EK - Medicine

2009/2010

EK - Medicine

Was ist schön? eine Ausstellung des Deutschen Hygiene-Museums Dresden 2010: Begleitbuch zur Ausstellung in Dresden vom 27. März 2010 bis 2. Januar 2011 [What is Beautiful? An Exhibition at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden 2010: Catalog of the Exhibition in Dresden from March 27, 2010 through January 2, 2011]. Ed. Sigrid Walther. Göttingen: Wallstein-Verlag, 2010. 224 p. ill. 27 cm. ISBN 978-3-8353-0642-4: EUR 24.90

What is beautiful is a question philosophers have pursued for years, so we should not expect the catalog of the exhibition at the German Hygiene Museum in Dresden to finally provide the answer. However, turning the pages of this richly illustrated catalog—every image is an image of beauty—encourages one to think about one’s own concept of beauty. Some of the topics covered in the book are measures of beauty, ideal beauty from the Stone Age to 1900, models, tattoos, nature as archetype, beautiful weekends, and beauty contests. In addition to the pictures, the catalog contains a series of very worthwhile texts by interesting authors. For example, Austrian literary Nobel laureate Elfriede Jelinek writes on the connection between the concept of beauty and the phenomenon of fashion. Anyone interested in aesthetics or beauty should have a look at this exhibition catalog, even if it would never claim to have the last word on beauty. [tk/hh]

Berühmte Frauenärzte in Berlin [Famous Gynecologists of Berlin]. Matthias David and Andreas D. Ebert for the Gesellschaft für Geburtshilfe und Gynäkologie in Berlin. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse, 2007. 230 p. ill. 24 cm. ISBN 978-3- 938304-45-7: EUR 23.90

The Gesellschaft für Geburtshilfe und Gynäkologie [Society for Obstetrics and Gynecology] in Berlin was created in 1876 by the merger of the Gesellschaft für Geburtshülfe in Berlin (founded 1844) and the Gesellschaft für Gynäkologie in Berlin (founded 1873). The present volume celebrates 16 famous Berlin gynecologists and members of the Society portrayed by current Society members, chiefly by author Matthias David. The chronologically arranged portraits are preceded by two introductory essays about the Society’s founding fathers. The biographical sketches start with Samuel Kristeller (1820-1900) and end with Helmut Kraatz (1902-1983). Of special interest are the stories of the Jewish doctors in Berlin before and during the Third Reich. The portraits do not follow a uniform format, and it would have been helpful to add a short biographical and career outline to the beginning of each biography.

Writings by and about each doctor are listed in the endnotes to each biography, in addition to the citations to the many quotes from archives that are woven into the texts. The biographies are richly illustrated with portraits, pictures of clinic buildings, facsimiles of title pages, letters and documents, and gynecological illustrations. The final essay in the volume is a chronicle of the Gesellschaft für Geburtshilfe und Gynäkologie, 1844-2007, which includes information about its founding, a list of chairmen through the ages, and important events in Society history. An index of names follows. This slender volume is one in a series of similar publications of societies that are (belatedly) coming to grips with their role in the Third Reich, as expressed in the portraits of Jewish members as well as members who flourished under the Nazi regime. [sh/hh]

Zerrissene Biografien: jüdische Ärzte zwischen nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung, Emigration und Wiedergutmachung [Disrupted Biographies: Jewish Doctors During the Period of Nazi Persecution, Emigration, and Restitution]. Linda Lucia Damskis. München: Allitera-Verlag, 2009. 253 p. ill. 22 cm. (Beiträge zur Geschichtswissenschaft). ISBN 978-3-86906-053-8: EUR 14.90

This study (originally a master’s thesis) focuses on the lives of 11 Jewish doctors from Bavarian cities, illustrated with photos of people, buildings and documents. The chapters are organized chronologically (“Jewish Doctors before the Persecution,” “The Nazi Takeover and its Consequences for Jewish Doctors in Bavaria,” “Emigration of Jewish Doctors,” “Survivors in Germany and Victims of the Deportations,” “Re-Immigration after 1945,” and “Restitution for Persecuted Jewish Doctors.”) The appendix includes uniformly structured biographies for each of the book’s subjects (pp. 195-216), followed by a listing of Jewish doctors from Munich, Nuremberg, and Würzburg during the Nazi years, with their names, birth dates, specializations, and addresses. [sh/sl]

