Caesar Hirsch

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Stumbling block for Dr. Caesar Hirsch, Birkenwaldstrasse 60 in Stuttgart

Caesar Hirsch (born November 19, 1885 in Cannstatt , † May 14, 1940 in Seattle ) was a German doctor who committed suicide in exile during the Third Reich . Decades later, the discovery of his library in Germany sparked controversy.

Life

Caesar Hirsch was the son of the Jewish factory owner couple Jakob and Fanny Hirsch. Jakob Hirsch was a partner in the “Gebrüder Hirsch” distillery and vinegar factory in Cannstatt. Caesar, the couple's youngest child, attended high school in Cannstatt and then went to Paris to improve his French language skills. He then studied medicine in Tübingen, Munich, Geneva, Berlin and Freiburg and received his doctorate in 1910 at the University of Freiburg with a thesis on the treatment of the remnants of the umbilical cord . As a medical assistant, Hirsch initially worked at the Interior and Surgical Clinic of the City of Stuttgart. He completed his specialist training at the Ear, Nose and Throat University Clinic in Frankfurt am Main with Otto Voss, the rhinolaryngological part probably in Katowice with Max Ehrenfried. Apparently he was still doing internships in various hospitals. At the beginning of 1914 he traveled briefly as a ship's doctor on the Hamburg-America Line , but from 1913 he already had an ear, nose and throat doctor's practice in Tübinger Strasse 1 / II in Stuttgart . Caesar Hirsch himself has made various statements about his engagement in the First World War ; In 1914 the enthusiastic mountaineer and skier, who had been a member of the Swabian section of the Alpine Club since 1910 , applied for a position in the Royal Württemberg Ski Corps. At that time he was working as an ordaining doctor in the military hospital in the Karl Olga Hospital in Stuttgart. In his application he mentioned training in war surgery with von Hofmeister's general doctor . Convalescent leave for 1917, which could indicate a front-line deployment, and an activity of the physician who was obliged to take part in the landstorm in the reserve hospital 3 in Tübingen are documented. After apparently serious differences had arisen there, Hirsch was transferred to Stuttgart in April 1918, and later to Ludwigsburg . He moved his personal residence and practice to Tübinger Strasse 11 in 1917.

In 1920 he married Felicia Kaufmann from Weinheim an der Bergstrasse. This marriage resulted in three children, born in 1923, 1925 and 1926.

From 1922 he was a consulting ENT doctor at the Katharinenhospital . From 1923 to 1933, Caesar Hirsch headed the ear, nose and throat department at the Marienhospital in Stuttgart . In addition to his practical work as a doctor, he wrote numerous specialist publications and the textbook on local anesthesia of the ear and the upper respiratory tract , which appeared in 1925. He was considered the best surgeon in his field in Stuttgart and the surrounding area. He became co-editor of The Pain magazine . In 1928 he led several workshops on analgesia in the USA . In 1932 he gave a lecture to the Italian Otolaryngological Society in Rome. The Stuttgart Mayor Klein commissioned Hirsch to comment on the planned urban ear, nose and throat clinic. Hirsch delivered a memorandum on this subject in 1932 and proposed himself as head of this future institution. However, this was not realized until 1937, when Professor Grohe became the boss.

In 1926, Caesar Hirsch acquired the villa at Birkenwaldstrasse 60 in a foreclosure auction . The former owner, Emil Dobler, persecuted him for years with slander and blackmail attempts. For example, he had his girlfriend, a prostitute named Falkenstein, accuse him of having sexually assaulted her during an appendix operation. Hirsch was able to prove that he never operated on Fraulein Falkenstein's appendix, but only removed her tonsils under local anesthesia and in the presence of a witness. The charges were then dropped. However, Dobler pursued Hirsch further by publishing a defamatory article about the doctor in the swastika newspaper.

Caesar Hirsch, who was on the National Socialists ' black list and probably felt harassed by Dobler, a member of the SS , let his children travel to Switzerland by train on March 31, 1933, accompanied by his mother-in-law. He himself followed with his wife on the evening of the same day, whereupon he was accused of violating the foreign exchange laws and his property that had remained in Germany, including the inventory of the practice in Tübinger Strasse, was confiscated. To this day, the whereabouts of these objects has not been fully clarified. The practice equipment was auctioned. Apparently the instruments in the Marienhospital stayed in place. In 1942 the Marienhospital was expropriated; apparently the documents about the takeover of the instruments from Hirsch's possession were destroyed. Hirsch's house, furniture, car and library were also sold to cover Hirsch's "tax debts" that had accrued during his escape.

Two of Hirsch's former employees traveled to Zurich to bring him money and some private items. Upon their return, they were arrested and sentenced to fines and several weeks' imprisonment. The transport of his medical instruments to Zurich by a sister of the Marienhospital was prevented by sealing both the practice and the corresponding operating theater in the hospital. Months later, the devices were picked up from the practice by the Gestapo . Caesar Hirsch had meanwhile tried to sell his house and have his library and grand piano moved to Zurich. This was no longer possible: in 1934 the house, inventory and library were confiscated. In 1938 the emigrant was stripped of his German citizenship, and in 1939 his state examination and doctorate. The revocation of the doctorate has not yet been withdrawn by the university.

In Switzerland , he received a work permit, which is why he was still in 1933 to France moved on. But in France, too, his income remained below the subsistence level for his family through subordinate activities. Under these circumstances, Caesar and Felicia Hirsch considered putting one of their children up for adoption, but did not put it into practice. Eventually the Hirsch family moved on to the USA . Caesar Hirsch was in New York Assistant Professor of Oto-Rhino-Laryngology at the Ophthalmological Clinic and an associate professor of otology at the New York Poli Clinic Hospital and the Medical School. Despite these activities, scientific publications and the establishment of his own practice, and although his wife worked in an orthopedic workshop and the children also contributed to the family support through vacation work, the family's financial situation remained critical. Caesar Hirsch also increasingly suffered from depression.

