Klaus Riegel (1926–2018)

Klaus Riegel (1926–2018)

Klaus Riegel was an extraordinary personality, artist, musician, he played the cello, and physician. He was born on May 14, 1926, in Schondorf, Swabia and had been married to his wife Elsbeh since 1954, together they had a son Stephan and a daughter Angela. Klaus attended school in Schondorf and passed his baccalaureate in 1946. He studied medicine at the University of Tübingen and obtained his degree in 1952. He trained at the Departments of Pediatrics of the Universities of Freiburg and Tübingen, and at the Department of Physiology in Tübingen. His habilitation as an academic teacher in 1963 was based on research on oxygen transport and the function of fetal hemoglobin. He was promoted to Professor of Pediatrics in 1969. For 2 years (1964, 1965) he worked at the Harvard Medical School as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) Research Associate with Clement A. Smith and Nicholas M. Nelson on the physiology of the newborn infant. In 1967, he followed his chairman, Prof. Klaus Betke, to the Department of Pediatrics at the University of Munich, where he became the Director of the Division of Neonatology. He was President (1984) of the European Society of Paediatric Research (ESPR), President of the German Society of Perinatal Medicine (1981–1983), an honorary member of the Society for Perinatal Medicine of the former GDR, and of the Bavarian Society of Obstetrics and Gynecology, a member of the German Society of Pediatrics, the Society of Neonatology and Pediatric Intensive Care, the German Society of Gynecology and Obstetrics and the German Society of Natural Sciences Leopoldina. He was a reviewer for the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (1980–1984), he received the Arvo Ylppö-Medal, the International Maternité-Prize and was an Honorary Doctor of the Free University of Berlin. He was granted the Federal Cross of Merit (1993) for the advancement of quality in perinatal medicine.

His curriculum vitae shows three distinct phases, Klaus Riegel, the scientist, Klaus Riegel, the pediatrician and Klaus Riegel, the father of quality control in perinatal medicine. These three phases and his personality are highlighted below in the form of testimonials by his friends. Riegel himself commented on his curriculum vitae: “There is nothing worth mentioning, except the fact that I was always lucky. Luck I had with my teachers … But really my luck began when I met Elsbeth”

His main interest was in oxygen transport from mother to fetus. Together with Enno Kleihauer, Klaus Betke and Heinz Bartels he did elementary research in this area. Regarding his time at Harvard Medical School I quote his Harvard-friend Nick Nelson: “Klaus was exceptional in all ways. In the famous ‘Clement Smith Family Tree of Neonatal Research’, he is at the upper right …He was above all, a gentleman …. A gently extroverted and extremely warm personality – and a gourmet who introduced me to “Bärlauch”. From these days in Boston he kept his beloved Harvard Chair, which he used until his very last days, although without his tobacco pipe.

Klaus Riegel was a gifted pediatrician and neonatologist and a marvellous teacher. His ethical principle was: no excessive intensive care if it does not help the infant. He detested the wide spread “heroic intensive care medicine”. He clearly differentiated between “those who turned buttons at machines, and those who knew why”. Regarding his personality as a pediatrician I quote his mentor Professor Klaus Betke: “musician, artist, poet of joyful verses, scientific curiosity – put it all together and you have a wonderful pediatrician. You have the whole Riegel: artistic quality, combined with a skilled hand and the gift of sharp observation”. Riegel did not simply accept the fate of a sick infant, but asked: “What are the reasons that a baby dies?” – and thus we come to his third and possibly most important focus, quality control in perinatal medicine.

If in Germany an infant died, the obstetrician incriminated the pediatrician and the pediatrician incriminated the obstetrician. Klaus Riegel in his modest and kind way broke the ice and created a mutual confidence. Together with the epidemiologist Professor H.-K. Selbmann, a unique interdisciplinary cooperation of quality control in perinatal medicine was initiated: the “Münchener Perinatalstudie” (1975), followed by the “Bavarian Perinatal Survey” (1979), the “Arvo Ylppö-Study” (1979–1982) and finally the “Study on Quality of Life of peviously Premature Infants” (1984–1992). The importance of this work was pointed out by Betke: “Several thousand Bavarian newborn infants were thus saved from death”. This quality control was soon adopted in the whole of Germany. His work as the father of these perinatal surveys certainly was Riegel’s greatest achievement for society in Germany. The Federal Cross of Merit, which he received for these achievements, was commented on by Riegel: “This was of course a great honor, but really proud I was when I was elected member of the venerable Leopoldina, the German Society of Natural Sciences”

I would like to end this recognition of Klaus Riegel with a final thought from Professor Betke: “Klaus Riegel was an universal genius, a brilliant artist, an excellent cello player, an exact scientist and an empathic, caring, admirable physician; all this embedded in a broad general education. All the while he had a wonderful sense of humor. We got along very well. … Our common work turned into a cordial friendship”. This is how we want to remember Klaus, we are grateful for his extraordinary achievements and his warm, modest and generous personality.