Marlene Ratzersdorfer (verh. Jantsch)

Born:	09-26-1917
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled student

Marlene RATZERSDORFER (later JANTSCH), born on September 26^th, 1917 in Osterwiede, Harz (Saxony-Anhalt)/German Reich (entitled residency (heimatberechtigt") for Bratislava/Czechoslovakia [Slovakia], citizenship 1938: Czechoslovakia), daughter of Dipl.-Ing. Hugo Ratzersdorfer (engineer, 1881-1944) and Helene Ratzersdorfer, née Zickfeldt (1877-1935), moved with her father from Berlin to Vienna in 1933, lived in Vienna's 7^th district, Westbahnstrasse 33, and passed her school leaving certificate (Matura/Reifepruefung) at the Doeblinger Maedchenrealgymnasium in 1936. She then began her medical studies at the University of Vienna in the fall term of 1936/37 and was enrolled in the 2^nd year of her studies at the Medical School in the spring term of 1938 After the Anschluss in 1938, she was perpetrated as a so-called "Mischling 2. Grades" for racist reasons, but was still able to continue her studies as a Czechoslovakian citizen for the time being - with revocation at any time. However, from the fall term of 1938/39 onwards, enrollment was only "subject to revocation". She was able to complete her studies on April 26^th, 1941, graduated and earned the "Dr. med. univ." degree (without the "blocking note" for "half-breeds", which would have been connected with a professional ban). She was at first able to work briefly officially as an assistant at the Surgical Clinic I of the Vienna General Hospital, under the direction of the National Socialist Prof. Leopold Schoenbauer (1888-1963), but soon left the staff and became his private assistant in 1942. She researched and wrote numerous studies on medical history, some of them very extensive, but all of them were published in the name of Schoenbauer.
She married the physician Dr. Hans Jantsch (1918-1994) in early 1942, later a university professor and head of the Clinic for Physical Medicine, and they had four children in 1943, 1946 and 1950. She remembered, that her paternal grandmother, Dr. Eugenie Jenny Ratzersdorfer (1859-1941), who jpoined the family when moving to Vienna, died there in 1941, shortly before their planned deportation. Her father died in Vienna in 1944. In 1945 the racist threat ended. Her protector, Prof. Leopold Schoenbauer, although a National Socialist, was not dismissed in 1945, but rather, in addition to being a full professor and director of the clinic, he also became director of the entire Vienna General Hospital and head of the Vienna University Institute for the History of Medicine, which was supervised, informally managed, and rebuilt by Marlene Jantsch beginning in 1945 - in his name. She continued to publish, first credited as a co-author but more and more crediting her name as the main author from 1948 on. She also continued to work as an internist at the surgical university clinic (haed: Schoenbauer)
In 1957 she was able to habilitate in the subject "History of Medicine" at the Medical School and from 1958 she was also a specialist in internal medicine. On the same day as she, Dr. Erna Lesky, her direct competitor, a former National Socialist, well-connected historian and physician, was habilitated in in the same field "History of Medicine" at the same Medical School of the University of Vienna. Within five years, Lesky took over the management of the Institute, which meant that Marlene Jantsch was no longer able to work there from 1963 and moved to the gynecological and urological department of the Lainz Hospital as a consultant physician and later to the new University Clinic for Urology at the General Hospital as an internist. In addition, she ran her own medical practice in the last years.

She died on July 17^th, 1994 in Vienna and is burried at Neustift cemetery in Vienna.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment form ("Nationale") MED 1937-1941; graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") MED XII (1929-1941), Nr. 5675; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 454; Sonia HORN, in: KEINTZEL/KOROTIN 2002, 333f.; Felicitas SEEBACHER, Erna Lesky, general and diplomat. Networking as a powertool for the history of medicine, in: The Circulation of Science and Technology. Proceedings of the 4^th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science, Barcelona, 18-20 November 2010, 2010, 208–216; Ilse KOROTIN, in: dies. ed., BiografiA. Lexikon österreichischer Frauen, Bd. 2: I-O, Vienna, Cologne & Weimar 2016, 1477f.; Fritz FELLNER & Doris A. CORRADINI, Österreichische Geschichtswissenschaft im 20. Jahrhundert. Ein biographisch-bibliographisches Lexikon, Vienna 2006; Michael HUBENSTORF, Kontinuitaet und Bruch in der Medizingeschichte. Medizin in Oesterreich 1938–1955, in: Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Kontinuitaet und Bruch. 1938 – 1945 – 1955, Munster 1988/2004, 299–332; Wikipedia; VanSwietenBlog MUW.

Herbert Posch