Karl Wilhelm Ernst Joachim Schönborn (May 8, 1840 - 1906) was a German surgeon who was a native of Breslau.

He studied medicine at the Universities of Breslau, Heidelberg, Göttingen and Berlin, and in 1863 received his medical doctorate. At Berlin

Berlin

Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...

 he became an assistant to Robert Ferdinand Wilms

Robert Ferdinand Wilms

Robert Friedrich Wilms was a German surgeon who was a native of Arnswalde. He studied medicine in Berlin, and in 1848 became an assistant at the Bethanien Hospital in Berlin...

 (1824-1880) at Bethanien Hospital, and to Bernhard von Langenbeck

Bernhard von Langenbeck

Bernhard Rudolf Konrad von Langenbeck was a German surgeon known as the developer of Langenbeck's amputation and founder of Langenbeck's Archives of Surgery....

 (1810-1887) at the University hospital. In 1871 he became a professor at the University surgical clinic at Königsberg

University of Königsberg

The University of Königsberg was the university of Königsberg in East Prussia. It was founded in 1544 as second Protestant academy by Duke Albert of Prussia, and was commonly known as the Albertina....

, and from 1886 until his death in 1906 he was a professor of surgery at the University of Würzburg

University of Würzburg

The University of Würzburg is a university in Würzburg, Germany, founded in 1402. The university is a member of the distinguished Coimbra Group.-Name:...

.

Schönborn is remembered for his surgical work involving velopharyngeal insufficiency (VPI), commonly referred to as cleft palate. In 1875 he described the first true pharyngeal flap surgery

Pharyngeal flap surgery

Pharyngeal flap surgery is a procedure to correct the airflow during speech. The procedure is common amongpeople with cleft palate and some types of dysarthria.-Pharyngeal flap procedures:...

, which was an inferiorly based flap surgery for VPI. He would perform several of these operations in the following years, and in 1886 switched to a superiorly based flap operation. He described these procedures in Ueber eine neue Methode der Staphylorrhaphie (1875), and Vorstellung eines falle von Staphyloplastik (1886).