Fritz Linder was born in Breslau in 1912 where his father occupied the house of Miculicz. He started to study medicine there, and after four years came to England to do his fifth year in Bristol, returning to qualify and practise in Germany. Linder served in the German Medical Corps throughout the second world war on the Russian Front. After the war he returned to Heidelberg under Bauer, the successor of Kirschner, went on in 1951 to become Professor of Surgery in the Free University of Berlin, and came back to Heidelberg in 1962. He made major contributions to cardiovascular surgery, and was responsible for infusing many of the British and North American traditions of teaching into the German system. He was President of the German Surgical Society, Vice President of the International Federation of Surgical Colleges and President of the International Society of Surgery. He died some time before the end of 1995.