Frankfurt, October 1929 – Surgical Ward, St. Katharinen Hospital

The corridor smelled of carbolic and fear. Werner Forssmann, 25 years old and already hated by half the staff for his arrogance, stood outside the catheterisation room holding a stolen ureteric catheter like it was Excalibur.

A senior nurse, Sister Gertrud – built like a Panzer and twice as gentle – blocked the door.

“You’re not bringing that snake in here, Herr Doktor.”

“It’s not a snake, Sister. It’s progress.”

“It’s suicide. Professor Sauerbruch will have you shot for this.”

Forssmann gave her the smile that always got him into trouble. “Then let’s not tell him until it works.”

She stared at him for a long second, muttered something about foolish boys, and stepped aside to fetch bandages. The moment her back turned, Forssmann slipped inside and turned the key.

He laid everything out like a surgeon preparing for war: iodine, lidocaine, the 65 cm catheter, and a hand mirror he’d nicked from the nurses’ station.

He tied his own left arm to the splint board (tight enough that the veins stood up like blue rivers), swabbed the crease of his elbow, and injected the local.

The needle stung. Good. Pain meant he was still alive to feel it.

He made the cut.

Blood welled, warm and bright. He slid the catheter in, watching the mirror so he could see what he was doing.

Ten centimetres. Twenty. Thirty.

The thing felt like a cold worm crawling up his arm. At the shoulder it met resistance. He paused, breathed through his teeth, and pushed harder.

A white-hot flash exploded behind his eyes.

“Scheiße…”

He waited until the corridor was empty, unlocked the door, and walked (catheter swinging from his arm like a grotesque IV line) toward the X-ray room on the floor below.

Halfway there he met Sister Gertrud again. She took one look and dropped her tray.

“Mein Gott, Werner, what have you done?!”

“Going for a stroll,” he said, pale as paper. “Care to join me?”

“You’re insane.”

“Documented fact. Now help me or get out of the way.”

She got out of the way.

In the radiology room the technician, a nervous man named Becker, went the colour of old cheese.

“Herr Doktor… is that… is that in your—”

“Right atrium, if I’ve done my anatomy right. Take the picture, Becker. History’s waiting.”

Becker’s hands shook so badly the first plate was blurred. The second showed it clear as day: the tip of the catheter curled inside Forssmann’s own beating heart.

Silence.

Then Becker whispered, almost reverent: “It’s… beautiful.”

Forssmann untied his arm, pulled the catheter out in one smooth motion, and pressed gauze to the bleeding hole.

“Tell anyone,” he said, grinning like a madman, “and I’ll deny everything.”

Zurich, September 16, 1977 – University Hospital Cath Lab

Forty-eight years later, another quiet maniac stood at another table.

Andreas Grüntzig’s hands didn’t shake, but everything else about him looked exhausted. He hadn’t slept in two days. The balloon catheter lying on the sterile drape had been made in his kitchen at 3 a.m. using his children’s modelling glue and his wife’s hair-dryer.

His patient, Adolf Bachmann, 38 years old, smoker, father of three, lay awake under local anaesthetic, eyes wide.

“You sure about this, Doc?” Adolf asked in thick Zürich dialect. “My wife thinks you’re going to blow me up like a birthday balloon.”

Grüntzig laughed (short, nervous, genuine). “If I do, I’ll buy her dinner. Lie still.”

In the control room, half the cardiology world watched through the glass: skeptics, believers, and one American who kept muttering “This will never work” in a loud Texas drawl.

Grüntzig threaded the guidewire. It kissed the left coronary ostium perfectly on the first try.

“Show-off,” murmured his assistant, Maria.

“Luck,” Grüntzig said, but he was smiling.

The stenosis was a vicious – 95%, a tiny murderous ring in the proximal LAD.

He advanced the balloon. Everyone stopped breathing.

“Pressure?” Maria asked.

“Start at four atmospheres.”

The gauge climbed. Five. Six. Seven.

Adolf suddenly gasped. “I feel… something.”

“Good or bad?” Grüntzig asked without looking up.

“Like… someone cracked a nut in my chest.”

Eight atmospheres.

A soft pop (barely audible) travelled up the catheter shaft into Grüntzig’s palm.

On the monitor, the waist of the balloon disappeared. The artery yawned open like a flower.

Blood flow went from a miserable trickle to a roaring river.

Adolf’s face changed. The grey left him. He laughed (actually laughed) on the table.

“The pain… it’s gone. Completely gone.”

Grüntzig finally exhaled. He looked almost surprised it had worked.

Maria whispered, “You did it, Andreas.”

“No,” he said softly. “We just changed the world. Again.”

He turned to the glass wall, raised the deflated balloon catheter like a trophy, and spoke to every doubter on the other side.

“Gentlemen,” he said in calm, perfect English, “the coronary artery has been tamed.”

Somewhere, in a small apartment in Locarno, an 73-year-old Werner Forssmann (retired, half-forgotten, and secretly delighted people still thought he was reckless) heard the news on the radio.

He poured himself a small glass of schnapps, lifted it toward the ceiling, and spoke to an empty room.

“Prost, Andreas,” he said. “I got us inside the heart. You just taught it to dance.”

Two men.
Two impossible mornings.
One revolution that still beats in millions of chests today.