In 1940, Hirsch accepted an offer to take over a practice in Seattle. This did not pay off, however, and Hirsch also suffered from the humiliation of having to repeat his medical examination because his German state examination was not recognized. Under the pressure of economic and emotional hardship, Caesar Hirsch finally committed suicide .

His widow remarried in 1943 and from then on had the surname Windesheim. His children later changed their family name to "Hearst". In 1956, a restitution procedure initiated by Felicia Windesheim and Peter Hearst was concluded with a settlement.

Aftermath

In front of his former house on Birkenwaldstrasse in Stuttgart, a stumbling stone was set in the ground in memory of Caesar Hirsch . Leo Martin Reich wrote a biography about Caesar Hirsch, which appeared in Stuttgart in 2009 under the title Caesar Hirsch - a Jewish doctor's fate . Reich praised Hirsch as a "pioneer of local anesthesia with a national and international reputation" and as "Nestor of ENT medicine in Stuttgart" .

The whereabouts of the Hirsch Collection

University Library of Tübingen

Part of Caesar Hirsch's possessions came to the Tübingen University Library in 1938 , presumably because the ENT department of the University of Tübingen was opened at that time. In 1940, the Tübingen University Library bought the Hirsch Collection, which consisted of 1,439 books and numerous smaller publications, from the German Reich for 1,000 marks. 1020 works were then cataloged and officially included in the collections of the University Library, the rest was z. T. sold through second-hand bookshops. Although the first reference to this whereabouts of the doctor's library was made as early as 1981, it was not until 1999 that the editor Hans-Joachim Lang researched more closely, found Hirsch's heirs in the USA and contacted them. The rector of the University of Tübingen offered Caesar Hirsch's son Peter J. Hearst the return of the remaining books. Although Hearst refused to take over the volumes that had surprisingly reappeared for him, he did not leave the collection in the Tübingen library, but handed it over to the Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library of the University of California in Los Angeles after examining the holdings . The University of Tübingen believed that it had fulfilled its duty. The Schwäbisches Tagblatt reported regularly on the transaction and a colloquium was held at the new location of the books, at which Hans-Joachim Lang also gave a lecture on the events.

Then, however, the Oberfinanzdirektion in Berlin intervened and pointed out that Caesar Hirsch's heirs had received financial compensation for the library, which was believed to be lost, in the 1960s and could therefore now count as double compensation. The university library had to submit a list of the books returned, and the regional finance directorate asked for the address of Peter J. Hearst in order to contact him. The university library submitted the requested list, but pleaded for it because of the low material value of the books, the fact that Hearst did not want to use the volumes for private purposes but had given them to a public institution, and the embarrassment that such a set-off would have meant the crackdown on the proceedings.

The history of the Hirsch Collection was presented in 2002 at the symposium “Book possession as booty, Nazi cultural theft in German libraries” in the Lower Saxony state parliament. One consequence of the symposium was the Hanover Appeal, which calls for the search for looted property in German libraries and return to the owners.

literature

  • Hans-Joachim Lang: A gift from the Gestapo. How the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen came to the private library of Caesar Hirsch. In: Displaced books. Book return from two perspectives. Contributions and materials on the inventory history of German libraries in the context of the Nazi era and war (Laurentius, Von Buch, Menschen, and Libraries, special issue), 2. durchges. and exp. Edition, Hannover 1999, pp. 100-107.
  • Peter-Michael Berger: The return of the library from Caesar Hirsch. In: Ulf Häder (edit.): Contributions by ... public institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany on dealing with cultural goods from former Jewish property (= publications by the Coordination Office for the Loss of Cultural Property. Vol. 1). Coordination Office for the Loss of Cultural Property, Magdeburg 2001, pp. 294–299 ( online ).
  • Michael Goerig, Jochen Schulte am Esch: Forgotten Jewish Pioneers of German Anaesthesia. In: Jochen Schulte am Esch et al. (Ed.): The Fourth International Symposium on the History of Anesthesia. Proceedings. Dräger, Lübeck 1998, ISBN 3-925402-00-4 , pp. 553-566.
  • Hans-Joachim Lang : Reichstauschstelle, Prussian State Library and the Gestapo as book suppliers for the University Library of Tübingen. In: Hans Erich Bödeker , Gerd-Josef Bötte (ed.): Nazi-looted property, Reichstauschstelle and Prussian State Library. Lectures at the Berlin Symposium on May 3 and 4, 2007. Saur, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-598-11777-0 , pp. 135–146.
  • Leo Martin Reich: Caesar Hirsch. The fate of a Jewish doctor in Stuttgart. Media and Dialogue Klaus Schubert, Haigerloch 2009, ISBN 978-3-933231-92-5 ( online ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Angst: On the darkest chapter in the history of the Alpine Club - the fates of the Jewish members of the Swabian section from 1933 to 1945  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. at www.alpenverein-schwaben.de@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.alpenverein-schwaben.de  
  2. ↑ Leo Martin Reich: Dr. Caesar Hirsch. A Jewish doctor's fate in Stuttgart , PDF 576 kB 50 pages , online edition 2006, p. 43
  3. ↑ Hans Joachim Lang: A gift from the Gestapo on www.uni-marburg.de
  4. ↑ Berndt von Egidy: The Caesar Hirsch Collection , AKMB-news 3, 2003, pp. 9-11
personal data
SURNAME Hirsch, Caesar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German medic
DATE OF BIRTH November 19, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Cannstatt
DATE OF DEATH May 14, 1940
Place of death Seattle