Dr. Manuel Schmidtlein and Dr. Uta Grosser love their job. Even if the two country doctors never really finish work.
Bad Hersfeld – “I couldn’t really do anything but become a doctor,” says Dr. Manuel Schmidtlein and laughs. He made an honest effort to do so. After graduating from high school at Obersberg in Bad Hersfeld, he first considered studying music and then began with archeology and ancient history. But that was quickly too dry for him. When he called home after two semesters and asked if he could study medicine after all, his father was enthusiastic. “However,” Schmidtlein emphasizes, “my parents never put any pressure on me. I was free to decide. “
It was the same with Dr. Uta Grosser, who works in a group practice together with doctors Claus and Manuel Schmidtlein and Jens Stelz. Although she stayed in the family tradition with studying medicine, she preferred to be a country doctor rather than a dentist like her father. Her great role model was the Friedlos doctor Dr. Koch, with whose family the Grossers were close friends. She was impressed by his humanity and care and his willingness to be there for his patients at all times, day and night. Uta Grosser, who grew up in the post-war era, considered the fact that his patients provided him with homemade sausage for Christmas as a further plus point.
Both doctors come from families with centuries of medical tradition. On the way to the university in Erlangen he often walked through the cemetery and discovered the grave of a professor von Schmidtlein from the 18th century there. That was actually one of his ancestors, he learned from his father. One of the Schmidtleins even made a real career as a doctor. Adolf von Schmidtlein was the personal physician of Emperor Maximilian I in Mexico. His ancestor, a great-uncle of his grandfather, worked in university medicine in Munich until he was appointed to the Habsburg court and went to Mexico with the Archduke. The doctor looked after the hapless emperor during his imprisonment until his execution. After that he stayed in Mexico.
Since he had no children, he asked his nephew Max, Manuel Schmidtlein’s great-grandfather, to come to Mexico and take over his clinic. Manuel Schmidtlein’s grandfather Ernst was born there. His mother died when he was born, so he grew up with a Mexican wet nurse and spoke only Spanish until he was ten. He was sent to Germany for training, later studied medicine, was assistant to the famous surgeon Ferdinand Sauerbruch, and came to Hersfeld in 1935 as head of the district hospital. After the war he founded the Elisabeth Hospital, where he worked until his 70s. Uta Grosser can also look back on a long family tradition in medicine, which also goes back to the 18th century. Her father, however, was the first to go to college. “My ancestors were bathers,” says Uta Grosser. Bader was the job title for the operator of a bathing room in the Middle Ages. Bader were little people’s doctors. They took care of personal hygiene, were hairdressers, took care of painful teeth – mostly with pliers – broken bones or wounds.
Grosser’s ancestors were mainly active in dentistry. It was said of her great-grandmother that she could pull teeth better than her husband, the doctor said. The father’s work has always been a natural part of family life. She remembers with a certain shudder that a patient rang their doorbell, put his teeth in her hand, and asked her to bring them to her father. In the living room, her father had set up a makeshift treatment chair with a pedal drill so that he could also take care of emergencies at the weekend. At Schmidtleins too, emergencies were treated in the living room on weekends and after work. Both doctors are convinced that being a family doctor is a life’s work. And they appreciate the personal contact and closeness to their patients. That that means practically always on duty and also being shown the varicose veins or asked medical questions at a private party, they accept that calmly and with humor. (Christine Zacharias)
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