Felix A. Theilhaber

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Felix Aaron Theilhaber (born September 5, 1884 in Bamberg ; died January 26, 1956 in Tel Aviv ) was a German-Israeli dermatologist, writer and Zionist.

family

His father, Adolph Theilhaber (1854/64; † 1937) came from a Franconian cattle dealer family and after receiving his doctorate in 1874 initially worked in the Nuremberg hospital as an assistant in the surgical department. From 1878 to 1887 he was a tutor at the midwifery school in Bamberg. In 1888 the family moved to Munich, where he was a doctor for obstetrics and gynecology and the owner of a private gynecological clinic. As chairman of the Daniel-Bund e. V. he was committed to the "ethical renewal of Judaism" and founded allotment gardens for this purpose. He wrote medical textbooks on the development and treatment of carcinomas and the fight against disease disposition as a healing method . In 1896 he took part in the hotly debated question in the Münchner Medizinische Wochenschrift whether “the friction of the genitals with the saddle results in libido sexualis”, and reassured that this “can only be done by women who are already so depraved that their morale can no longer be damaged by cycling ”.

His brother, Robert Theilhaber (1881–1942 Auschwitz) lived in Munich's Löfftzstrasse from March 1933 and had a law firm on Promenadeplatz . On August 1, 1939, he emigrated to Paris, was taken to an internment camp in southern France in 1940 and then deported to the east.

Career

Felix Theilhaber studied medicine in Berlin and Munich. In 1910 he wrote his doctoral thesis on the theory of the connection between social status and race and the development of uterine carcinomas . The subject was influenced by his mother's early death from uterine cancer and his father's work on it.

As early as 1900 he was a member of the local Zionist group that had just been founded in Munich and founded a Jewish gymnastics club. In 1906 he made his first trip to Palestine . During his studies he founded a Zionist student association in the cartel of Zionist associations . From 1907 to 1910 he ran the magazine Palestine in a one-man business.

He also attended lectures in economics and demography. In 1911 he published his demographic study, Der Untergang der Deutschen Juden (The Downfall of German Jews) , which was compiled by Georg von Mayr , on the migration of Jews from the countryside to the big cities, mixed marriage and the birth rate of less than one child per family. Their fate, as he wrote, was decided and only Zionism could rejuvenate the Jewish people in the diaspora. It was clear to him, like Arthur Ruppin , that the downfall of Judaism could only be stopped in a Jewish home .

From April to September 1911 he was an assistant at the gynecological clinic in Jena under the full professor of gynecology and obstetrics Max Henkel (1870–1941). As a young doctor, Theilhaber volunteered in the medical service of the Turkish Red Crescent in the Italo-Turkish War (September 1911 - October 1912) in Tripoli and in the Balkan Wars (1912-1913) against the Bulgarians . He was a doctor for the Turkish government in Palestine. The hope of being able to settle in Palestine as a farewell Turkish medical officer, however, was dashed.

In 1913 he wrote another demographic study Das Sterile Berlin . Due to the shockingly tight, unhealthy conditions of the Berlin population, which he experienced as a young doctor, he concluded that Berlin was in decline. In the same year he decided to found the Society for Sexual Reform (Gesex) at Bülowstrasse 89 in Berlin . In 1905, Helene Stöcker had founded the Association for Maternity Protection . He campaigned for birth control and against the criminalization of abortion and homosexuality. He wrote one book after the other and, along with Magnus Hirschfeld and Wilhelm Reich, was one of the pioneers of the sexual reform movement .

During the First World War (1914–1918) he was called up as a field doctor and used the time to write other Zionist writings and to collect material on the use of Jewish soldiers at the front. During the war he married Stefanja Czaplinska, who helped him with his studies. In 1918 his first son Joachim, called Thola, was born. In 1921 his son Max Michael (Adin Talbar-Theilhaber) was born in Wilmersdorf.

After the end of the war he settled in Berlin as a specialist in skin and venereal diseases. Gesex was also reopened. In 1923 the director of the Moscow Institute for Social Hygiene, Grigorii Batkis, published The Sexual Revolution in Russia . Stefanja translated it into German two years later. In 1925 he founded a coalition to reform German criminal law. In 1930 he co-founded the first clinic for birth control and sex education in Berlin.

