Arthur Hartmann

Personal

Vocation

Notable

Family

German ENT physician and university lecturer who developed a series of instruments, including the anterior nasal mirror (Rhinoscopia anterior), a nasal speculum, as well as Hartmann's foreign body tongs (named after him) and the Akumeter which he had introduced in 1878. With this technical development, he was one of the pioneers of audiometry, his development was a combination of the Helmholtz electric tuning fork and the Bell telephone receiver. Arthur Hartmann was the son of Paul Hartmann, a cotton spinning entrepreneur from Heidenheim and the founding father of today's Hartmann Group. He obtained his medical licence in Leipzig in 1873. Afterwards he was a military doctor in Stuttgart for two years. In 1875 he decided to become an ear-nose-throat doctor, so he took up his medical duties in Vienna with the otologist Adam Politzer and Josef Gruber. In 1876 he opened a practice in Berlin and later a private clinic in the Karlstrasse, which was exceptionally popular. In 1902 he became a university professor and in 1909 he was appointed secret secretary. He married Johanna Blankertz (1860-1940), the daughter of the manufacturer Heinrich Siegmund Blanckertz, and they had two daughters. He died on 28 August 1931, aged 82, in Berlin. Link to Wikipedia biography (German)