Felix Hirschfeld

Felix Hirschfeld was born in Militsch in Lower Silesia (now Milicz, Poland) to Julius Hirschfeld and his wife Johanna Loewe. His father, Julius, who was born in 1831, also came from Militsch and died when Felix was around 11 years old. From then on, Felix lived with his mother, who was born in 1835 in Ratibor (today Racibórz in Poland) and died in Berlin in 1922 at the age of 86 and his younger brother Eugen (1866–1946). Eugen emigrated to Australia in 1889, where he worked as a doctor and politician.¹

After graduating from high school, Felix Hirschfeld took up medical studies, which took him to Würzburg, Berlin and Breslau. One of his former teachers at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-University was the physiological chemist Ernst Leopold Salkowski (1844-1923).
²Hirschfeld was awarded his doctorate in 1886. In the following years, he worked at the Chemical Laboratory of the Institute of Pathology at the University of Berlin and published several papers, in particular on protein metabolism.³

From 1889 to 1894, Hirschfeld worked at the Moabit Hospital in Berlin. When the tuberculin developed by Robert Koch was introduced into the clinic in 1890/91 as a supposed cure for tuberculosis, Hirschfeld was in personal contact with Koch and his colleague Paul Ehrlich.⁴

Doctor, Researcher and University Lecturer

Hirschfeld's own research, which led to his habilitation and private lectureship at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität in Berlin in 1892/93, increasingly turned to diabetes and patient nutrition following his experiences in Moabit. He spoke about coma diabeticum at the Verein für innere Medicin (Association for Internal Medicine) in Berlin in 1895.⁵

Hirschfeld's research interests were reflected in his work as a general practitioner, on which he concentrated from 1894. Meanwhile, he continued to publish. In 1897, his monograph on specific nutritional cures was published.⁶ He published  further articles on nutrition and diabetes, including in the social-hygienic fundamental work ‘Krankheit und soziale Lage’ by Max Mosse and Gustav Tugendreich.⁷

From 1896 to 1924, he was a member of the DGIM and regularly attended its Wiesbaden Congress. At the 16th congress in 1898, he presented a paper on diabetes, and four years later on gastric cancer.⁸ He was also a member of the Berlin Medical Society from 1895 until at least 1931.⁹ In 1922, he spoke to the Berlin Society for Internal Medicine and Paediatrics on the subject of ‘Ueberlastungssymptome[n] der erkrankten Nieren’.¹⁰

Driven into Suicide

Hirschfeld's achievements in research and teaching led to his appointment as associate professor of internal medicine in 1921. After more than three decades of teaching at the university and shortly after his 70th birthday, his teaching licence was revoked on 14 September 1933 under paragraph 3 of the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service because of his Jewish heritage. In view of the ever-increasing number of humiliations, Hirschfeld attempted to commit suicide by taking morphine. He was taken to the Charité hospital, where he died on 16 July 1938.¹¹

Felix Hirschfeld left behind his wife Grete (Margarete) Rebecca Baerwald, who came from Nakel in Upper Silesia (now Nakło, Poland) and their son Walter, who was born in 1899. Felix married Grete in 1898. Walter, a doctor, emigrated to the United States in 1934 and died in Woburn near Boston in 1997 at a ripe old age. Felix Hirschfeld's widow Grete and his sister-in-law Else Esther Wiesenthal were most likely murdered in the Shoah. The two twin sisters were deported from Berlin to the Warsaw Ghetto on the so-called 12th east transport on 3 April 1942, where their traces are lost.¹²

An obituary published on 7 August 1938 in the C.V.-Zeitung – the mouthpiece of the Central-Verein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens (Central Association of German Citizens of Jewish Faith) – says the following about Felix Hirschfeld: ‘He was an important researcher. His book on diabetes caused a sensation at the time. He expressed groundbreaking new ideas in it. He coined the term “malnutrition”. 
The treatment of diabetes was expanded over time with the discovery of insulin, but the basic scientific view of the condition stayed the same, thus the connection to the name Felix Hirschfeld will remain. Hirschfeld was a true scholar: a simple, modest man, filled with high idealism. Anything narrow-minded, small-minded or based on appearances was far from him. He only recognised the spiritual man. He was unable to understand the times with their turmoil and storms. His noble nature also broke under their weight."¹³

Laying of 'Stolpersteine' in 2024

Felix Hirschfeld's young family initially lived in Berlin's Tiergarten district at Magdeburger Strasse 21 (today Kluckstrasse). In 1905, the Berlin address book lists the address as Genthiner Strasse 40, and in 1910 Von-der-Heydt-Strasse 13. By no later than 1915, the family was living at Kurfürstenstrasse 106, with the last move in 1932/23. From then on, the address was Bamberger Strasse 17. ‘Stolpersteine’ (stumbling stones) were laid there on March 5, 2024 in memory of Felix Hirschfeld, his wife and his sister-in-law.¹⁴