| Born: | 10-14-1876 |
| Faculty: | Medical School | Medical University Vienna |
| Category: | Expelled teacher |
Richard VOLK (born on October 14th, 1876 in Lundenburg, Moravia/Austro-Hungarian Empire [Břeclav/Czech Republic] as son of Alois (1847-1927) and Rosa Volk, died on September 14th, 1943 in Mexico City, was lecturer for dermatology and syphilidology at the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna in 1938 with the title (but not the position) of an associate professor.
He had studied medicine at the University of Vienna and also received his Dr.med.univ. degree here in 1900. Subsequently he was employed at the I. medical univ.-clinic (Prof. Hermann Nothnagel), at the II. gynecological univ.-clinic (Prof. Friedrich Schauta), as well as with professors Wagner and Lang. He did research in Switzerland (Berne) and France (Paris) on dermatological issues and, back in Vienna, became assistant professor at the II. univ-clinic for skin and venereal diseases of the Vienna General Hospital. From 1908 he was head of this department.
In 1912 he habilitated and became a private lecturer ("Privatdozent") in dermatology and syphilidology, and in 1921 he was awarded the title of associate professor ("Pd., tit.ao.Prof."). From 1918 he was also primary physician of the pulmonary sanatorium in the Wilhelminenspital (he lived in Vienna's 8th district, Langegasse 63). He was the recipient of numerous war awards as well as orders of merit, was a member of the Society of Physicians in Vienna, a member of the Vienna Dermatological Society and the Vienna Society of Tuberculosis Physicians. He published numerous scientific articles (among others on immunity theory and skin tuberculosis) and wrote the Handbuch der Lichttherapie (1927).
He was persecuted in times of National Socialism on racist grounds and was removed from office on April 22nd, 1938; his venia legendi was revoked and he was expelled from the University of Vienna.
He had to flee Vienna with his family and they managed to emigrate to Mexico City/Mexico in 1939, where he ran a private practice together with his wife - he had been married to the physician Dr. Else Friedland (1880-1953) since 1908. He became a member of the Dermatological Society of Mexico, and received honorary doctorates from the Mexican universities of San Luis Potosi and Guadalajara.
His wife, Dr. Else Volk-Friedland, had been born in Vienna on March 21st, 1880, had attended the girls' high school of the Verein für erweiterte Frauenbildung there, and had graduated in 1899. She studied medicine - one of the first women to be allowed to do so - and received her doctorate in 1905. She had worked with Prof. Heinrich Obersteiner at the Neurological Institute in Vienna until 1907. Despite her obvious interest in psychiatry and neurology - she was the only female member of the Vienna Society of Psychiatry and Neurology and participated in relevant events - she had established herself as a general practitioner in 1907 for men's and women's diseases in Vienna's 1st district, Kärntnerstrasse 28. In addition, she had taught the subject of hygiene at the Schwarzwald School from the 1905/06 school year and had been appointed school physician in its institutes by the Association for the Promotion of Higher Commercial Women's Education in 1912.
She remained active as a physician even after her marriage in 1908 and the birth of her son Georg Heinrich in 1910 and her daughter Eva Franziska in 1912, and from 1919 she was head of a children's outpatient clinic. She was also active as a journalist and published, among other things, numerous articles on women's health for the magazine Die Frau und Mutter.
After the family's flight to Mexico in 1939 and the death of her husband in 1943, she continued to run the practice alone and was active in German-language exile literature in Latin America. She founded the exile publishing house "El Libro Libre" (The Free Book) together with other migrants from Austria like the physician and sexual reformer Marie Frischauf-Pappenheim, and the writers Bruno Frei, Leo Katz and Egon Erwin Kisch, and was also active as a writer, translator and painter in Mexico. She also created numerous radio programs in Mexico and wrote several articles in the exile periodicals "Freies Deutschland" and "Demokratische Post" and was vice president of the "Accion Republicana Austriaca" in Mexico (ARAM). In 1946, the Mexican publishing house Prometeo published her novel "Cristo y el Judia," in which she deals with Catholic anti-Semitism. She died on February 27th, 1953.
Dr. Richard Volk had died of a stroke in Mexico City on September 14th, 1943.
On September 9th, 1953, a bust was erected in memory of Richard Volk at the Lupus Pavilion in the Wilhelminenspital in Vienna's 16th dsitrict, which he had directed for 20 years beginning in 1918. In 2008, at the Medical University, his name was included in the "Fountain of Remembrance" and in the VanSwietenBlog about the physicians expelled in 1938, and at the University of Vienna in the "Memorial Book of the Victims of National Socialism at the University in 1938".
Lit: Archive of the University of Vienna/Personalbogen S 304.1324, photo 106.I.1591; Established female physicians 1910; FISCHER 1932/33, 1626; MERINSKY 1980, 273-274; Christian KLOYBER, Österreichische Intellektuelle in Mexiko, in: STADLER II.1. 1988 [2004], 1004-1011; MUEHLBERGER 1993, 34; FEIKES 1999; Dietrich von ENGELHARDT (ed.), Biographische Enzyklopädie deutschsprachiger Mediziner 2, Munich 2002, 656; BLUMESBERGER 2002, 1414f.; Ariadne|ÖNB, Frauen in Bewegung; BOLBECHER/KAISER 2000, 663f.; UB MedUni Vienna/van Swieten Blog [https://ub.meduniwien.ac.at/blog/?p=722]; KOROTIN 2016, 3410f; REITER-ZATLOUKAL/SAUER 2023.
Herbert Posch
