Colleagues describe him as "the doyen of Neuroscience in Magdeburg" and more widely in the German Democratic Republic.
During the Second World War he was a soldier, joining the NSDAP (Nazi Party) in 1943, the year of his eighteenth birthday.
[2] Towards the end of the war he was captured by the British, and on his release he became a member of the Socialist Unity Party of Germany (Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands / SED), newly formed in April 1946 in the Soviet occupation zone within what remained of Germany.
He embarked on the study of medicine, obtaining his doctorate, which he produced under the supervision of Friedrich Jung, from the Humboldt University of Berlin in 1953.
However, in 1990 Hansjürgen Matthies had reached his sixty-fifth birthday, and this was the year in which he formally retired from his academic responsibilities.