Anpassung und Ausschaltung: die Berliner Kassenärztliche Vereinigung im Nationalsozialismus [Fitting In and Shutting Out: The Berlin Public Health Insurance Physicans Association under National Socialism]. Judith Hahn and Rebecca Schwoch. Berlin; Teetz: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2009. 227 p. ill. 25 cm. ISBN 978-3-941450-09-7: EUR 19.80

Berliner jüdische Kassenärzte und ihr Schicksal im Nationalsozialismus: ein Gedenkbuch [Berlin’s Jewish Public Health Plan Physicians and their Fate under National Socialism: A Memorial Book]. Rebecca Schwoch and Torsten Bendias. Berlin; Teetz: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2009. 973 p. ill. 25 cm. ISBN 978-3-941450-08-0: EUR 38

In Germany the Kassenarzt is a physician who primarily sees patients insured by the German public health system, the Krankenkasse. The fees that a Kassenarzt can charge to patients are lower than those charged to patients with private insurance.

In 2005 the Berliner Kassenärztliche Vereinigung began to document and chronicle its history during the Third Reich period, and in 2009 these two works were published. More information (in German) about the Association and this project can be found at http://www.kvberlin.de/10kvberlin/40geschichte/20projekt/index.html. The smaller book, Anpassung und Ausschaltung (http://d-nb.info/99780565x/04) is a concise but thorough history of the Association, beginning with the establishment of the Krankenkasse in 1878 and continuing to 1945, through the period of the Nazi regime and its purposeful and calculated measures to exclude and finally expel all Jews from the Association and to neutralize the Association itself.

The larger book, Berliner jüdische Kassenärzte, is a biographical compendium of the Association’s 2,018 Jewish doctors from the years 1933-1945. Each entry provides the person’s name, life dates and places, date of award of medical license, date of expulsion from the Association, information on origin and family, place of study, addresses and places of deportation, as well as addresses and activities in emigration (primarily in the USA), and the title of the doctor’s dissertation. The 20-page bibliography also contains internet addresses. Most of the data were gathered from the card catalog of the Reichsarztregister [Reich Physicians Registry], which was microfilmed after the war (with some gaps) and has survived, while the original records got destroyed. Additional names and information were drawn from the Reichsmedizinalkalender [Reich Almanac of Medicine]. These doctors’ offspring and colleagues were yet another source of information and of reminiscences, and they provided many of the physicians’ portraits. [sh/ga]

Mit aller Kraft verdrängt: Entrechtung und Verfolgung “nichtarischer” Ärzte in Hamburg 1933 bis 1945 [Forcefully Displaced: Deprivation of Rights and Persecution of “Non-Aryan” Physicians in Hamburg from 1933 to 1945]. Anna von Villiez. München; Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz, 2009. 456 p. ill. 22 cm + 1 CD-ROM. (Studien zur jüdischen Geschichte, 11). ISBN 978-3- 937904-84-9: EUR 24.90

In 1933 there were 432 “non-Aryan” physicians in the area of Greater Hamburg as legally defined in 1937, more than one quarter of all Hamburg physicians. Anna von Villiez’ 2009 dissertation (Hamburg University) is devoted to their fate. It consists of a chronological general section (whics also has a chapter on physicians after 1945) and a section of short biographies of physicians who were persecuted and driven to death or emigration. The biographies are more clearly organized than in Rebecca Schwoch’s Berliner jüdische Kassenärtzte und ihr Schicksal im Nationalsozialismus (see RREA 15/16:228), with summary information in the headers and short biographies that include the time in exile. Black-and-white portraits are included if available. The text of the biographies is also on a CD-ROM in .pdf form, along with two indexes, one by specialty and one by city section, and a list of the 68 deaths. [sh/gh]

