Gustav died Sept. 23, 2023.
He prepared at the Lichtenfels Gymnasium in Graz, the second-largest city in Austria.
At Princeton, he was a member of Prospect Club. His year as a Fulbright scholar at Princeton awakened a deep fascination for the biological sciences.
Gustav earned a medical degree in Graz and a doctorate in Vienna in 1960. His subsequent appointments took him to the Pharmacological Institute and the Medical Clinic II of the University of Vienna in 1961, a research position at the New Jersey College of Medicine, and in 1971 the department of clinical pharmacology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. In 1979, he was appointed professor of internal medicine and became director of Medical Clinic II at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, retiring in 1999. In 2013 Gustav returned to Vienna as a visiting professor at the clinical department of gastroenterology and hepatology at the university’s department of internal medicine.
The focus of Gustav’s career as a physician-scientist was in the field of bile secretion and its disorders in the context of cholestatic liver diseases. He played a leading role in the application of the latest techniques and the development of new therapeutic concepts. His work has been reflected in more than 500 scientific publications in the journals of internal medicine, gastroenterology, and hepatology, as well as book contributions and chapters in the international textbooks.
Despite his achievements, his demeanor was characterized by modesty in his clinical and scientific activities and expressed in his love of nature, skiing, music, and literature. Gustav was generous and highly esteemed.
Gustav’s first wife, Dagmar, died of cancer. He is survived by his wife, Christel; and her children and grandchildren.