Franz Loogen

Franz Loogen (13 April 1919 – 3 September 2010) was a German cardiologist.

He is a pioneer of cardiac catheterization and is considered the founding father of cardiology as an independent specialty of internal medicine in Germany.

He held the first cardiology chair outside paediatrics in Germany and founded the so-called "Düsseldorf School of Cardiology", from which many full professors, chief physicians and practising cardiologists have emerged.

After graduating from the Kaiser-Karls-Gymnasium in Aachen in 1937, Loogen studied human medicine in Cologne, where he took his medical examination in 1939.

For the 1st clinical semester he transferred to the Humboldt University of Berlin, as the University of Cologne had been closed at the beginning of the war.

He was able to complete the second clinical semester in Cologne again.

Loogen was then drafted into military service with the Gebirgsjäger in Füssen.

After frontline medical service in France and Russia (1940–42), he joined a student company.

A leave of absence to finish his medical studies in Munich saved his life, as his unit was destroyed near Leningrad shortly after his return from Russia.

At the University of Munich, Loogen continued his studies from the summer semester of 1942 and passed the state examination in medicine on 13 July 1944, as well as receiving his doctorate with the thesis "Über den sog. ärztlichen Kunstfehler" (On the so-called medical malpractice) from the surgeon Karl Vossschulte (1907-2001).

He then had to return to military service and spent 3 months as a hospital doctor in Rosenheim.

In September 1944, while on home leave, Loogen was taken first as an American and then as a British prisoner of war, from which he was not released until January 1948.

In British captivity he played in an English soccer team and worked as a camp doctor in the prisoner-of-war camp in Horbling.

During this time, he met an English doctor of German origin who (then illegally) provided him with penicilline as early as 1946, with which Loogen was able to successfully treat fellow prisoners suffering from endocarditis.

After his release from captivity, Loogen initially worked from 1948 as an unpaid volunteer assistant doctor with Erich Boden at the 1st Medical Clinic of the Düsseldorf Medical Academy, the forerunner of the University of Düsseldorf, which was founded in 1965.

There he met Otto Bayer, with whom he performed the first cardiac catheter examinations in 1948/49, and became a member of the cardiology working group headed by Bayer at the 1st Medical Clinic.

In the course of 1949 he became ward physician and scientific assistant.

His first scientific field of work was endocarditis.

1952: Loogen sets up a cardiology outpatient clinic in the Medical Clinic.

The number of patients increases steadily.

He also looked after the Germany national football team at the 1954 World Cup as team doctor.

Franz Loogen was born in Baesweiler near Aachen as the son of the administrative official Melchior Loogen and his wife Maria.

1954: Publication of the first German monograph on cardiac catheterization, dedicated to the later Nobel Prize winner Werner Forßmann, which became the "bible" of every interventional cardiologist.

1955: Franz Grosse-Brockhoff, director of the 1st Medical Clinic, officially appoints Loogen to head the cardiology working group.

1957: Habilitation under Grosse-Brockhoff with the thesis "Pulmonary hypertension in congenital heart defects with high current volume (ductus arteriosus apertus, ventricular septal defect, atrial septal defect)".

1959: Senior physician at the 1st Medical Clinic.

1960: Joins the then "German Society for Cardiovascular Research" (DGK), today: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Kardiologie (German Society for Cardiology - Cardiovascular Research).

1963: Appointment as adjunct professor.

1965: Appointed associate professor.

Loogen takes over the newly created extraordinary - and in the Federal Republic of Germany first - chair for "Internal Medicine, especially Cardiology" in Düsseldorf.

In the same year, the University of Düsseldorf is founded from the former Düsseldorf Medical Academy.

1966: Head of the Department of Cardiology at the 1st Medical Clinic.

1967: the associate professorship is converted into a full professorship and Loogen is appointed full professor.

1968 to 1985: Chairman of the Collaborative Research Centre "Cardiology" (SFB 30) of the German Research Foundation at the University of Düsseldorf.

1969 to 1993: Editor of the Journal of Cardiovascular Research.

1969 to 1972: Editor - together with Konrad Spang, Stuttgart - of the Archiv für Kreislaufforschung.

1969: The former tuberculosis ward is converted into the new Department of Cardiology of the 1st Medical Clinic of the University of Düsseldorf.

1971: Call (primo et unico loco) to the Chair of Cardiology at the University of Heidelberg.

Loogen had been married to Hedwig, née Tillis († 2009) since 1943.

The marriage produced one daughter.