Samuel Mitja Rapoport
Encyclopedia
Samuel Mitja Rapoport was a prominent physician, biochemist, European Jewish émigré, and Communist who fled to East Germany from McCarthyite persecution
McCarthyism
McCarthyism is the practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence. The term has its origins in the period in the United States known as the Second Red Scare, lasting roughly from the late 1940s to the late 1950s and characterized by...

 in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Biography

Throughout his life Samuel Mitja Rapoport saw danger and exile. Rapoport was born in Wolhynia near the Russian-Austrian border in what is now the Ukraine
Ukraine
Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It has an area of 603,628 km², making it the second largest contiguous country on the European continent, after Russia...

 and his family resided there from 1912 to 1916. They later moved to Odessa
Odessa
Odessa or Odesa is the administrative center of the Odessa Oblast located in southern Ukraine. The city is a major seaport located on the northwest shore of the Black Sea and the fourth largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,029,000 .The predecessor of Odessa, a small Tatar settlement,...

, Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

 on the Black Sea
Black Sea
The Black Sea is bounded by Europe, Anatolia and the Caucasus and is ultimately connected to the Atlantic Ocean via the Mediterranean and the Aegean seas and various straits. The Bosphorus strait connects it to the Sea of Marmara, and the strait of the Dardanelles connects that sea to the Aegean...

 coast. At the conclusion of the World War I he saw the Russian Revolution and witnessed the barbaric warfare of the Russian Civil War
Russian Civil War
The Russian Civil War was a multi-party war that occurred within the former Russian Empire after the Russian provisional government collapsed to the Soviets, under the domination of the Bolshevik party. Soviet forces first assumed power in Petrograd The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) was a...

.

His family left Odessa for Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...

 in 1920. Already sympathetic to left-wing views, he joined the Communist Party out of protest against the rise of fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...

. At the age of 13 years he found in his father's archives works written by Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels was a German industrialist, social scientist, author, political theorist, philosopher, and father of Marxist theory, alongside Karl Marx. In 1845 he published The Condition of the Working Class in England, based on personal observations and research...

. By reading them he was fascinated by socialist ideas. His own painful experiences of war, injustice, banishment, political and racial persecution brought him to a socialist world-view up to his end of life. He was active in communist organizations from his youth and became a member of the Socialist pupils in Vienna, then he participated in the illegal Austrian communist movement. But he didn't follow ideological extremes. He was directed by a deep humanity, he loved reasoning and discussing, he had a great inquiring mind and he had the ability to connect theoretical knowledge, philosophical views and practical realization.

In Vienna he studied medicine and chemistry receiving his doctorate. In 1933 he attended the Institute for Medical Chemistry and worked on the analysis of amino acids in the blood serum.

When the annexation of Austria by Nazi-Germany was imminent, he received a scholarship for scientific studies and clinical work at the Children’s Hospital Research Foundation in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1938. At the time this hospital was a leader in research and medical treatment. During his tenure at this hospital he served as a pediatrician and earned a second doctorate.

During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 his research focused on blood conservation. He worked to prolong the shelf life of blood altering conservation media in order to preserve the energy metabolism of erythrocytes. He succeeded in extending the maximum storage time for blood from one to three weeks. His efforts saved the lives of thousands of US soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen. For these efforts he was honored by President Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman was the 33rd President of the United States . As President Franklin D. Roosevelt's third vice president and the 34th Vice President of the United States , he succeeded to the presidency on April 12, 1945, when President Roosevelt died less than three months after beginning his...

 with a Certificate of Merit.

In 1944 while in Cincinnati he met the German emigrant and physician Ingeborg Syllm, they married in 1946. Ingeborg Syllm, born in 1912 in Cameroon
Cameroon
Cameroon, officially the Republic of Cameroon , is a country in west Central Africa. It is bordered by Nigeria to the west; Chad to the northeast; the Central African Republic to the east; and Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, and the Republic of the Congo to the south. Cameroon's coastline lies on the...

 was the daughter of a Jewish pianist, studied medicine in Hamburg
Hamburg
-History:The first historic name for the city was, according to Claudius Ptolemy's reports, Treva.But the city takes its modern name, Hamburg, from the first permanent building on the site, a castle whose construction was ordered by the Emperor Charlemagne in AD 808...

