Alfred Bannwarth

Alfred Bannwarth (1903 to 1969) was a German neurologist who is credited with first reporting lymphocytic meningoradiculitis. He began by studying music and then turned to medicine at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, afterwards becoming an assistant to the German neurologist Max Nonne at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Hamburg. His best known work appeared in the Archiv für Psychiatrie und Nervenkrankheiten: a 1941 paper on chronic lymphocytic meningitis, inflammatory polyneuritis and rheumatism as a problem of allergy and the nervous system, followed by a longer 1944 study of the clinic and pathogenesis of chronic lymphocytic meningitis. In 1945 he enlisted as a military doctor, was stationed in the Tegern Lake valley, and was captured by American soldiers and held prisoner until June 1946.