User:Nataliedardon/sandbox

Life

Auguste was born and raised in Cassell, Germany into working class family on May 16th 1850. She had 3 siblings and was a daughter to Johannes Hohmann. He died when Auguste was very young. Even though Auguste’s family was impoverished she was well educated. She attended school in Cassell and it is speculated that she may have been a student of Alzheimer’s grandfather, Johann. He was a schoolmaster in Cassell during the time Auguste attended school. Auguste started work as a seamstress assistant when she was at the age of 14. She married Carl (Karl) August Wilhelm Deter on 1 May 1873 at the age of 23. After marring Carl she moved to Frankfurt, Germany. Together they had one daughter named Thekla. Carl worked as a railway clerk since its opening in 1888. Auguste and Carl have been married for 33 years until her death in April 8th 1906 being the age of 51.

Onset of Disease

During the late 1890s, Auguste exhibited a rapid escalation in memory loss &  started showing symptoms of dementia; such as loss of memory, delusions, and even temporary vegetative states. March, 1901, Auguste’s behavior started to become uncontrollable. She began to accuse Carl of being adulterous and soon became rather jealous. Auguste started to become inattentive with housework, purposely hid objects & loss her capacity to cook. She developed insomnia and would drag sheets outside the house and scream for hours in the middle of the night.

As a railway worker, Carl was unable to provide adequate care for his wife and was given recommendations by a doctor to admit her into a mental hospital. She soon was admitted to a mental institution, the Institution for the Mentally Ill and for Epileptics (Irrenschloss) in Frankfurt, Germany on 25 November 1901 at the age of 51. There, she was examined by Dr. Alois Alzheimer.

Carl visited Auguste whenever possible even though he was struggling with payments for her stay. Having a difficulty with keeping up with the payments Carl was planning to get her into a more affordable facility, such transfer would remove Auguste from Alzheimer’s care. When asking Alzheimer for an arrangement of hospital transfers Alzheimer discouraged him from such a decision. Instead, he offered him an agreement for her to stay without cost in exchange for her medical records & brain after death.