Eduard Bloch (doctor)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Eduard Bloch in his Linz medical practice (approx. 1938)

Eduard Bloch (born January 30, 1872 in Frauenberg , Bohemia , Austria-Hungary , † June 1, 1945 in New York City , New York , USA ) was the family doctor of Adolf Hitler's parents.

Life

Bloch studied medicine in Prague as a student of Alfred Přibram and then went to the Austrian army as a doctor. In 1899 he was ordered to Linz in Upper Austria , where he opened a private practice in 1901 following his military service. He married Lilli Kafka in 1902. They had a daughter, Trude. Two years later, the Alois Hitler family came to this practice from the Linz suburb of Leonding , who died shortly afterwards.

Among other things, he was the family doctor of Adolf Hitler's mother Klara . After a tumor in her breast was diagnosed in 1907, she was treated in the Linz hospital Die Barmherzigen Schwestern . The chances were bad from the start, and Bloch told 18-year-old Hitler that the situation was serious. Lengthy therapy could only prolong Klara Hitler's life, but not save it. She died on December 21, 1907. The doctor later recalled that in his entire career he had never seen someone as sadly filled as Hitler, who had always had a close bond with his mother.

According to Rudolph Binion , her death is said to have triggered Hitler's hatred of Jews, as the Jew Bloch could not cure her cancer. However, the facts speak against this thesis. Bloch had asked for a relatively modest fee of 300 kroner and waived a surcharge for the many house visits and treatments with iodoform and morphine . When the family went to see him on December 24, 1907 to pay the bill and thank him, Hitler even bowed to the doctor with the words "I will be eternally grateful to you." In 1908 he wrote him a card in which he thanked again for his efforts. In 1937 Hitler asked visitors from Linz to Bloch in Berlin, and when he made a stop in Linz in the course of the invasion of Linz in 1938, he immediately asked Councilor Adolf Eigl for “his good old Dr. Bloch ”and called him a“ noble Jew ”.

After Austria was annexed to Germany in 1938, Bloch, like all other Jewish doctors, was restricted in the exercise of his profession; a short time later, however, he realized that he was apparently receiving preferential treatment. He was allowed to keep his downtown apartment, had no J stamped on his passport and did not have to mark his practice as “Jewish”. The Gestapo, however, confiscated the two thank you cards written by Hitler; although Bloch tried, he never got it back. The Gestapo told him that his case would be "handled" from Berlin. The National Socialists wanted to make Eduard Bloch an " honorary Aryan ", which would have enabled him and his family to continue living in Germany. But Bloch refused this rare award because he was not ready to betray his faith. The Gestapo then contented themselves with monitoring him.

However, since the living conditions were getting worse and worse and Bloch thought that he recognized from the reactions to his request to give him the two cards from Hitler that the protection of the dictator was limited, he decided to emigrate. In November 1940, the couple emigrated to the United States of America after other members of their family had left Germany a year earlier. Bloch no longer practiced his profession in the USA because his license to practice medicine was not recognized there.

He was interviewed by US agencies in 1941 and 1943 in order to gain deeper insights into the development of Adolf Hitler. Bloch himself published his memories of Hitler in Collier's Weekly as early as 1941 .

He was acquainted with Hedda Wagner , who was a patient and dedicated a novel to him. He himself was interested in books by James Fenimore Cooper and Karl May .

literature

  • Brigitte Hamann : Hitler's Vienna - apprenticeship years of a dictator . 7th edition. Piper, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-492-03598-1 , pp. 53-57.
  • Eduard Bloch: The Autobiography of Obermedizinalrat Eduard Bloch . In: JAS Grenville, Raphael Gross (eds.): The Leo Baeck Institute Year Book , XLVII (2002).
  • Brigitte Hamann: Hitler's noble Jew - the life of the poor doctor Eduard Bloch . Piper, Munich 2008, ISBN 3-492-05164-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Rudolph Binion : ... that you found me: Hitler and the Germans, a psychohistory. Klett-Cotta, 1978, ISBN 3-129-10860-2 , p. 32.
  2. ↑ Wolfgang Zdral : The Hitlers: the unknown family of the Führer. Campus, 2005, ISBN 3-593-37457-9 , p. 45 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  3. ↑ "I will be forever grateful", article from December 6, 2008 by Ulrich Weinzierl on Welt Online
  4. ↑ Volker Ullrich: German history: "Your grateful Adolf Hitler" . In: The time . Retrieved December 11, 2011. 
personal data
SURNAME Bloch, Eduard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physician, family doctor of Adolf Hitler's parents
DATE OF BIRTH January 30, 1872
PLACE OF BIRTH Frauenberg on the Vltava
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1945
Place of death New York City , New York , USA