Helmut Max Dehn
1914 - 2007

Helmut Max Dehn was born in Breslau on January 12, 1914, the son of the mathematician Max Dehn (1878-1952) and his wife Antonia, née Landau (1893-1996). Helmut Max had two sisters: Maria (1915-2013) and Eva (1919-2008). In 1921, his father took up a professorship for pure and applied mathematics at the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Frankfurt am Main, which he held until his dismissal by the National Socialists in 1935. During this period, the Dehn family lived at Kettenhofweg 105 (1923-1929), at Wöhlerstraße 6 (1930-1936) and from 1937 to 1939 at Klettenbergstraße 16.

Helmut Max Dehn's parents fled to the United States via Norway and Japan in 1939. He himself emigrated to the United States in February 1936. His two sisters Maria and Eva first went to Great Britain and later also to the USA. Eva later wrote in her family memoirs: "Wie sehr war ich mir der bevorstehenden Katastrophe, die uns alle entwurzeln würde, nicht bewusst! Ich hielt es für selbstverständlich, dass sich die Welt zur Vollkommenheit entwickeln würde und wir unseren Teil dazu beitragen würden." ("How unaware I was of the impending catastrophe that would uproot us all! I took it for granted that the world would develop to perfection and that we would play our part.")

Helmut Max Dehn graduated from Frankfurt's Goethe-Gymnasium in 1932 and went on to study medicine in Frankfurt am Main (5 semesters) and Würzburg (1 semester). He emigrated to the USA in 1936, where he was able to continue his medical studies at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond with financial support from relatives. During his studies, Helmut Max Dehn worked as an usher in a movie theater, where he watched many American films and was thus able to improve his English language skills.

In 1939, he graduated with a doctorate and began his "wandering years", as he called them, which took him to hospitals in Cleveland and Akron (Ohio), Chicago (Illinois) and Puerto Rico, among other places. His encounters with the extreme poverty in Puerto Rico and its overwhelming effects on children led him to turn to pediatrics. In 1950, he opened his medical practice in Berea, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, where he worked for 37 years. During this time, he was also an assistant professor of pediatrics at Case Western University in Cleveland. He also cared for the residents of the Methodist Childrens Home in Berea. In later years, he spent several summers as a physician at the hospital on the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

After completing his studies, Helmut Max Dehn worked as a pediatrician in Berea, Ohio. In the USA, he married Frances Josephine True (1920-2011) in 1956. They had five children, one of whom died in infancy in Berea. His father Max Wilhelm Dehn died in June 1952 in Black Mountain, Buncombe (North Carolina) at the age of 74. His mother Antonia Dehn, on the other hand, was 103 years old and died in Cleveland (Ohio) in February 1996.
Helmut Max Dehn died at the age of 93 on April 13, 2007 and was buried in Woodvale Cemetery in Middleburg Heights (Ohio). His solidarity with the children in Berea is also demonstrated by the fact that donations were to be made to the Berea Children's Home on his death.

Helmut Max Dehn joined the Frankfurt section of the Alpine Club in 1932. His guarantors were Prof. Dr. Matthias Friedwagner, the long-time first chairman of the section, and Professor Walter Behrmann, one of the founders of the student section of the Frankfurt section. Nothing is known about Helmut Dehn's specific mountaineering activities or involvement in the section.
His father Max was a member of the Hamburg section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club. He is listed as one of 449 members in the section's membership directory for 1897. He was an accomplished mountaineer (e.g. crossing the Schwarzenstein in the Zillertal Alps without a guide) and enjoyed traveling in the Alps. Other relatives of Helmut Max Dehn were also active in the Hamburg section and gave lectures in the section, for example: Gustav Dehn (1848-1926) and Dr. Otto Dehn (1852-1925). Gustav Dehn was one of the founders of the Hamburg Section, became its first "Cassirer" (treasurer) and spoke in 1877, for example, on "Dangerous adventures on harmless paths". Otto Dehn was the second chairman of the Hamburg section in 1900 and spoke, for example, about "The Rauris and the Hohe Goldberg" in 1878 and "An excursion to Liechtenstein" in 1904. Later, he was even elected first chairman of the Hamburg section.