Dr. Hans Lehmann Dies

Seattle cardiologist Hans Lehmann was as much in his element researching new medical techniques as he was rolling out of bed for a midnight house call or discussing Mozart.

Friends described Dr. Lehmann, former president of the University of Washington Board of Regents and seminal force in Seattle's art community, as a Renaissance man.

"He was a man of immense breadth and depth," said his close friend, former UW President William Gerberding. "He was brilliant."

Dr. Lehmann was critical in encouraging Seattle physicians to accept the UW's decision to build a medical school, Gerberding said, and worked behind the scenes to help save the Humanities and Art departments from the chopping block during budget reductions in the early 1980s.

Dr. Lehmann - lover of Mozart, author and co-founder of Ballard Community Hospital (now Swedish Medical Center/Ballard) - died Sunday evening at his Ballard home of heart failure. He was 84.

Dr. Lehmann was born in Germany in 1911 to a farm family in the northern town of Barsinghausen before his life was disrupted by politics. As a young man of 24 he fled Nazi Germany and finished his medical studies in Italy before immigrating to the United States and making his way to Seattle.

It was here that Dr. Lehmann met Seattle oil and watercolor painter Thelma Gerstman. The two married in 1942

"He kept hanging around, answering my phone calls, and when somebody would ask for me he would say he was my father and that I couldn't date. I finally married him to get rid of him," Thelma Lehmann said.

She described her husband as a thinker and stern father who adored his children, loved to socialize and indulged a passion for music that included his clarinet.

He was a Renaissance man, friends said, who spoke several languages and authored two books, one on his experience emigrating from Germany, another on Seattle's cultural evolution.

"His brain was going a mile a minute," said one close friend, conductor Milton Katims.

Katims said he and Dr. Lehmann met in 1952 in New York when Katims was principal guest conductor of the NBC Symphony. Dr. Lehmann, then vice president of the Seattle Symphony, urged Katims to be a guest conductor in Seattle. Katims went on to conduct the Seattle Symphony from 1954-1976.

In addition to teaching at the UW and establishing the Hans and Thelma Lehmann Professorship in Music, Dr. Lehmann helped found the Seattle Opera Association and Pacific Northwest Ballet Association, and served on the boards of numerous other organizations.

Dr. Lehmann is survived by his wife, Thelma; sons Spencer of Issaquah and Mark of Bellingham; and grandchildren: Kyle and David.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the Butterworth Manning Ashmore Funeral Home, 520 W. Raye in Seattle.