Emil Flusser

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Emil Flusser (born May 4, 1888 in Křivoklát , Bohemia; † April 28, 1942 between the Theresienstadt concentration camp and the Zamość ghetto ) was a Jewish pediatrician and peace activist. He made a name for himself above all with his book ›War as Disease‹, published in 1932, for which Albert Einstein wrote the foreword. Emil Flusser is considered one of the spiritual pioneers of the medical peace movement .

Life

Emil Flusser was born in 1888 in the Bohemian town of Křivoklát (part of Austria-Hungary until 1918 ) as the son of Leo Flusser (1857–1392) and Therese Flusser, née. Katz (died 1942) was born. The Jewish Flusser family belonged to the German minority in Bohemia. After finishing school, Emil Flusser studied medicine with a focus on paediatrics. At the beginning of the First World War he was drafted and served as a medical officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army until the end of the war. After the end of the war he settled in České Budějovice as a practicing pediatrician . With the strengthening of revanchist, nationalist groups in Germany and Austria, but also with increasing tensions between the German minority and the Czech population, Flusser's involvement in the peace movement began. After the defeat of Czechoslovakia and the German invasion in 1939, Emil Flusser was banned from working because of his Jewish origins. Even so, he continued to treat primarily Jewish children. In 1942 he was finally deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp . He and his family died on a transport to Zamosc in April that year.

Create

“ As a pediatrician, I am faced with madness, that is, a mental illness, almost like a layman. But interpreting the whining and complaining of the helpless and the innocent is my job. I see people suffering innocently and helplessly, and then I dare to take the step into an area that is perhaps closer to other subjects; I dared to do it because I hear calls for help and my attempt to help may be more than no help at all. The laypeople know that war is madness, that is, a disease. May the doctors now also know that they are there to help the sick. «

Emil Flusser initially devoted himself entirely to paediatrics and, in this context, to the topics of sexual hygiene and education. After a few specialist articles, ›The Screaming Infant‹ appeared in 1928 in the renowned medical specialist publisher Urban & Schwarzenberg . In 1932 his main work finally appeared, which made him known beyond the boundaries of the subject. ›War as Disease‹ was published by the north German publisher Paul Riechert, who had made a name for himself in the 1920s with publications on the peace movement and international understanding. In his preface Albert Einstein expressed the hope that "the book will open the eyes of some contemporaries".

Emil Flusser did not endeavor to take a moral or philosophical consideration, but rather to fathom - in a medical anamnesis, so to speak - the socio-psychological causes of the war madness and national hatred, as preliminary stages of the war. He names various endogenous and exogenous causes of human belligerence and mania for war and finally states: In its symptoms and sometimes also in its causes, enthusiasm for war is comparable to psychopathological illnesses. He repeatedly expresses his conviction that war is a mental illness and, above all, that in normal peacetime the madness of war is well known to every reasonable person. War can therefore only be the result of a collective mass psychosis. He explicitly addresses the medical profession of his time, whose most urgent task he sees is to protect himself from falling prey to this psychosis in order to ultimately develop a 'therapy' against it.

Others

After the National Socialists came to power, "War as a Disease" was banned and, with the exception of a few surviving copies, burned. When Peter van den Dungen began to grapple with the life and work of Emil Flusser in the 1990s, he could only find it in a few academic specialist libraries.

Publications

  • The crying infant, Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin 1928.
  • War as a disease. With a foreword by Albert Einstein, Paul Riechert Verlag, Heide / Holstein 1932.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ van den Dungen, Peter: Dr. Emil Flusser. Forgotten Precursor of the Medical Peace Movement, in: Medicine, Conflict, Survival 1996, 12 (2), p. 90.
  2. ↑ Löwová, Markéta: MUDr. Emil Flusser - dětský lékař jako posel humanity. Příspěvek ke studiu židovské intelektuality v první polovině 20, p. 12f.
  3. ^ Emil Flusser, War as Disease, Pinneberg 2018, 7f.
  4. ^ Emil Flusser, War as Disease, Pinneberg 2018, pp. 159f.
  5. ^ Emil Flusser, War as Disease, Heide 1932.
  6. ↑ van den Dungen, Peter: Dr. Emil Flusser. Forgotten Precursor of the Medical Peace Movement, in: Medicine, Conflict, Survival 1996, 12 (2), pp. 91–92 ..
personal data
SURNAME Flusser, Emil
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Jewish pediatrician and peace activist
DATE OF BIRTH May 4, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Křivoklát , Bohemia
DATE OF DEATH April 28, 1942
Place of death between the Theresienstadt concentration camp and the Zamość ghetto