Carl Heinrich Stratz

Carl Heinrich Stratz
Born	(1858-06-14)14 June 1858 Odessa
Died	the Hague
Fields	Gynecology
Known for	Pioneering research in human growth and development

Carl Heinrich Stratz (14 June 1858 – 21 April 1924) was a German-Russian gynecologist who was one of the first to research human growth and development. His best-known works deal with criteria for assessing and promoting female beauty. In pediatric and adolescent medicine, he made valuable contributions to the morphology of the healthy body.

Biography

Carl Stratz was born at Odesa in the Russian Empire, the son of the wealthy merchant Heinrich Stratz. The family originally came from Wildgutach in the Black Forest. His grandfather Sebastian immigrated to Russia during the reign of Catherine II. His brother Rudolph was a well-known writer. Born as a Russian citizen, the family succeeded in being released from its station as Imperial subjects with the help of Grand Duchess Louise von Baden. In 1876, the Stratz family were admitted to the Grand Duchy of Baden.

In 1877 Stratz began studying medicine at Heidelberg University, where he spent the winter semesters of 1877/78 and 1878/79 and the summer semester of 1879. In the winter semester of 1879/80 he continued his studies in Freiburg and from 1881 to 1882 in Leipzig. On August 2, 1883, he received his doctorate in Heidelberg with the grade cum laude. medical PhD. From 1883 to 1886 he was an assistant doctor under Karl Schroeder in the Clinical Institute for Obstetrics at the Charité in Berlin.

In 1887 he traveled to Equatorial Africa with his brother Rudolph and then in the same year became a medical officer in the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army, where he was employed as a gynecologist on Java and did research at the pathological-anatomical institute in Batavia. In 1890 he traveled the interior of the island. In 1892 he ended his work as a military doctor and published his research results. Study trips to America, China and Japan ended in 1898. In 1902 he became a member of the Berlin Society for Anthropology, Ethnology, and Prehistory. A 1904 note in the Mitteilungen zur Geschichte der Medizin und der Naturwissenschaften (Announcements on the History of Medicine and Science) mentions that Stratz "traveled all over the world with an open eye except South America, South Africa and Australia". In 1908 Stratz returned to Europe and settled in The Hague, where he ran an extensive obstetrics and gynecology practice in the Daendelstraat. Because of more than 10 years of uninterrupted residence abroad, he lost his German citizenship. He later acquired it again.

The circumstances under which Stratz in 1914 was awarded a Prussian professor title by imperial decree are unclear. Stratz medical activities during World War I are not well known. He himself mentioned "wounded Russians" who came to his treatment; In addition, his profession led him "to the most diverse areas of Europe". In his autobiography, his brother Rudolph wrote that he had been at the head of a war hospital in France, Courland and Macedonia for years and again in France. In 1918 he was active as an surgeon at the German army during the German spring offensive. He reports-probably as the first-about the devastating effect of the dumdum bullets used by the British army. In 1919 he lived again in The Hague. In 1923 Stratz fell ill at a "pelvic abscess" and could not leave his hospital from autumn from autumn. He died on April 21 of the following year.

Works

The works of Stratz were extremely successful after the frequent positive book reviews and the large number of requirements. Reviews and excerpts from his books in conventional medicine and life -reformal magazines indicate that Stratz's medical and aesthetic expertise has been recognized by medical and medical life reformers as well as art historians and artists. As early as 1913, 22 editions of his book The Beauty of the Female Body had been exhausted. In 1941 the 45th edition was already sold.

His research on the proportions of the child's and adolescent body had a lasting influence. In this regard, Hans Grimm described him as "co-founder of a medical youth science".

Stratz publications on human beauty, above all the beauty of the female body, are richly illustrated. The photographs, often naked shots of young women, are of different origin. Photographers are only partially mentioned by name. Some recordings are nude photographs from the private collections of Stratz colleagues and friends.

Major publications

• The Women on Java: A Gynecological Study (1897) — This book summarizes Stratz personal experiences during his five years as a gynecologist on Java. Stratz described gynecological diseases and obstetrics in European and local patients.

• The Beauty of the Female Body (1898) — This title, "dedicated to mothers, doctors and artists," was consistently well received by the press and was extremely successful, with 46 editions by 1941. After an overview of the concept of beauty in general, in art and in literature, as well as the canon, the work goes into detail about the influence of factors such as development, age, diseases and dress on beauty. The following part establishes criteria for judging the female body in general, various body parts and movement. The book ends with "Prescriptions for the Preservation and Promotion of Female Beauty." Stratz himself stated about this work:

I have tried to take a new approach to the evaluation of human beauty by placing the physician's point of view next to the artist's and the anatomist's, by making my observations as much as possible on the living body instead of on pictures and corpses, and by considering it in and of itself as the main thing and not only as the object of artistic representation.