On May 30, 1933, the Gestapo put him and another 50 doctors in Plötzensee prison for two months. After that he lost his license as a doctor. In 1935 Theilhaber emigrated with the family to what was then the British Mandate Palestine and opened a medical practice there. In the two years before, however, over 1,000 doctors had come to Palestine from Germany (with a Jewish population of just 350,000) and so the patients stayed away. He had brought 4,000 British pounds with him from Germany, which he invested so wisely that the family could live on the interest (a policeman earned five pounds a month, 20 pounds was a peak income).

In Palestine, Theilhaber founded with other doctors who had come from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia, the private health insurance with free choice of doctor Kupat Cholim Maccabi (as an alternative to the union's own fund, which was based on the Soviet principle). Until his death it had 30,000 members, today there are several hundred thousand.

Martin Feuchtwanger published in his small publishing house Edition Olympia Theilhaber's works Judenschicksal - Acht Biographien . The last book, on Leon Trotsky, lies unpublished as a manuscript in Theilhaber's estate.

Publications

  • Contributions to the sexual problem ; Berlin, hangover
  • On the doctrine of the connection between social position and race and the development of uterine carcinomas ; Munich, Berlin, Hirschwald, 1910
  • The Fall of the German Jews: An Economic Study ; Munich: Reinhardt, 1911
  • At the red crescent moon in front of Tripoli: travel experiences from e. Trip to Turkish-Italian. War zone ; Cologne, Schaffstein, 1912
  • The sterile Berlin: an economic study ; Berlin, 1913
  • Does the material and social advancement bring dangers to the families in relation to racial hygiene? - Development of the Jewry of Berlin. In: Racial and Social Biology. B. Teubner publishing house, Leipzig and Berlin, 1913
  • The damage to the race through social and economic advancement: proven in the Berlin Jews ; Berlin: Lamm, 1914
  • The sexual distress of the students. In: The New Generation. Helene Stöcker, 2nd issue, 14/2, 1914
  • The birth restriction in ancient times and among primitive peoples. In: The New Generation. Helene Stöcker, 4th issue, 9th year.
  • Generative politics. In: The New Generation. Helene Stöcker, 5th issue, 9th year
  • The Jews in the World War: with special consideration of the conditions for Germany ; Berlin: Weltverlag, 1916 ( online )
  • Leaves from the field . In: Neue Jüdische Monatshefte, Vol. 1, Issue 14, April 25, 1917, pp. 415-418.
  • Simple war experiences ; Berlin: Lamm, 1916 ( Lamm's Jüdische Feldbücherei 7)
  • Jewish Aviators in World War I: A Book of Remembrance ; Berlin: Lamm, 1919 ( online )
    • Jewish aviators in World War I ; Edited by Adin Theilhaber-Talbar and Günther Keller. Facsimile of the first edition from 1924. Berlin: Verlag Der Schild, 2009
  • Herzl words ; Compilation based on Theodor Herzl ; Berlin: Welt-Verlag, 1921
  • The woman before and in marriage , with father Adolf; In: Frauen- und Mutterbuch. Strecker & Schröder Publishing House, Stuttgart, 1922
  • Your kingdom come! A chiliastic novel from the time of Rembrandt and Spinoza ; Berlin: Schwetschke, 1924
  • Human love , contribution to the sexual problem, 1st issue, Verlag Der Syndikalist ; Fritz Kater , Berlin, 1925
  • Prostitution ; Contribution to the sexual problem, 7th issue, 1926
  • Sexuality and eroticism ; Contribution to the sexual problem, issue 9, 1927
  • The circumcision ; Verlag L. Lamm, Berlin, 1927
  • Penitentiary or maternity ; Contribution to the sexual problem, 11th issue
  • Morality and criminal law: alternative proposal on sexual and sex-related acts ; Cartel for Reform of Sexual Criminal Law, Verlag der Neue Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1927
  • The problem of the large number of children - culture and life. In: Monthly Cultural History and Biological Family Studies. Verlag Karl Hofer, Schorndorf (Württbg.), February 1927
  • Collaboration on the Jewish Lexicon , 1927
  • Goethe: Sexus and Eros ; Berlin-Grunewald: Horen-Verlag, 1929
  • Blood miracles and delusions of love ; Berlin: Asy-Verlag, 1929
  • Population processes in Wroclaw at the end of the 18th century. In: Journal for Demography & Statistics of the Jews No. 4/5, April / May 1931
  • Fate and Achievement: Jews in German Research and Technology ; Berlin: Welt-Verl., 1931
  • Jewish welfare and social policy. In: New Jewish monthly books. October / November 1931
  • On the population problem of Berlin's Jews. In: New Jewish monthly books
  • Lombroso. In: Menorah - Jewish Family Gazette: Science, Art, Literature. March / April 1932
  • History of the Jewish people ; Berlin: Kedem, 1936
  • In the struggle for God, people and land ; Berlin: Kedem, 1936
  • The fate of the Jews: eight biographies ; Tel Aviv: Ed. Olympia, around 1939
  • Oche Destinos ; (Judenschicksal) Editions Estellas, Buenos Aires, 1946
  • The graphic historical atlas of Palestine by Felix Aaron Theilhaber ; with J. Szapiro, 1942
  • The Graphic Historical Atlas of Palestine, from 2000-333 BC to the present time , Hebrew ed., Tel Aviv
  • "Palestine", a "monthly for the economic development of Palestine"

