| Born: | 10-06-1917 |
| Faculty: | Medical School | Medical University Vienna |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Lisbeth Anna OSTERMANN (married: Elizabeth Ann WECHTER-OSTERMANN), born on October 6th, 1917 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, Citizenship 1938: Austria), daughter of Dr. med. Max Ostermann (physician, 1886-1967) and Olga Katharina Ostermann, née Schoen (1889-1940), lived in Vienna's 18th district, Colloredogasse 20, was enrolled finally in the spring term 1938 at the Medical School in the 3rd year of her studies.
In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism, she was forced to quit her studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna (Leaving Certificate ("Abgangszeugnis") was issued on November 7th, 1938).
She had to flee Austria and was able to emigrate to Switzerland with her father in time at the end of July 1938. In Switzerland she was able to continue her studies at the University of Basel and received her doctorate in 1941 (her aunt Dr. Rachel Deutsch, née Ostermann, one of the first female Germanists to receive a doctorate, was deprived of her doctorate by the University of Vienna for racist reasons in 1942).
Her father, whose medical practice in Vienna's 9th district, Spitalgasse 1a ("Wiener Physico-Therapeutisches Institut" or "Privatheilanstalt Institut fuer Inhalationstherapie und physikalische Heilverfahren") had been expropriated ("Aryanized") in 1938 and whose license to practice medicine had been revoked throughout the German Reich, was able to work again in Switzerland as a physician and publisher (he was editor from 1913 to 1967 and until 1938 also publisher of the journal "Ars Medici", whose headquarters he moved from Vienna to Basel in 1938). He also lived in Basel, initially Schweizergasse 50, and from 1941 Benkenstrasse 21.
After the end of the Second World War Dr. med. Lisbeth Anna Ostermann emigrated from Switzerland via Southampton, England/UK to the USA where she arrived on February 24th, 1948 with the SS Queen Elizbeth in New York, NY. She passed the State Board Exam and an internship at Flushing Hospital in 1948 and then worked as a physician in private practice in New York. On January 19th, 1954, she became a U.S. citizen as "Elizabeth A. Osterman" and was then living in Brooklyn, NY/USA. That same year she married Paul Wechter in Queens, NY, and continued to live and work as Elizabeth A. Wechter(-Osterman), M.D., in New York.
She later moved to Longboat Harbor, Florida, and died in Longboat Key, FL/USA in early May 2014.
Lit: Archive of the University of Vienna/National MED 1937-1938; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 445; REITER-ZATLOUKAL/SAUER 2022; Austrian Heritage Collection at Leo Baeck Institute New York; www.genteam.at; www.ancestry.de; information from Elisabeth Hammer, Vienna 07/2022, and Dr. Barbara Sauer, Vienna 07/2022.
Herbert Posch
