| Born: | 12-03-1887 |
| Faculty: | Medical School | Medical University Vienna |
| Category: | Deprivation of academic degree |
Walter SCHILLER (born on December 3rd, 1887 in Vienna's 1st district, Schoenlaterngasse 13, the only child of KommRat Friedrich Schiller (publishing bookseller from Prague, partner in the publishing house Moritz Perles books, 1854-1943) and Emma Schiller, née Friedmann (1868-1938), was an Austrian-American pathologist, after whom the Schiller test for the detection of uterine cancer is named to this day.
After graduating from the k.k. Franz Joseph Gymnasium (Vienna's 1st district, Stubenbastei), Walter Schiller had studied medicine at the University of Vienna from fall term 1907/08 and obtained the degree of "Dr. med." from the Medical School on October 31st, 1912, which was revoked from him in 1943 for racist reasons.
While still a student, he worked as a demonstrator in physiology for Prof. Siegmund Exner-Ewarten (1846-1926) and in pathology for Prof. Anton Weichselbaum (1845-1920). After receiving his doctorate in 1912, he worked as a bacteriologist for the Bulgarian Army during the First Balkan War and then trained in pathology under Weichselbaum, who was one of the first in Vienna to recognize the role of bacteriology in the study of infectious diseases, discovering meningococci as the cause of meningitis in 1887.
He served in World War I from 1914 as a medical officer in the k.&.k. Austro-Hungarian Army and was in charge of a medical laboratory there; he saw action in Bosnia, Russia, Turkey, and Palestine, and also worked after the end of World War I until 1921 as a pathologist at the Vienna Military Garrison Main Hospital 2 on Rennweg, and from 1918-1921 also he also worked at the First Medical University Clinic with the distinguished internist Hans Eppinger (1879-1946).
From 1921 to 1936 he was assistant and laboratory director at the Second University Clinic for Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Vienna, which was headed by Prof. Fritz Kermauner (1872-1931) and since 1931 by Prof. Wilhelm Weibel (1876-1945). There he also conducted his medical studies on cervical cancer and developed his iodine screening test ("Schiller test" for early detection of uterine cancer by detecting glycogen-depleted cells in the epithelium of the cervix), about which he published in German-language journals in 1927 and 1928 and in English-language journals in 1933 and 1934.
Beginning in the 1920s and increasing from the mid-1930s, Schiller was on international lecture tours as a specialist in gynecologic pathology, giving month-long lectures at Trinity College, the Rotunda, Coombe Hospital, and the Royal Academy, all in Dublin, in 1923, 1925, and 1935, respectively. He delivered the Lloyd Roberts Lecture in Manchester, England, the Ingleby Lecture in Birmingham, England, and lectures at other institutions in England and Scotland, including the British Postgraduate Medical School in London in 1935. From September 1936 to May 1937, he gave 150 lectures in the United States and Canada. These included the Hannah Lecture at Western Reserve University in Cleveland and the Bacon Lectures at the University of Illinois in 1936.
In view of the threatening advance of National Socialism in Europe, Schiller and his family emigrated to the USA - he had been married since February 23rd, 1923 to PhD Marie Popper (1893-1980, daughter of Isidor Popper and Caroline, née Pollak, she received her PhD in English from the University of Vienna on March 26th, 1917) and they had two daughters: Esther Marianne Schiller-Porto (1929-2011) and Eva Susanne Schiller-Udell (1934-2016) and they lived in Vienna's 9th district, Reithlegasse 12.
Walter Schiller and his wife entered the U.S. from Montreal, Canada, in St. Albans, VT, on April 25th, 1937. In the U.S., he worked as laboratory director at Jewish Memorial Hospital in New York City, NY, 1937-1938, and as director of the Department of Anatomic Pathology at Cook County Hospital in Chicago, IL, 1938-1944 (about 50,000 surgical specimens and 2,500 autopsies were performed there annually at that time, providing him with a wealth of morphologic examination material).
In September 1941, the Reichsfuehrer-SS and Chief of the German Police initiated expatriation proceedings against him and his family, and in the course of this, via the Reich Ministry of Education in Berlin, also requested the University of Vienna in October 1941 to deprive Walter Schiller of his academic degree as a legal consequence.
On July 22nd, 1943, Walter Schiller was deprived of his academic degree, which he had earned 31 years earlier, for racist reasons, since he as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ("eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwürdig") by the National Socialists (however, no deprivation proceedings were initiated against his wife for the loss of her doctoral degree, which she had earned in 1917).
The deprivation of citizenship was accompanied by the loss of all civil rights, statelessness and confiscation of all assets. Walter Schiller, however, had already applied for American citizenship in 1938 and became a U.S. citizen on June 2nd, 1943.
It was not until 12 years after the revocation and long after the end of National Socialism that the University of Vienna reinstated his doctoral degree on May 15th, 1955, or declared the revocation "null and void from the beginning," but without informing him.
In the meantime, he was also a consulting pathologist at Columbus, Mary Thompson, and Cuneo Hospitals in Chicago in the United States, and for a time was on the staff of the Women and Children's Hospital Chicago.
Also in addition to being a doctor, he was an excellent violinist having studied with Arnold Rosé.
In 1959, he was honored by the United States Section of the International College of Surgeons and received a certificate recognizing his outstanding work.
He was a charter member of the College of American Pathologists, the American Association of Pathologists and Bacteriologists, and the American Society of Clinical Pathologists, an honorary member of Phi Lambda Kappa, the Midwest Clinical Society, the Mississippi Valley Medical Society, and the Austrian Society of Gynecology.
He last resided at 1401 Lake Street, Illinois, Cook County.
Walter Schiller, MD, died on May 2nd, 1960, at the age of 72 in Evanston, Cook County, IL, while cremated in Skokie, IL, he is buried in Charlotte, VT/USA.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") MED 1912–1919 No 124, graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") PHIL 1913-1922, personnel rooster University of Vienna 1920/21 to 1937/38, rectorat GZ 118 ex 1941/42 No 135, GZ 561 ex 1944/45 No 15; Austrian State Archives OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/FLD 14729, OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/VVSt/VA/65401; obituary in Chicago Tribune 1960; John G. GRUHN & Lawrence M. ROTH, History of Gynecological Pathology V.: Dr Walter Schiller, in: International Journal of Gynecological Pathology 4, vol. 17 (1998), 380–386; BLUMESBERGER 2002, 1204; Robert H. YOUNG, The rich history of gynaecological pathology: brief notes on some of its personalities and their contributions, in: Pathology, 1, vol. 39 (2007) 6–25; POSCH 2009, 469; www.genteam.at, www.geni.com; www.ancestry.de; information by courtesy of Dr. Kathrin Korn, Vienna 07/2022 and his grandson Nathaniel Udell, Bratislava 10/2024.
Herbert Posch
