Alfred Alexander

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred John Alexander (born March 7, 1880 in Bamberg ; died May 15, 1950 in Zurich ) was a German-British doctor . He was President of the Berlin Medical Association in Berlin in the 1920s .

Life

Alfred John Alexander was born in Bamberg in 1880 as the third child of Herman Alexander (1841-1885) and his wife Bella Lehmaier (1855-1906). He came from a respected Jewish family. Despite the early death of his father, who died of leukemia five years after Alfred was born , Alfred was able to graduate from high school and then study medicine in Munich and Berlin. He completed his studies with top marks. He was offered a doctor's position at the Städtisches Klinikum Frankfurt am Main in the event that he would convert. He refused and accepted a training position in Berlin. He received his doctorate in Munich in 1903. After completing his training, he settled in Berlin and opened a medical practice. During the First World War he was used as a military doctor. I.a. he ran a hospital in Alsace and was awarded the Iron Cross.

The Alexander family lived in a large apartment with 22 rooms in Kaiserallee (Berlin) 219/220 on the first floor (today: Bundesallee ). The apartment also served his practice as an internist. The apartment and practice were ideally located in the center of the Jewish community in western Berlin.

After the practice rooms in Kaiserallee became too small, in 1922 he found suitable rooms for a hospital in the immediate vicinity of his home. From the opening in 1923 to 1937, Alfred Alexander ran an initially prosperous, private sanatorium in Achenbachstrasse. 15 in Wilmersdorf . His patients also included numerous prominent writers, artists, actors and musicians. To his patients u. a. counted: Alfred Einstein , Max Reinhardt , James Franck , Alfred Polgar , Walter Hasenclever and Marlene Dietrich . The guest and congratulations book, which is still preserved today and was published on the occasion of his 50th birthday, testifies to his social reputation. Albert Einstein, who also valued Alfred Alexander for his human kindness, also entered it.

In 1927, Alexander signed a lease with the landowner Otto Wollank (1862-1929) for a lake property in Groß Glienicke , a village north of Potsdam , right on the western city limits of Berlin. In the same year, the Alexander House , a relatively simple summer house made of wood with several rooms, a garage and a garden shed were built on this property . After the structures, including a small pond, a tennis court and a long flight of stairs to the lake shore with a jetty, had been set up, the family usually spent the summer holidays there. After extensive restorations, the house is now a listed building.

After the National Socialists came to power in the German Reich, extensive restrictions were gradually introduced for Jewish doctors from 1933 , which made it more and more difficult to run the clinic. As a front-line fighter, Alexander fell under the exceptions contained therein. The number of patients, especially non-Jewish, fell sharply. After he had been warned in 1936 by Otto Meyer (lawyer) , his commander in World War I, that his name was on a list of people who were about to be arrested by the Gestapo , Alfred Alexander returned from a trip to London to his living there Daughter no longer returns to Germany. In the following years he tried to bring his wife and his children, who were still living in Germany, to England, which was finally successful.

In July 1939 it was announced in the Reichsgesetzblatt that Alfred Alexander and his family had been expatriated and that they had lost their German citizenship. The family's property was transferred to the German Reich (Nazi Germany) .

Alfred Alexander did not return to Germany after the end of the Second World War . He founded a small practice on Harley Street in Westminster, London, and ran it until shortly before his death. In 1947 he received British citizenship.

Alfred Alexander was married to Henriette A. (Henny, née Picard; 1888–1970). Her father, Lucien Picard (1854–1935), was a partner in “ Lazard Speyer-Ellissen ”, a respected banker and Swiss consul in Frankfurt am Main. The marriage resulted in four children: Bella Alexander (1911–2000), Elsie Alexander - married Ellie Harding (1912–2004), Paul Alexander (1917–2003) and Hanns Alexander (1917–2006). Alfred Alexander died at the age of 70 after a heart attack. His grave is in the Jewish Cemetery in Willesden in North London.

Honors

Fonts

  • About traumatic cryptogenic septic infection and traumatic purulent gonarthritis: with blackboard . Munich: Kastner & Callwey 1903. Munich, Univ. Diss. 1903

literature

  • Thomas Harding : Summer house on the lake. Five families and 100 years of German history . Translated from the English by Daniel Bussenius. dtv, Munich 2016. ISBN 978-3-423-28069-3
  • Thomas Harding : Hanns and Rudolf. The German Jew and the Hunt for the Commander of Auschwitz , dtv, Munich 2014.
  • Rebecca Schwoch (Hrsg.): Berlin Jewish Statutory Health Insurance Physicians and their fate under National Socialism. A memorial book . Hentrich & Hentrich, Berlin 2009.

Web links

Movie

  • Anne Wigger: The house on the Glienicker See. Germany, documentary with many contemporary witnesses, Gabriele Conrad editorial staff, 2017. 45 min. First broadcast on December 12, 2017, 9:00 pm - 9:45 pm on RBB television

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.alexanderhaus.org/timeline/
  2. ↑ http://www.ggforum.de/Material/EingabeHausAlexander.pdf
  3. ↑ Kevin Neuroth, Zeit online: Alexander-Haus - "When I came to Germany, I was afraid" , interview with Thomas Harding , accessed on June 17, 2019
  4. ↑ Sonja Richter: The expropriation of Dr. Alexander. Retrieved January 18, 2019 . , near Groß Glienicke district
  5. ↑ Jana Hasse: When Albert Einstein was a guest at Glienicker See , Der Tagesspiegel , May 4, 2014.
  6. ^ Agreement of intent for the Alexander House signed. Communication from the State of Brandenburg from Aug. 15, 2016
  7. ↑ Location: liberal jewish cemetery prayer hall london, 2 Tower Rd, London NW10 2HP, UK
  8. ↑ Proof of the dissertation at WorldCat and SBB StaBiKat - results / titledata. In: stabikat.de. Retrieved January 18, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Das Haus am Glienicker See , channel information on the film, rbb-online from December 5, 2017
personal data
SURNAME Alexander, Alfred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Alexander, Alfred John (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British doctor
DATE OF BIRTH March 7, 1880
PLACE OF BIRTH Bamberg
DATE OF DEATH May 1950
Place of death Zurich