Julius Spanier

Julius Spanier (born on April 18, 1880 in Munich ; died on January 27, 1959 there ) was a German doctor, member of the Bavarian Senate and chairman of the regional association of Jewish religious communities in Bavaria .

Life

Julius Spanier was born in Munich in 1880. He studied medicine in Munich and Berlin and then opened a practice as a pediatrician in Munich. During the First World War he was used in a military hospital at the front. Then he was back in his practice and as a school doctor. In 1919 he was a co-founder of the Munich infant care scheme.

After the seizure of power in 1933, all offices were withdrawn from him due to his Jewish origins and, like all Jewish doctors, he was no longer allowed to officially call himself a doctor. After the November pogroms in 1938 he feared deportation and initially hid in the Israelite hospital and nurses' home , where he suffered a heart attack. He later became the chief physician of this hospital and also moved his apartment there. He could only visit his private patients at night, and he treated needy patients free of charge. In addition, he was obliged by the SS to work as a medical officer when using Jewish forced laborers and as a camp doctor in the Berg am Laim assembly camp . In June 1942 the Israelite Hospital was forcibly closed and he was the first Munich doctor to be deported to Theresienstadt . There he was imprisoned until the end of the war and worked as a doctor. He and his wife Zippora are among the few Munich Jews who survived the Holocaust.

After the war, Spanier was chief physician and head of the children's clinic on Lachnerstrasse from 1946 to 1955 . He was President of the Israelite Religious Community in Munich and Upper Bavaria , from 1947 to 1953 chairman of the regional association of Jewish religious communities in Bavaria and from 1948 head of the Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation . From 1947 to 1951 he was a member of the Bavarian Senate . In 1958 he was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit .

Julius Spanier died in Munich in 1959. He is buried in the New Israelite Cemetery in Munich. A memorial plaque has been commemorating him since 1960 on the building of the former children's clinic at Lachnerstrasse 39.

literature

• Helga Pfoertner: Living with history. Vol. 3, Literareron, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-8316-1026-6 , pp. 64-67 ( PDF; 6.0 MB ( Memento from June 26, 2008 in the Internet Archive ))
• Friedrich Deich: Jewish physicians in Munich. In: Hans Lamm (Ed.): Past days. Jewish culture in Munich , Langen Müller Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7844-1867-8 , pp. 315-316.
• Gerty Spies : Memories of Dr. Julius Spanier. In: Hans Lamm (Ed.): Past days. Jewish culture in Munich , Langen Müller Verlag, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-7844-1867-8 , pp. 130-135.