Sources
Heusler, Andreas: Israelitische Privatklinik e.V., in: Winfried Nerdinger (Hg.): Ort und Erinnerung. Nationalsozialismus in München, Salzburg 2006, S. 143.
Israelite Private Clinic
1911 – 1942
Sicht von der Kobellstraße auf die Hermann-Schmid-Straße, hinten: Israelische Privatklinik, 1910 | StadtAM, HB-II-c-0511
Social welfare and care of the sick have long been counted among the most important basic principles and tasks of Jewish Communities. The ‘Krankenheim Israelitische Privatklinik e.V.’ (Israelite Private Clinic Infirmary) organization was established in 1906 on the initiative of physicians August Feuchtwanger and Joseph Marschütz and the B’nai B’rith lodge. The organization bought the building on Hermann-Schmid-Straße 5 in 1910 and opened an infirmary treating people of all religious affiliations in 1911. Until 1933, only half of the patients were Jewish. During the First World War, the infirmary also provided medical care for soldiers injured at the front. In 1919, it was expanded to include the adjacent building at Hermann-Schmid-Straße 7. A maternity ward was added in 1925, and by the early 1930s, the infirmary had 40 beds. The private clinic also had a nurses’ home, which was established in 1900 and formed part of the ‘Lipschütz’sche Versorgungsanstalt’ (Lipschütz Care Home) until 1911, when it was moved to the second floor of the Israelite Private Clinic.
The Nazi concept of the ‘German racial corpus’ and the superiority of German blood had led to drastic cuts in the healthcare available to the Jewish population even before the enactment of the Nuremberg laws in 1935; Jews were ultimately banned from receiving medical treatment at public hospitals in 1936. From then on, the only places offering refuge and medical care for Jewish people were the Israelite Infirmary in Munich and two other hospitals in Fürth and Würzburg. The infirmary was dissolved in May 1942 on Heinrich Himmler’s orders; the patients, nursing staff and physicians were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp and ghetto from June that year. The director of the Israelite Private Clinic, Julius Spanier, was among the physicians deported.
The Nazi organization ‘Lebensborn e.V.’ (literally ‘Fount of Life’) then appropriated the building without ever paying the agreed purchase price. The building was destroyed during the war.