Alexander branch

Alexander Zweig (born June 11, 1881 in Oels , † July 1, 1934 near Hirschberg ) was a German doctor, homeopath and medical writer. Zweig became known as one of those killed in the " Röhm Putsch ".

Life

Youth and education

Alexander Zweig was the son of Karl Zweig. In his youth he first attended the royal grammar school in his home country and from the lower secondary school onwards the royal Luisen grammar school in Berlin, where his parents had moved in 1896. In 1900 he obtained his school leaving certificate there.

From 1900 onwards he studied medicine in Freiburg im Breisgau , Berlin , Greifswald and Heidelberg . In Heidelberg he passed the tentamen physicum. He completed his clinical semesters in Berlin and Giessen , where he also passed the state examination on February 7, 1905. Zweig was given half of his practical year, the second half he went through partly in the pathological anatomy department of the Friedrichshain Municipal Hospital and partly in the internal department of the Charlottenburg Westend Municipal Hospital . As a trainee he worked at the polyclinics of Hermann Frank and Robert Müllerheim . After his license to practice, Zweig passed the rigorosum exam on September 30, 1905 in Giessen. Also in 1905 Zweig did his doctorate with Adolf Vossius at the Eye Clinic of the Grand Ducal Hessian Ludwig University in Gießen with the thesis on the teaching of the persistent pupillary membrane to the Dr. med.

From October 1905 to October 1906 Zweig was a one-year volunteer in the riding department of the Torgau Field Artillery Regiment 74 in Wittenberg.

Career as a doctor and medical writer

In 1906 Zweig established himself as a general practitioner in Hirschberg , Silesia , where he eventually became the owner of his own sanatorium . In addition to his work as a doctor, Zweig also distinguished himself as a medical writer: up until the 1930s, he published a number of medical specialist books and guides, including for Dr. Madaus & Co.

assassination

On the night of June 30th to July 1st, 1934, Zweig was one of the most prominent Jews from Hirschberg, together with his ("non-Jewish") wife Jeanette Zweig (* 1877/78) on the orders of SS group leader Udo von Woyrsch arrested by the SS . The arrest took place in the context of or in the "shadow" of the political cleansing action of the National Socialists in the early summer of 1934, which became known under the propaganda name "Röhm Putsch".

On the night of July 1 to July 2, 1934, the Zweig couple were murdered along with two other Jews, Charig and Förster, on a country road outside of Hirschberg. According to Gruchmann, the order to murder the four Jews was given by the SS brigade leader in Görlitz, Richard Hildebrandt . He called the SS-Standartenführer in Hirschberg, Hans Himpe, on the evening of July 1st and gave the execution order. The Standartenführer had packed the four on a truck and had them transported to Görlitz. On the way, the driver faked a breakdown. The attendant asked the four prisoners to push the car and then shot them from behind while pushing it. This manipulation enabled the SS men to state that their victims were "on the run" when they were shot.

The four bodies were initially abandoned and found by passers-by on the morning of July 2nd. Despite massive attempts at intimidation by the SS, the corpses of those killed were handed over to the Attorney General by the investigating public prosecutor of the Hirschberg Regional Court.

While the murder of the four Hirschberg Jews was concealed in the German press, it became known to the world public through reports in foreign newspapers. The Basler National-Zeitung reported on the incident on the basis of messages from local people, whereupon the exile newspaper Pariser Tageblatt picked it up. As a result, the process gained greater notoriety: The exiled writer Lion Feuchtwanger devoted himself to the Hirschberg murder of Jews and the SPD abroad ( Sopade ) also noted it in its Germany reports .

Fonts

• On the doctrine of the persistent pupillary membrane. Von Münchow, Giessen 1905 (dissertation).
• For women and mothers: health teachings. Willmar Schwabe, Leipzig 1926.
• Dr. med. Kreidmann's teachings in their importance for science and practice with special consideration of Dr. Kreidmann's theory of the nervous system and Dr. Kreidmann's origin and career of humans and living beings of all times. P. Schimmelwitz, Leipzig 1926.
• Nervous diseases: A homeopathic-clinical compendium of practically the most important nervous diseases. J. Sunday, Regensburg 1927.
• Small Vademecum: Introduction to Homeopathy. Willmar Schwabe, Leipzig 1927.
• Guide to studying practical homeopathy for doctors. J. Sunday, Regensburg 1927.
• Local forms of cramp (occupational cramp, swallowing, leg cramp) and their treatment. Dr. Madaus & Co., Radebeul 1929.
• Soul sickness. Dr. Madaus & Co., Radebeul 1930.
• Allergic diseases and their homeopathic treatment. O. Enslin, Berlin 1930.

Web links

• Literature by and about Alexander Zweig in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature list in the online catalog of the Berlin State Library

Individual evidence

1. ^ Curriculum vitae in Zweig's dissertation combined with Wolfram Fischer, Klaus Hierholzer, Michael Hubenstorf (eds.): Exodus of Sciences from Berlin: Questions, results, desiderata, developments before and after 1933 (= Academy of Sciences in Berlin. Research report no.7) . De Gruyter, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-11-013945-6 , p. 404, fn. 122 ( preview )
2. ↑ Date of death according to Lilly Becher (ed.): The yellow spot. The extermination of 500,000 German Jews. Ed. du Carrefour, Paris 1936, p. 259. Zweig is identified here as a man aged 60 at the time of his death in 1934. According to this, Zweig would have turned sixty in the second half of 1933 or the first half of 1934 and should therefore have been born in the second half of 1873 or the first half of 1874. However, this contradicts the first mentioned source.
3. ↑ Biography of his cousin Leonore Goldschmidt ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . 
4. ↑ Lothar Gruchmann : Justice in the Third Reich 1933–1940: Adaptation and submission in the Gürtner era. 3rd, improved edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, p. 460 ( preview ). See also: Ernst Hornig : The Confessing Church in Silesia 1933–1945. History and documents. Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, Göttingen 1977, p. 101. Reference is made here to a woman Helen Hornig who testified that all four were shot “in the open”.
5. ↑ Lilly Becher (ed.), Lion Feuchtwanger (preface): The yellow spot. The extermination of 500,000 German Jews . Editions du Carrefour, Paris 1936, p. 259.
6. ↑ Lothar Gruchmann : Justice in the Third Reich 1933–1940: Adaptation and submission in the Gürtner era. 3rd, improved edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 2001, p. 460 ( preview ).
7. ^ "Pogroms in Schlesien on June 30th", in: Pariser Tageblatt of July 12th, 1934 (digitized version) .
8. ^ Social Democratic Party of Germany: Report on Germany by Sopade , born in 1934, p. 204.