In Memoriam Prof. Dr. med. Waldemar Hecker

On May 27th, 2008 Prof. Dr. Waldemar Christian Hecker died at the age of 86 years in Munich.

Waldemar Hecker ([Fig. 1]) was born on February 15th, 1922 in Potsdam; he was the oldest of 4 sons of the physician Dr. Paul-Gerhard Hecker, later chief surgeon at Eberswalde. In 1939 after graduation from school at the age of 17 years he was drafted into the army and served as a pilot in a scouting unit during World War II. Shortly before the end of the war he survived a crash but was injured, when his plane was shot down, whereas his one-year younger brother, who was also an aviator, was killed on the Eastern front in 1943.

Fig. 1 Prof. Dr. med. Waldemar Hecker.

From 1945 to 1950 he studied medicine in Hamburg, and in memory of his father he chose surgical training with A. Lezius and G. Konjetzny in Hamburg-Eppendorf. Under the influence of H. Knuth at the surgical department of the Altonaer Kinderkrankenhaus (Paediatric Hospital in Altona), he developed an interest in paediatric surgery, in which he started his specialisation in 1957 under Fritz Linder at the surgical clinic of the FU in Berlin, and in 1962 he moved with him to Heidelberg. There he completed his specialisation in paediatric surgery, developing and changing the paediatric ward into a paediatric surgical department. In 1966 he was placed in charge of this department, and in 1967 he was nominated as Professor.

Hecker had a comprehensive vocational surgical training. However, as he did not have a direct paediatric surgical teacher – like everyone of his generation – he procured his actual knowledge and abilities mainly with the help of his huge collection of special reprints, mainly from British and American publications, which he studied carefully. His main interest and accentuations centred on neonatal surgery, the surgical treatment of connate malformations, gastrointestinal and thoracic surgery, and at the beginning also traumatology during childhood.

During his engaging lectures and seminars he tried to promote the interest of his medical students in the specialty of paediatric surgery. At the same time he involved himself more and more in structural and medico-political meetings of the faculty and the university. Already in 1957 he had taken part in the “Meeting of West German Paediatric Surgeons” at the Dr. von Haunersche Kinderspital (Munich), which in 1963 officially became the German Society of Paediatric Surgery, therefore, he is rightly counted as one of its founders.

Before the end of the war, Waldemar Hecker married his wife, Wilma Rönnan, in January 1945, they had 2 sons and 2 daughters.

In 1969 Waldemar Hecker was awarded his first professorship for paediatric surgery in Germany at the University of Munich as successor to Anton Oberniedermayr. He developed the surgical department of the Dr. von Haunerschen Kinderspital, which became the trend setter clinic for German paediatric surgery. He wanted to contain this faculty in its diversity against organic specialisations in respect of “the common causes of the growing organism”. Even so, he also saw the necessity to take into account the subspecialisations during infancy. He promoted this idea by the establishment of different departments in his clinic for: paediatric urology, reconstructive plastic surgery in childhood, paediatric traumatology, an independent paediatric anaesthesiology and a paediatric intensive care unit, with an interest in spina bifida and hydrocephalus, as well as paediatric surgical experimental research. He encouraged the outpatient day-care surgery and introduced general free visiting hours as well as rooming-in for parents, which at that time required for economic reasons a considerable input of effort and persistence towards the administration. Hecker was a full hearted paediatrician as well as surgeon: he performed paediatrics with surgical means and specialised surgery in infancy. As he always considered paediatric surgery to have one leg in paediatrics and one in surgery, he considered its capacity to survive only as an independent faculty with equal rights. Therefore his main engagement was centred on achieving an independent qualification as a paediatric surgeon. However, this goal could not be achieved through the faculties or the scientific societies, but only through medico-political negotiations with representatives of the medical chambers and medical conventions, therefore from 1960 he started a 22-years lasting “journey through the institutions of the medical chambers”, until he finally succeeded and triumphed at the final ballot of the medical convention in Cologne in 1992. Although he also could understand the hesitations and objections against such a specification, he did not share them, and he never allowed himself to be distracted from his goal.

His untiring energy is reflected in his scientific work with several hundred publications of his own and more than one thousand from his clinic, by his own books and many contributions to other books, more than 150 promotions, 13 habilitations, 8 nominations as professor and 10 ordinations of his colleagues as well as nominations to positions as chief surgeon.

From 1973 to 1976 Hecker was President of the German Society of Paediatric Surgery. Together with Wolfgang Maier he founded the professional association of paediatric surgeons. He received the Mainhard-von-Pfaundler Medal from the association, and the Fritz-Rehbein Medal from the German Society of Paediatric Surgeons, whose honorary member he was since 2002, besides 6 other honorary memberships from German and foreign scientific societies. In 2004 he was nominated as its honorary president by the German Society of Paediatric Surgery.

Waldemar Hecker was a man of many facets including also many corners and edges. It was possible to collide with them, which happened to many, but not necessarily. His most prominent attribution was probably not the diplomacy and conciliation, but his perseverance to reach his goals with clever strategy, tactics and cunning, patience and endurance. On one hand his thinking and actions were extremely concentrated on matters and facts, but in reality he was also a very emotional man, who showed sympathy and affection. Besides his family he had mainly only one big love and passion for his medical profession, his young patients, his clinic with his colleagues and the paediatric surgery as subject and science.

His patients will gratefully remember him as a great doctor, his students as an exemplary and engaged teacher, the members of the German Society of Paediatric Surgery as an important personality and his friends as a great man.

Prof. Dr. Ingolf Joppich, Munich