, and went to the US in 1938.

While in the US he supported the trade union and communist movement. Together with his wife he delivered the paper "The Worker" on the weekends and got involved with the civil rights movement. His political views polarized profession colleagues.

Despite his gratitude towards the United States, which had offered him citizenship and work, Rapoport continued to be politically active as a member of the Communist Party. During a congress of pediatricians in Switzerland in 1950 he received information that he was a target of the anticommunist McCarthy
McCarthy
McCarthy may refer to:* McCarthy * McCarthy, Alaska* McCarthy , an indie pop band* MacCarthy , a Bordeaux wine* McCarthy Tétrault, a Canadian law firm...

-commission. As a result of this warning he chose not to return to the US and his wife brought their children to Zurich
Zürich
Zurich is the largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zurich. It is located in central Switzerland at the northwestern tip of Lake Zurich...

. The Rapoports moved to Vienna, where for a short time he again worked at the Institute for Medical Chemistry. But the university refused his appointment for professorship due to the intervention of the US government. France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, Great Britain
Great Britain
Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 all refused his services. Rapoport rejected a job offer by the Weizmann Institute in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 on the grounds that he wasn’t a Zionist
Zionism
Zionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...

.

In 1951 Humboldt University in East Berlin
East Berlin
East Berlin was the name given to the eastern part of Berlin between 1949 and 1990. It consisted of the Soviet sector of Berlin that was established in 1945. The American, British and French sectors became West Berlin, a part strongly associated with West Germany but a free city...

 offered Rapoport the professorship and directorship of the Institute for Physiological Chemistry at the Charité
Charité
The Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the medical school for both the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. After the merger with their fourth campus in 2003, the Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe....

 Hospital. He accepted political asylum as well as the chance to continue his work.

While in Berlin he wrote the text, Medical Biochemistry dictated in only three months. This book became a bestseller in both the medical communities in East and West Germany. It was printed in 9 editions with 60,000 copies, and was translated in several languages.

Samuel Rapoport was the most important representative of East German biochemistry. Several of students of Rapoport were appointed to professorships. After the unification of Germany he became president of the newly founded Leibniz-Societät, which consisted of former members of the disbanded Academy of Sciences of the GDR.

When in 1982 the committee "Physicians of GDR for prevention of nuclear war" was founded, Rapoport was elected the chairman. Up to his death he continued fighting against nuclear weapons.

Ingeborg Rapoport continued be active in her medical profession and in social action. She worked from 1952 as pediatrician in Berlin. In 1964 she became a professor and had the professorship for neonatology of the Charitè Hospital from 1969 to 1973. She was co-founder of the Society of Perinatology of the GDR and council-member of the European Society of Perinatology.

The children of Samuel and Ingeborg Rapoport are the biochemist Tom
Tom Rapoport
Tom Abraham Rapoport is a German-American cell biologist who studies protein transport in cells.He has been a professor at the Harvard Medical School since 1995, and an HHMI investigator since 1997...

, who up to 1995 worked at the Berlin Max-Delbrück-Centrum, and now is at University of Harvard, the mathematician Michael
Michael Rapoport
Michael Rapoport is a German mathematician. He currently holds a chair for arithmetic algebraic geometry at the University of Bonn...

 who works at the University of Bonn
University of Bonn
The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...

. One daughter is pediatrician in Berlin, another a nurse.

Scientific work

Samuel Rapoport worked especially on the water-electrolyte balance and the metabolism of the erythrocytes. He described the role of the 2,3-diphosphoglycerate for the anaerobic production of energy in the erythrocytes (Rapoport-Luebering-cycle). Jane Luebering was a technical assistant of Rapoport. Rapoport detected the eminent importance of the ATP
Adenosine triphosphate
Adenosine-5'-triphosphate is a multifunctional nucleoside triphosphate used in cells as a coenzyme. It is often called the "molecular unit of currency" of intracellular energy transfer. ATP transports chemical energy within cells for metabolism...

 concentration for the survivability of the erythrocytes.

