Philipp Schwartz

Philipp Schwartz
Schwartz in 1960
Born	(1894-07-19)19 July 1894 Versec, Austria-Hungary
Died	1 December 1977(1977-12-01) (aged 83) Fort Lauderdale, U.S.
Scientific career
Fields	Pathology
Institutions	Goethe University Frankfurt University of Istanbul Warren State Hospital

Philipp Schwartz (19 July 1894 – 1 December 1977) was a Hungarian-born neuropathologist. In the interwar period he was a professor in Frankfurt, Germany. He became a major figure in the community of German émigré scientists after 1933 and founded the Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad [de].

Early career

Schwartz was born on 19 July 1894 in Versec. He studied medicine in Budapest and earned his doctorate there in 1919. In the same year, he became an assistant of Bernhard Fischer at the Senckenberg Institute of Pathology at the University of Frankfurt, where he worked for the next 14 years. He earned his Habilitation in 1923, became an associate professor in 1926 and a full professor in 1927.

Life in exile

Following the Nazi takeover in Germany in 1933 he was dismissed from his university chair for being Jewish, and he emigrated to Zürich, Switzerland, where he founded the Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad [de] to help other refugees find new employment. He notably established contacts with Turkish universities. Together with Albert Malche, Schwartz convinced the Turkish government to offer a significant number of persecuted German professors employment in Turkey. Finally, contracts of up to five years were signed. Over time around 150 academics immigrated to Turkey. Most of them were from the economic, finance, legal or medical fields, while social sciences played a less important role.^[1] He later became director of the Department of Pathology at the University of Istanbul.

From 1953 he worked as a pathologist at the Warren State Hospital in Pennsylvania and chaired a research department there. In 1957 he was formally reinstated as a Professor (emeritus) at the Goethe University, but the university declined his wish to resume teaching due to his age.^[2]

Family

His daughter is the Zürich psychiatrist Susan Ferenz-Schwartz. He is interred at the Fluntern Cemetery in Zürich.^[3][4]

References

1. Gungor, Serap (14 March 2016). "From Nazi Germany to Istanbul University". We Love Istanbul.
2. Gerald Kreft: "'Dedicated to Represent the True Spirit of the German Nation in the World': Philipp Schwartz (1894–1977), Founder of the Notgemeinschaft." In: Shula Marks, Paul Weindling, Laura Wintour (eds.): In Defence of Learning. The Plight, Persecution and Placement of Academic Refugees 1933–1980s (Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 169). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2011, ISBN 978-0-19-726481-2, pp. 127–142
3. Brigitte Hürlimann: "Das Vermächtnis des Philipp Schwartz." Neue Zürcher Zeitung. No. 45, 23 February 2013, p. 37
4. Gabor Hamza: Studies on Legal Relations between the Ottoman Empire/the Republic of Turkey and Hungary, Cyprus, and Macedonia. Selected Essays in Hungarian, English, German, and Turkish. Klaus Schwarz Verlag, Berlin, 2017. ISBN 978-3-87997-463-4