Introduction

Fatal sickness

A note from Ludwig Traube to Adolph Goldschmidt, 06.03.1907

In January 1905, Ludwig Traube’s health began to decline rapidly; in July he was diagnosed with untreatable leukaemia. This finding, written on 29. July 1905 by Prof. Friedrich Moritz, who was then the director of the policlinic of the Munich medical clinic I, is archived together with old work contracts for MGH staff members. Traube underwent radiation treatment, but to no avail: his condition deteriorated further. As Franz Boll, a friend and colleague records, Traube himself recorded his own daily blood values with scientific meticulousness. Some of these notes are preserved among Traube's papers.

On the small card (9 x 11 cm) on display written to his friend Adolph Goldschmidt three months before his death, Ludwig Traube expresses his longing to undertake a last trip to Italy. That wish remained, however, unfulfilled.

In the biographical introduction to his edition of Ludwig Traube’s lectures and studies (published 1909-1920), Franz Boll relates how Traube worked feverishly to finish his last major publication, the „Nomina sacra“, in the final weeks of his life: As he records, Traube’s younger friends helped to prepare this work for publishing and brought it to print so that the author in his deathbed had the satisfaction of seeing the last drafts go out. Even as a dying man, he had worked to the end, publishing a number of reports for the Academy in his last winter. (Boll, S. XXXII).

Ludwig Traube died in Munich on 19 July 1907 at the age of 46. His remains were brought to Berlin on 27 July and laid to rest beside those of his parents in the old Jewish graveyard in Schönhauser Allee.

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