Eugenie Sonntag (geb. Fränkel)

Born:	04-18-1900
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Deprivation of academic degree

Eugenie SONNTAG (nee FRAENKEL) (born on April 18th, 1900 in Butschatsch/Galicia in Austro-Hungarian Empire [later Buszacz/Poland, then Soviet Union, today Бучач/Ukraine], had graduated at the Medical School at the University of Vienna on March 4th, 1929 with the academic degree 'Dr. med.'. She acquired the Austrian citizenship and became a member of the medical association in 1930. In times of Nazism, in September 1938 she succeeded to flee from Vienna together with her husband Baruch Sonntag and their children Ruth and Hans Robert Sonntag. The forced emigration brought them via Brussels/Belgium to Brazil, were they settled beginning April 1939 in Sao Paolo. She - and also her husband Dr. Baruch Sonntag - was deprived of her academic degree on May 8th, 1941 with the racist argument, that she as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ('eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwürdig'). It took 62 years since the deprivation - and a very long time since the end of Nazism - until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on April 10th, 2003 posthumously in a solemn ceremony. Eugenie Sonntag deceased in Brasilia in the 1950ies.

Lit.: POSCH/STADLER 2005; POSCH 2009; information from Dr. Barbara Sauer, Vienna 01/2017; Austrian State Archive/Archiv der Republik/06-Finanzen/Hilfsfonds AHF 8373.

Herbert Posch