A Visit to Alzheimer’s Home
by: Roger A. Brumback, M.D.

Marktbreit, Germany (see arrow)


On 14 June 1864, Alois Alzheimer was born to the notary Eduard Alzheimer and his second wife Theresia in a house on Ochsenfurter Strasse 15a in Marktbreit, Germany. In 1995, the Eli Lilly Company purchased the house for use as a museum.  In 1998, my wife, Mary, and I had the opportunity to visit his birth place.  We embarked on a local train in the morning at Würzburg, Germany (the home of the University of Würzburg where Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen made his discovery of x-rays). Marktbreit is a small town about a half-hour train ride south of Würzburg.


 

 

Marktbreit Café

View of Alzheimer's house
 from the street

Plaque on side
 of Alzheimer's house

Line drawing of 
Alzheimer's house

We got off the train at a small station house and asked a passer-by for directions to the Marktbreit Café.  The proprietor of the café (Frau Ernst) keeps the key to Alzheimer House. She gave us the key and told us to lock up after we finished our visit. We then walked one block down and two blocks over on brick roads until we came to the Alzheimer House. We photographed the outside of this 19th century brick home and then let ourselves in the back door. The house is two stories with a basement. 

Pen and ink drawing
 of Alzheimer
Dr. Brumback beside 
oil portrait of Alzheimer
 

 

On the landing is a large oil portrait of Alzheimer, while the upstairs has a large room with a conference table and a framed pen and ink drawing of Alzheimer. In the drawing room in the front of the house there is a collection of memorabilia. In December 1888, Alzheimer began his medical career as assistant physician at the Municipal Hospital for Lunatics and Epileptics in Frankfurt-am-Main and later was promoted to 2nd physician, senior physician. 

Original hospital record



A display case contains the original hospital record and a photograph of his 51-year-old patient Mrs. Auguste D. who he treated at the Frankfurt hospital. He described her case at the 37th Meeting of Southwest German Alienists (directors of mental asylums) held in Tübingen, Germany in November 1906. His lecture was entitled: "Über eine eigenartige Erkrankung der Hirnrinde" ("On a Peculiar Disorder of the Cerebral Cortex"). He left Frankfurt to continue his scientific work under the direction of the renowned neuropsychiatrist Emil Kraepelin first in Heidelberg and then in Munich. It was Kraepelin who assigned the name "Alzheimer’s disease" to this condition in his famous textbook of mental illness. 

Alzheimer’s microscope
 

 

The Alzheimer House contains Alzheimer’s microscope retrieved from Munich. In 1912, Alzheimer moved to Breslau, Germany to became director of the Clinic of Psychiatry and Neurology at the Silesian Friedrich-Wilhelm-University.

Memorial 
Date of Death: 
19 December 1915

However, Alzheimer's health deteriorated, and he became increasingly bedridden from rheumatic heart disease. He finally died of kidney failure on 19 December 1915 and was buried in the principal cemetery in Frankfurt-am-Main beside his wife who had already been buried there in 1901.

After completing our tour of the house, we walked back to the Marktbreit Café to return the key.  We stayed for a bite of lunch at the cafe before traveling by train back to Frankfurt-am-Main.

For someone who has worked in the area of neurological diseases, this visit with my wife to the birth place of Alois Alzheimer was truly a memorable experience.