The Jewish Pathologist Carl Julius Rothberger (1871–1945) and the gradual deprivation of his rights in the Third Reich

Abstract

The Jewish pathologist Carl Julius Rothberger (1871–1945) is undoubtedly one of the most important representatives of his field. His studies on atrial fibrillation, the bundle branch block and arrhythmia perpetua in particular secured him a place in medical history. Rothberger also gave the name to an agar used to prove the neutral red reduction of salmonella (Rothberger-Scheffler agar).While Rothberger’s name is well known in pathology, his biography and his experiences of stigmatization as a Jewish university lecturer have received little attention. The latter are therefore the focus of this paper. Three central research questions need to be answered: What effect did Rothberger's Jewish origins have on his personal life and on his career at the University of Vienna in the first third of the 20th century? What personal changes resulted from the “Anschluss” (“annexation”) of Austria to the German Reich (1938) and the assumption of power by the National Socialists? And finally, what role does Rothberger play in the collective memory of the city of Vienna today – does a kind of public memory exist?The current work is based on extensive primary sources from the Archives of the University of Vienna, the manuscript collection of the Archives of the Medical Faculty there and the Austrian State Archives. Some of these primary sources have been evaluated for the first time. They have been supplemented by contemporary newspaper articles and the relevant secondary literature.Although Rothberger grew up in a largely assimilated upper middle-class family in which religious practice hardly played a role, he was exposed to considerable anti-Semitic and repressive actions, especially from the 1920s onwards. However, these repressions only become apparent at second glance. Stages of increasing rights deprivation included (1) Rothberger's frustratingly unsuccessful applications for the Chair of General and Experimental Pathology, which had been vacant since 1924, (2) his forced early retirement (1936/37), (3) an exclusion order against him along with temporary imprisonment after the “annexation” (1938), and (4) the final closure of the institute which he had helped develop and shape over decades (1942).An active public debate on the victims of National Socialism has been taking place in Vienna and at its university since the turn of the millennium. In this context, Carl Julius Rothberger was officially commemorated at a ceremony in 2010 – a late attempt to rescue him and his work from collective oblivion.