My life for pheochromocytoma.

A fascination with hereditary tumor diseases, especially Von Hippel–Lindau (VHL) disease and pheochromocytoma, has dominated my academic life for three decades (Table 1, Fig. 1). My background was the warm and rich atmosphere created by my parents Colonel Joachim Neumann and Mechtild Zuckschwerdt, PhD, MA, descendent of an industrial family from Magdeburg. Together with three sisters and a brother, I spent my youth in Brunswick, Hamburg, and Bonn with a classical education including Latin and Greek. I served 2 years in the artillery of the German army. From 1969 to 1974, I studied medicine at the Universities of Bonn and Heidelberg. After examination, I felt unprepared for a university career. I started in internal medicine in a country hospital, but decided after some months to move into pathology in the large city hospital of Ludwigshafen/Rhein, the city of the BASF company. The 5-year training programme of 500 autopsies, 20 000 biopsies and operation specimens, dominated by the cultured personality of the head Kurt Wegener, gave me a solid background. However, returning to the wards at the University Clinics of Freiburg at the age of 34 years was not promising: in this country, I was considered too old.