Epilepsieforschung und Epilepsiechirurgie in Detmold 1950–1952: Friedrich-Wilhelm Kroll und das Otfrid-Foerster-Hirnforschungsinstitut

Modern epilepsy research began in Berlin between 1860 and 1870 with the stimulation experiments of Eduard Hitzig and Gustav Theodor Fritsch on the dog cortex. Otfrid Foerster transferred these experiences to epilepsy surgery on humans between World Wars I and II. The neurologist Foerster was a neurosurgical autodidact. He founded a neurological research institute in Breslau in 1934, which after his death was renamed the Otfrid Foerster Institute and existed until the end of the Second World War. Friedrich-Wilhelm Kroll, a pupil of Foerster’s, founded a new Otfrid Foerster Brain Research Institute at the State Hospital II (Landeskrankenhaus II) in Detmold in 1950. Epilepsy research and epilepsy surgery (electrocorticography-assisted extended lesionectomy) were conducted there over a short episode lasting until 1952. When Kroll left Detmold in 1952/1953, the institute and the neurological neurosurgical department of the Landeskrankenhaus II in Detmold were also closed. It took another 30 years for surgical epilepsy treatment to return from North America to Germany.