Freiherr Von Blomberg - Ernst Freiherr Von Blomberg (1821-1903)

Ernst Freiherr Von Blomberg (1821-1903)

Born in Hamburg, son of Wilhelm Freiherr von Blomberg. He attended the Academisches Gymnasium where he studied Evangelic Theology and subsequently enrolled the University to study Biology. We lose his track due to the moving of the family; he resurfaces in 1856 when he is appointed Lektor at the Fachhochschule Lübeck. He holds the chair of Zoology and, fully within his iron Prussian upbringing, sports a fascination for all things theological. In 1869 he publishes a work called Die Verwandlung im Prinzipus: Thiere, Maenschen und Ihren Gottlosen Vereinen. Covering topics such as clinical lycanthropy and clinical vampirism, it is considered the first attempt in describing anthrozoology. Later, and unintentionally, he is the first to coin the term Human biology. Today, this term is used on an entirely different basis, but his use had the same roots of research, albeit distorted by religious motives. As Sanitätsrat (an honorary title given to physicians), Freiherr von Blomberg equally held a private medical practice in his estate in Lauenburgfrom 1889 until 1894. He retired from university two years later. He died in Lübeck in 1903.

In 1914, Springer Berlin/Heidelberg published the paper “Ein seltener fall von Hydrocephalus” (A Rare Case of Hydrocephalus), by Dr. Freiherr v. Blomberg, in the ‘Zeitschrift für die gesamte Neurologie und Psychiatrie’. Although some online efforts have attempted to link this document to interests in vampirism, the paper is, in fact, a terse, observation-driven medical account of a child (known as C.K.) with hydrocephaly, commenting on the patient's general condition and observations made during autopsy. The observations recorded, made well into 1913, preclude authorship by an author who died in 1903.