Stratz considered beauty to be the consequence of scientific and supernatural laws. For him, beauty presupposed a normal (i.e., healthy) body, but this applied only to a small part of the population. A well-proportioned body could be traced back to the canon obeying only formal rules. The goal was to establish timeless criteria that fulfilled demands for perfect beauty.

The 13th edition (1902) was supplemented with some photos of Italian models, which were made by Guglielmo Plüschow especially for this work. The later editions contain over 300 illustrations.

• Women's Clothing and Its Natural Development (1900) — In this work, Stratz provided an overview of women's clothing in various cultures. It covers nudity, body adornment, cultural influences, general dress in its "primitive," "tropical," and "arctic" variants, and European and non-European women's clothing. The volume concludes with a chapter on the influence of clothing on the body — especially corsets — and suggestions for improving women's clothing of the time.

• The Racial Beauty of the Woman (1901) — Stratz had already announced such a title describing the physique of women of different races in one of the first editions of The Beauty of the Female Body, after the subject could no longer be dealt with in a separate chapter. In the preface to the last 21st edition published in 1940 — the book title was retained — Hans Weinert explained that a few changes to the work were necessary because the understanding of race had changed fundamentally in recent times.

• The Body Forms in the Art and Life of the Japanese (1902) — In this work, Stratz addressed both the Japanese peculiarities of body form and the concept of beauty and the representation of the naked body in Japanese art. The photographs for this volume were partly taken by Stratz himself.

• The Body of the Child and Its Care (1903) — Stratz dedicated this volume "for parents, educators, physicians and artists" expressly to the healthy child. With regard to the structure of the child's body, "just as with the female ... so far no attempt has been made with the child to illuminate its faults and advantages from an objective-scientific point of view". The first, general part deals with the child in art as well as growth and development, while the special part treats the individual age stages in detail and — in the later editions — concludes with advice on nutrition, clothing, personal hygiene and education.

• What are Jews? An Ethnographic-anthropological Study (1903) — In this paper, he wrote that modern anti-Semites generally characterize the Jewish people by a series of physical defects. He did not share this view. Rather, Jews had laid the foundation for Western civilization and shared Caucasian and Aryan origins with the Nordic and Romance races. Centuries of inbreeding would have produced in European Jews — unlike other Europeans or North African Jews — defects and infirmities such as deformity, gout, diabetes and rheumatism. Further, he wrote, one would see many more sick and ugly than feeble-minded Jews. Intelligence would be a result of the Jews' struggle for survival, and Jews could contribute to the future of European culture and society.

• Age and Sex (1926) — Stratz completed the manuscript for this volume in 1924. The first part, "The Ages of Life," describes the changes in body size, proportions, and organs in the course of human life. The second part, "The Sexes," deals with the primary and secondary sexual characteristics of both sexes and the qualitative and quantitative differences in metabolism and other life processes.

Further reading

• Entry in Isidor Fischer's (publisher): Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Ärzte der letzten fünfzig Jahre. Urban & Schwarzenberg, Wien 1962, S. 1525.
• H. Grimm: Carl Heinrich Stratz (1858 bis 1924) als Mitbegründer einer Ärztlichen Jugendkunde. In: Ärztliche Jugendkunde. Band 70, Nr. 3, Juni 1979, ISSN 0001-9518, S. 177–192.
• Michael Hau: The Holistic Gaze in German Medicine, 1890–1930. In: Bulletin of the History of Medicine. Band 74, Nr. 3, 2000, S. 495–524.
• Michael Hau: Körperbildung und sozialer Habitus. Soziale Bedeutungen von Körperlichkeit während des Kaiserreichs und der Weimarer Republik. In: Rüdiger vom Bruch, Brigitte Kaderas (Hrsg.): Wissenschaften und Wissenschaftspolitik. Bestandsaufnahmen zu Formationen, Brüchen und Kontinuitäten im Deutschland des 20. Jahrhunderts. Steiner, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-515-08111-9, S. 109–124.
• Michael Hau: The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany. A social history, 1890–1930. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2003, ISBN 978-0-226-31974-2.

External links

• Works by Carl Heinrich Stratz at German National Library
• Literature list in online-catalogue of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin