exercise. The roots go back to his early childhood to become later a sports doctor since 1974 under the provisions of the German Sports Medical Association. Not to forget that his eldest son Johannes Krüger born 1979 was an excellent foil-fencing sportsman who qualified twice as World Champion with the German Equipment in 1998 at Venezuela and Vice-European Champion at Madeira 2001 with a victory over the late world champion. Sport: Fecht-EM: Johannes Krüger besiegt Florett-Weltmeister (tagesspiegel.de) Fechteuropameisterschaften 2000 – Wikipedia Gerd Krüger as his father coached and sponsored him, having been his adviser and sports doctor. In his own career as psychiatrist sports and exercise belonged to the whole therapeutic armentarium which he published about in books edited of one of his teachers in psychiatry Fritz Reimer (83), nowadays still working as a psychotherapist in Weinsberg. This admirable man edited a lot of books dealing with hospital psychiatry and psychiatric reform. Gerd Krüger can say with good reason that he has learned during his time in the Weinsberg Hospital from 1971 to 1975 how to manage psychiatric and/or psychosomatic hospitals including the importance of sports and exercise in the therapy of psychiatric patients. Also there had been come the full circle to his father´s horsemanship if he introduced, supported by Fritz Reimer, the hippotherapy as valid therapeutic method for severely ill psychiatric and neurologic patients (21 ).G. Krüger: Reittherapie in einem psychiatrischen Krankenhaus. Zschr Allgemeinmedizin 1976;1:30-34.//Sports and exercise in psychiatry and psychosomatics by G Krüger Sport-und Bewegungstherapie s.119-121 in F Reimer, W König und E Willis (Hrsg.), 1995, Krankenhauspsychiatrie-Ein Leitfaden für die praktische Arbeit.
Medicine as a passion but the brain all at once
In 1964, after two years of military service, he started to study medicine in Heidelberg and Graz and promoted to a Medical Doctor (MD) at the University of Heidelberg in 1970. During his postdoctoral time he was trained in neurochemistry and neuropathology supported by his MD supervisor Günther Quadbeck (1915 -2004) ( ) at therefore specified Institutes as parts of the Pathological Institute of the alma mater Heidelbergensis. Since his student times his clinical experience was backed up by taking part at the clinical-pathological conferences, having been lectured by the prominent pathologist Wilhelm Doerr (1914-1996), exactly there. Gerd Krüger feels very grateful having learned neuropathology in this famous institute. The macroscopic and microscopic methods confronted with brain slices he learned in companion with Benedikt Volk (1940-2010), later professor of neuropathology at the Freiburg University and Alexander Hartmann (76), neurologist in Cologne, in scholarship by Günter Ule und Friedrich Wilhelm Kolkmann (78) who was recently honored with Paracelcus-Medaille by the German Federal General Medical Council. Unfortunately, research with experiments about hepatic encephalopathy, in companion with him, were not finished. But, staying at this extraordinary institute, Gerd Krüger has come in contact with the fascinating work of Veit Harold Bauer (76), today a busy practioner in internal medicine in Mannheim-Ilvesheim, with his experiments about LSD and <ergotism>, which was already demonstrated as an “entity” in the art of Hieonymus Bosch and other artist of the middle ages.
To that time there was a parallel cooperation with Joachim Ronge (77), who assisted Heinz Gänshirt (1919-1991), pioneer of research on cerebrovascular diseases and the former chief of Heidelberg University Neurology about cases with brain cysticercosis. Joachim Ronge was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit for his excellent work as chief of the Psychiatric Hospital in Ludwigsburg with establishing a modern example of community psychiatry. It was a pity that the desired effects in the common interests of him and Gerd Krüger meant to say good-bye. We met only once again at congress event in Cologne with his beloved wife in the 80s. But this work was just the start of his own scientific interest. He couldn´t miss to think about the interrelationships between of anatomical and biochemical changes in the brain und and those of behavioral and psychic ones we have to investigate as patients. The first publications about this subject did not have long to wait at the annual Salzburg Conferences on cerebral vascular disease ( ) in 1978 and 1979.
The metabolic lens of brain-structure-function relationship
He qualified as neurologist, psychiatrist and psychotherapist in Heidelberg and Weinsberg till 1975. The lifetime achievement of his doctoral supervisor was his research idea about the blood-brain-barrier (BBB) and cerebral oxidative metabolism, especially glycolysis. To follow in his footsteps was his desire unknowing about the importance of lactate, aerobic glycolysis, and the Warburg effect in brain, nowadays. In the 70s he started supported by Günther Quadbeck with lack of O2 studies on the transport of glucose into the brain of rats. There remains the question which never got lost til today: Can reduced energy support by glucose in the brain be compensated by increasing the glycolysis? ( ) It is known that enhanced glycolysis can protect each cell metabolism from oxidative stress as a possible mechanism of cellular immortalization ( ).
Since the 70s, 80s, and 90s technical processes, brain imaging, neurosciences on the one side and scientific knowledge of psychiatric thinking and clinical acting on the other have not been jointly developed. This lack of developmental lines has been recognized by Gerd Krüger, not too late, in the clinical praxis and scientific thinking being full of activity with consultation-liaison psychiatry, psychosomatics, and psychooncology at the large General Hospital Northwest in Frankfurt. He remembered his results of the 70s and 80s which were summarized in different publications. But most of all, an overstuffed case study was published in the Lancet 1976 ( ). Suggesting in these cases the importance of the Pyruvate Dehydrogenase Complex (PDHC) and cerebral lactate as a metabolic link and/or biomarkers to brain Injury and target of toxic, ischemic, degenerative or by oxidative stress genesis we have predated the later hype about brain glycolysis and lactate.
Queen Square London 1976
When Gerd Krüger started his psychiatric training there psychoanalysis and social psychiatry were being the top inborn lines in which the truth of scientific thinking lied. It was a hard work to be both a clinician in practice during the time of German Psychiatry Reform and a neuroscientist. As such he stayed supported of a vascular diseases research grant, advertized in the popular medical journal Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift (DMW) to that time, at the Institute of Neurology, Queen Square, in London in 1976. There he learned and compared the global method to measure cerebral blood flow and metabolism with the regional one of cerebral blood flow (rCBF) practiced by the London group in 1976 according the work of the great N. A. LASSEND. H. INGVAR, COPENHAGEN, DENMARK; LUND, SWEDEN from the Department of Clinical Physiology of Bispebjerg Hospital, Copenhagen, Denmark, and the Department of Neurology, University Hospital, Lund, Sweden: The regional blood flow method lacked the measuring of metabolic data as there are glucose, lactate and oxygen in the brain which was greatly missed by the research group in London. After this important know-how in London he was happy having been learned global methods to measure cerebral blood flow (CBF) and metabolism (CMR) by Siegfried Hoyer (1933-2014) ( ). He cooperated with him between 1971 and 1981. But in his scientific thinking Gerd Krüger was essentially influenced by the Canadian psychiatrist of Polish origin ZJ Lipowski (1924-1997) whose books and scientific work were simply consummately well described having integrated delirium, organic brain syndromes, psychosomatics, and consultation-liaison psychiatry.
Whither Psychiatry? Z.J. Lipowski on the Importance of a Mind-Body Approach - v13p001y1990.pdf // http://www.garfield.library.upenn.edu/essays/v13p001y1990.pdf
Also, he met at Queen Square in London the American neurologist Norman Geschwind (1926-1984) who spent his sabbatical year - lecturing about Cerebral Laterality - at the same time he stayed there. From Queen Square it was only a few steps to the reading room of the British Museum´s library where Colin Wilson (1931-2013) has started his career as a writer with <The Outsider>. The work of Colin Wilson fascinated him, especially the parts dealing with the problem of human consciousness. Just then he read the first time the most famous novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) being rich and colorful about the search for self-knowledge which lingered in his mind and spirit for his following lifetime (1951 English copyright).
“Aerobic glycolysis": a major cycle closing or opening ?
Back to neuroscience, it is obvious today that separate ways of glycolysis and lactate ended in a final common pathway of “aerobic glycolysis“. Glycolysis is termed the Embden– Meyerhof –Parnas (EMP) pathway. Both famous scientists Otto Meyerhof (1884-1951) and Otto Warburg (1883-1970) were Nobel Prize winners, the first named in 1922 with Archibald Hill and the second in 1931. Recent findings suggest that the regulation of glycolysis depends on cellular context ( ). But aerobic glycolysis is metabolized in the presence of oxygen that exceeds that needed for oxidative phosphorylation. The breakthrough for recognizing the importance of lactate/aerobic glycolysis, and the Warburg effect in brain was illustrated by Marcus Raichle in Philosophical Transactions B in 2015 (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_E._Raichle ).
Returning to his homeland after this sabbatical-like stay in London he was a medical assistant at the Psychiatric Hospital of the University Wurzburg in 1976-1981 to complete his combined clinical and neurochemical studies to correlate psychopathology with brain energy metabolism ( ). The results were summarized in his <Habilitationschrift> (Dr.med.habil.) to be recognized by the medical faculty as academic teacher in psychiatry 1981. According PhD, the title of his written work about this worthwhile five years lasting study was <Brain Metabolism and Blood Flow in 155 Patients with Organic Brain Syndromes >, he qualified for the “venia legendi” in psychiatry at the Universities of Wurzburg and Heidelberg where he worked at the Central Institute of Mental Health in Mannheim introduced by his inaugural lecture entitled "Organic Brain Syndromes - Classification and Pathogenesis" at first july 1983.
Then, he changed to research about schizophrenia to the group of the ZI (Central Institute of Mental Health) in Mannheim as part of the University of Heidelberg), having investigated social impairments in first onset schizophrenic patients in cooperation with the WHO in 1982-1985 ( ). The research about this disorder he never forgot. The question, whether schizophrenia can be localized in the brain, has not been answered till today ( ). Subsequently he became a Medical Director of the Rhine-Mosel Mental Hospital in Andernach and continued against harden political pressure his research about the quality of therapy and rehabilitation in schizophrenic patients till 1996. Art therapy has been introduced. Sports and exercise were central ingredients in the therapy armentarium to reform a custodial Psychiatry. Dehospitalisation of long-term patients had been successfully done (have a look on the part
