Otto Krayer

Otto Hermann Krayer (October 22, 1899 in Köndringen, Baden – March 18, 1982 in Tucson, Arizona) was a German-American physician, pharmacologist and university professor.

He was the only German scientist who refused on moral grounds to succeed a colleague who had been dismissed from his professorial chair by the National-Socialist government for anti-semitic reasons. Krayer voiced his opinion publicly and aggressively. The medical historian Udo Schagen entitled his historical analysis of Krayer: „Widerständiges Verhalten im Meer von Begeisterung, Opportunismus und Antisemitismus“ or ‘Resistant Behaviour in a Sea of Enthusiasm, Opportunism and Antisemitism’.

Otto Krayer’s parents were the council scribe Hermann Krayer and his wife Frieda (née Wolfsperger), who made a living from the ‘Rebstock’ restaurant in Köndringen, Baden. Otto Krayer’s education in Emmendingen and at the Rotteck-Gynasium in Freiburg was disrupted by the First World War: he was wounded on the Western Front. From 1919 to 1924 Krayer studied medicine in Freiburg, Munich and Berlin. In 1925 he interned for Paul Trendelenburg at the University of Freiburg’s Institute of Pharmacology. In 1926 he graduated as a medical doctor with his thesis: ‘The Pharmacological Characteristics of Pure Apocodeine’ and finally he became a scientific assistant at the University of Freiburg.

In 1927 both Krayer and Trendelenburg transferred to the Pharmacological Institute at the University of Berlin, where Krayer qualified as a university lecturer in 1929. From 1930 to 1932 Krayer was managing director of the Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University of Berlin, during Trendelenburg’s severe illness and continuing after his subsequent death in 1931. In 1933 the Jewish pharmacologist (1887-1952) was removed from his post as a professor at the Düsseldorf Medical Academy (now part of the University of Düsseldorf) and Krayer was appointed as his successor. Krayer initially rejected his post verbally, as the new director of the Berlin Institute of Pharmacology and Toxicology, , recounts in his diary entry from 14 June 1933: ‘<Krayer came> to me in person at around midday to tell me that he had seen Pertmanent Secretary to voice his personal reservations about replacing a man who, in his opinion, had been removed from office for no good reason. Upon this, Achelis dismissed him, telling him that he, Achelis, would look for someone else. Magnificent!’

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