Jüdische Ärzte in Frankfurt am Main 1933-1945: Isolation, Vertreibung, Ermordung [Jewish Physicians in Frankfurt am Main 1933-1945: Isolation, Expulsion, Murder]. Birgit Drexler-Gormann. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse-Verlag, 2009 [pub. 2008]. 143 p. ill. 24 cm. ISBN 978-3-940529-37-4. EUR 16.90

Unlike the biographical volumes on Jewish physicians in Berlin, Hamburg, Saxony, and Stuttgart also reviewed in this section of RREA 15/16, the present volume is not primarily a biographical documentation of the Jewish physicians in Frankfurt during the National Socialist period. Instead it describes the group’s situation on the basis of two registers: the card file of the local chapter of the Ärztekammer Hessen-Nassau [Physicians’ Association of Hesse-Nassau], and the compensation documents of 108 Jewish physicians. In 1937 there were 204 Jews among the city’s 918 licensed physicians, but there had been more, for some began emigrating as early as 1933. In 1936 there were 276 Jewish physicians, about 30 percent of the physicians in Frankfurt. Of these, 157 were able to emigrate, 21 were deported, five committed suicide, two were murdered or died in prison, 25 died between 1936 and 1945, and the fate of 66 is unknown.

In addition to this statistical portrait, this work also contains “selected biographies” of 59 physicians, supplemented by contemporary photographs and excerpts from documents, giving a depressing panorama of the persecution of these doctors and the hardships of emigration. A list of the names of Jewish doctors in Frankfurt from 1933-1945 and a bibliography close the volume. [sh/gh]

Ärzte und Zahnärzte in Sachsen 1933-1945: eine Dokumentation von Verfolgung, Vertreibung, Ermordung [Doctors and Dentists in Saxony, 1933-1945: A Record of Persecution, Expulsion, and Murder]. Ed. Caris-Petra Heidel. Frankfurt am Main: Mabuse-Verlag, 2005. 401 p. 21 cm. (Mabuse-Verlag Wissenschaft, 72). ISBN 3-935964-39-0: EUR 39

The main portion of this volume consists of two sequences of short biographies of 298 doctors and 100 dentists, alphabetical by the name of their place of work. The biographies each contain the doctor’s name, personal information (parents, spouses, children, etc.), date of degree, title of dissertation, and chronology of their practice, plus information regarding any known persecution, including “further fate unknown.” In a subsequent section, nine individuals are given more detailed, illustrated biographies. An alphabetical personal name index provides an additional search option. All but 21 of the listed doctors were Jewish, 10 others made the list because they were political dissidents. Introductory chapters.

This reviewer would have preferred a single alphabetical sequence of all names, with dentists specially marked, and with an index of place names referring back to the alphabetical corpus. Nonetheless, the volume represents a respectable effort to bring to mind the fate of Jewish medical practitioners in one German state. [sh/hh]

Stuttgarter jüdische Ärzte während des Nationalsozialismus [Stuttgart’s Jewish Physicians during the National Socialist Period]. Susanne Rueß. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009. 439 p. ill. charts. 24 cm. ISBN 978-3- 8260-4254-6 : EUR 49.80

Like Anna von Villiez’s volume about Jewish physicians in Hamburg during Nazi Germany, Mit aller Kraft verdrängt ... (see RREA 15/16:229) , Susanne Rueß’s work about Stuttgart’s Jewish physicians began as a dissertation (Tübingen, 2009). In contrast to Hamburg’s 432 Jewish doctors (over 25 percent of the total), Stuttgart’s 88 Jewish doctors were a smaller group, comprising 15 percent of the 597 medical doctors registered there. In Berlin, Jewish doctors comprised almost 50 percent of the number of physicians overall (see Rebecca Schwoch’s Berliner jüdische Kassenärzte, RREA 15/16:228).

These 88 detailed biographies are much more extensive than those in the Hamburg volume and include significant recollections by the doctors themselves or by relatives or colleagues. There is a 20-page index of archival sources, a 24-page bibliography, and an internet index. Preceding the indexes is a seven-page statistical survey of Jewish doctors in Stuttgart, which lists their religious communities, life dates and places of birth and death, professional specializations, countries and places of refuge, time in concentration camps, and the dates of their return to Germany. The work concludes with a summary essay that also offers further statistical summaries. [sh/ga]

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