Karl Ernst Ranke

Karl Ernst Ranke was the son of the anthropologist Johannes Ranke (1836-1916). He studied medicine in Munich, where he received his doctorate in 1896. After spending a year as an assistant in the children’s clinic under his uncle Heinrich von Ranke (1830-1909), he headed an anthropological research expedition to Brazil. Following his return he spent two more years as assistant in the children’s clinic, and then worked for two years as a physician at the tuberculosis sanatorium Altein in Arosa, Switzerland.

In 1906 Ranke returned to Munich. Working as a paediatrician he specialised in diseases of the lungs, but also worked as a school physician and as a tuberculosis physician with the social security system. He was habilitated for internal medicine 1915, becoming ausserordentlicher professor in 1921.

Ranke introduced a new era in the knowledge of tuberculosis, presenting the doctrine of the stages of tuberculosis, the proof of which had been obtained through long and strenuous work in the Munich pathological-anatomical institute

Besides medicine his interest was philosophy, he was an expert on the philosopher Kant.

• Erinnerungen an Justus von Liebig.
  Münchener medizinische Wochenaschrift, 1909, 56: 663-664.
• Die Kategorien des Lebendigen. Eine Fortführung der Kantschen Erkenntniskritik.
  Munich, 1928. 705 pages.
• Ausgewählte Schriften zur Tuberkulosepathologie. In: Die Tuberkulose und ihre Grenzgebiete in Einzeldarstellungen; volume 6, Berlin, 1928.
  This posthumous publication was occasioned by Walter Pagel (1898-1983) and M. Pagel.
• B. Graovac:
  [Critical evaluation of Ranke's stages in pulmonary tuberculosis.] [Article in undetermined language]
  Tuberkuloza, Beograd, March/April 1953, 5 (2): 126-135.
• W. Pagel:
  [The 50th anniversary of Karl Ernst Ranke's death.] [Article in German]
  Praxis der Pneumologie vereinigt mit Der Tuberkulosearzt, December 1976, 30 (12): 721-724.
  
  Bibliography in Schweizerische medizinische Wochenschrift, Basel, 1928, 58: 412.