In World War II there was a great need of transfusions. Many scientists worked on an improvement of the defensibility of the blood bottles (C.R. Drew, P. Rous, J.R. Turner, J.F. Loutit, P.L. Mollison, I.M. Young u.a.). Among them Rapoport was very successful. Due to his works the ACD-medium was established, the pH-environment, the storage temperature and the processing were improved. His research was supported by Paul Hoxworth, who founded in 1938 one of the first USA blood banks in Cincinnati. Thus the survivability of the bottled blood could be extended from 1 to 3 weeks.

In 1948, he together with two other American physicians reported his results about the Ekiri disease in Japan. They showed the helpfulness of infusions with calcium which ameliorated the symptoms like convulsions.

In 1952 Rapoport founded at the Berlin Charité
Charité
The Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin is the medical school for both the Humboldt University and the Free University of Berlin. After the merger with their fourth campus in 2003, the Charité is one of the largest university hospitals in Europe....

 a Biochemical Institute. His scientific interest was to further the clinical-biochemical research, especially the investigation of reticulocytes and of the enzyme lipoxygenase. He was an early a representative of the thesis that the degradation of proteins is energy-dependent.

The pharmaceutical production of insulin in the GDR was encouraged by him.

Samuel Rapoport published or was a participant in over 600 scientific works. In 1969 he became a member of the Academy of Science of the German Democratic Republic. He received several honorary doctorates. The documentary Die Rapoports – Unsere drei Leben (The Rapoports – our three lives, ARTE/ZDF 2003), by Sissi Hüetlin and Britta Wauer (2005 awarded the Adolf-Grimme-prize) is a testament to the lives of the scientists Samuel and Ingeborg Rapoport.

Sources and literature

  • Obituary, BMJ VOLUME 329 7 AUGUST 2004 bmj.com

  • Rapoport S., Wing M.: Dimensional, osmotic, and chemical changes of erythrocytes in stored blood. Blood preserved in sodium citrate, neutral, and acid citrate-glucose (ACD) mixtures. J Clin Invest. 1947 Jul;26(4):591–615.

  • Dodd, K., Buddingh, G.J., Rapoport, S.: The etiology of Ekiri, a highly fatal disease of Japanese children. Pediatrics Vol. 3 No. 1 January 1949, pp. 9–19

  • Rapoport, S. and J. Luebering: An Optical Study Of Diphosphoglycerate Mutase (From the Children's Hospital Research Foundation, Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Institute of Medical Chemistry of the University of Vienna, Austria) J. Biol. Chem. 1952; 196:583

  • Rapoport, S. M., Rohland L. (Hrsg). Medizin und globale Menschheitsprobleme. Vorträge. Veröff. Med. Ges. 1997; 3: 1-55 (Heft 9)

  • Marxismus, Exil und jüdische Identität. Der Biochemiker Samuel Mitja Rapoport. Jüdisches Echo 49 (October 2000). 337-345.

  • Frömmel, C.: Vortrag zum 90. Geburtstag von Prof. Dr. Samuel Rapoport bei einem Symposium der Charité, Berlin, 2.12.2002

  • Rapoport, I.: Meine ersten drei Leben – die Erinnerungen von Ingeborg Rapoport, 2002 NORA-Verlag

  • Rapoport, S.M.: Die Erfahrungen des Exils. TRANS Internet-Zeitschrift für Kulturwissenschaften 15. Nr. November 2003

  • Schönfeld, Th.: Samuel Mitja Rapoport (1912–2004) – In memoriam Mitteilungen der Alfred Klahr Gesellschaft, Nr. 3/2004

  • Goldenberg, H. : Nachruf Univ.-Prof. Dr. Samuel Mitja Rapoport (1912–2004) Newsletter vom 20.07.2004 Gesammelt vom Informationsmanagement der medizinischen Universität Wien

  • Jacobasch, Gisela / Rohland, Lothar (Hrsg.) Samuel Mitja Rapoport (1912–2004) [= Medizin und Gesellschaft, Bd. 52], Berlin 2005, 103 S., ISBN 3-89626-536-9

External links

  • http://www.klahrgesellschaft.at/Mitteilungen/Rapoport_3_04.html
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