Talk:Hans Adolf Krebs

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[edit] Query

Does anynone know if he's in any way related to the german word for cancer, "krebes"? --Jwanders 12:41, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

"Cancer" is Latin for "crab", but also for "a malignant tumour" [cancer, cancri, m.]. It came into English through the Old Northern French "cancre", and from this we get our words "cancer", "canker", and even "gangrene". (See the Oxford English Dictionary, online edition.) The zodiac sign of people born between June 22 and July 22 is called "Cancer", because during this time the sun appears to pass through the constellation thought to resemble a crab-monster crushed by Hercules in Greek mythology.

German obviously preserves a semantic link between crabs and cancer; I think it's safe to say, however, that Hans Adolf Krebs's family had in mind our tasty friends in the sea.

[edit] Note

I deleted jewish in the introduction. Being "jewish" is used to characterise so many different things, that I think it is misleading for someone who got an anglican burial. Of course the problems he had in Germany due to his "jewishness" are appropriately described in the body text. --Linksrechts 10:55, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hans Krebs' Father Was Jewish

Hans Krebs was not of "partially Jewish heritage," as the article currently states. His autobiography "Reminiscences and Reflections" (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1981) makes it clear that BOTH of his parents were Jews. On page 6, referring to anti-Semitism, he states: "The reactions of German Jews varied. The Zionists' answer was a return to the Promised Land; others preferred to hold to tradition and to demonstrate this openly; a third group, TO WHICH MY FATHER BELONGED, believed that the only answer lay in assimilation." (Emphasis added.) On pages 6-7, he writes of his mother: "Born Alma Davidson, she was a native of Hildesheim. Her ancestors had lived in the district for centuries and we had more than a hundred relatives living near by. Today only one is left in Hildesheim. In the Nazi holocaust the family became scattered all over the world; not a few perished in concentration camps." On page 104, he writes of his father's death in 1939: "My father had remained in Hildesheim. Later I realized that his death at this time had spared him the fate of many of his generation who were to be exterminated in the ensuing years. Nazi persecution had made his last years very sad. He had been deprived of the right to practice [medicine], much of the money he had saved for old age had been extorted by 'special levies', and at the time of the pogrom in November 1938 he had been rounded up and imprisoned for about a fortnight." I am, therefore, modifying the article to correctly reflect the facts. Jinfo 03:00, 17 October 2006 (UTC)

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