Erwin Gohrbandt

He was then assigned to the Pathological Institute of the Charité. Between 1920 and 1928 he worked at the surgical university clinic of the Charité, from 1924 as senior physician and head of the pediatric surgery department. In 1924, he habilitated in surgery and began teaching. On June 6, 1928, he was appointed Associate Professor of Surgery at the Friedrich Wilhelm University in Berlin. In the same year, he moved to the city hospital Am Urban as chief physician of the II. Surgical Department.

In 1931, Gohrbandt, with Ludwig Levy-Lenz, was one of the first surgeons to perform sex reassignment surgery with vaginoplasty on some transsexual patients - a pioneering experimental achievement at the time. Known by name are the patients Dora Richter,[3] a domestic worker at the Institute for Sexology under Magnus Hirschfeld, and the Danish artist Lili Elbe.[4]

During the National Socialist period, Gohrbandt was a research assistant for surgical questions in the Social Office of the Reich Youth Leader.

From August 1939, Gohrbandt was a consultant surgeon to the army and (from 1940) as the inspector of medical services in the Luftwaffe.

With effect from October 1, 1940, he became Head of the Surgical Department at the Municipal Robert Koch Hospital and at the same time became Clinic Director of the Third Appointed Surgical University Clinic. Gohrbandt participated in the conference on medical questions in distress and winter death on October 26 and 27, 1942. From 1944 he was a member of the scientific advisory board of the General Commissioner for the Sanitation and Health Service Karl Brandt.[1] He participated in the development of human experiments conducted on prisoners of the Dachau concentration camp, investigating the problems of mortality due to hypothermia.[5][6]

In the post-war period, he was Ferdinand Sauerbruch's deputy in the office of the city council for health care in all of Berlin. He was commissioned by the Soviet military administration in Germany and the Berlin magistrate to ensure sanitation and to monitor hygiene regulations. He drove the reconstruction of the war-damaged Moabit Hospital and headed its surgical department until December 31, 1958. At the same time, he resumed his lectures at the newly founded Free University of Berlin and published the Central Journal for Surgery in 1946. Effective December 31, 1958, he retired. He ran an outpatient clinic in Berlin-Tiergarten until his death in 1965.