Journal articles (selection)

In: The Socialist Doctor

  • Sex counseling. Volume II (1927), Issue 4 (March), pp. 17-19 digitized
  • Morality before the Reichstag. The doctor and the sex legislation. Volume V (1929), Issue 4 (December), pp. 157-162 digitized

Secondary literature

  • Renate Heuer : Felix Aaron Theilhaber. In: Manfred Treml , Wolf Weigand (ed.): History and culture of the Jews in Bavaria. Resumes . Munich: Saur, 1988, pp. 293-298
  • Lehfeldt, Hans: Medical pioneers of the sexual reform: Magnus Hirschfeld, Ernst Graefenberg and Felix A. Theilhaber. Mitt. Magnus-Hirschfeld-Ges., No. 5, 21-25, 1985
  • Lehfeldt, Hans: Felix A. Theilhaber - Pioneer sexologist. Arch. Sex. Beh. 15, 1-12, 1986
  • Marcuse, Max: Review by Felix A. Theilhaber: Der Untergang der Deutschen Juden, 2nd edition. Berlin: Jewish publishing house. Z. Sexualwiss. 8, 331, 1921/22
  • Volkmar Sigusch : Felix A. Theilhaber (1884-1956) . In: Personenlexikon der Sexualforschung, ed. by Volkmar Sigusch and Günter Grau. Frankfurt / M., New York: Campus Verlag 2009, pp. 697–701.
  • Eva Edelmann-Ohler: Theilhaber, Felix Aaron. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , pp. 501-503.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Adin Talbar: About my father Felix Theilhaber. In: sexarchive.info. July 2, 2000, accessed February 10, 2016 .
  2. ↑ a b c Adolf and his sons Adolf and his sons ( Memento from January 21, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) In: Eine Tages (Spiegel Online)
  3. ↑ ANNIVERSARIES AND OTHER CELEBRATIONS
  4. ↑ monuments, memorials, memorials to the victims of National Socialism in Munich 1933-1945 ( Memento of 16 December 2011 at the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Reinhard Weber: The fate of Jewish lawyers in Bavaria after 1933. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2006, ISBN 9783486580600 , p. 154. Restricted preview in the Google book search
  6. ^ Together with Jakob Reich, the Jewish Echo founded in 1913 and the Joint Committee of Eastern Jews in November 1918 ; was married to Lion Feuchtwanger's sister Henni from 1916 to 1939
  7. ↑ Michael Brenner: Prophets of the Past. CH Beck, 2006, ISBN 9783406549816 , p. 214. Restricted preview in the Google book search
  8. ↑ The Max Henkel case. In: db-thueringen.de. Accessed December 31, 2014 .
  9. ↑ Heike Specht: The Feuchtwangers. Wallstein Verlag, 2006, ISBN 9783835300170 , p. 282. limited preview in Google book search
personal data
SURNAME Theilhaber, Felix A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Theilhaber, Felix Aaron (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German dermatologist, writer and Zionist
DATE OF BIRTH September 5, 1884
PLACE OF BIRTH Bamberg
DATE OF DEATH January 26, 1956
Place of death Tel Aviv