Annemarie Subal (Demmer, Wanko)

Annemarie SUBAL (widowed Demmer, remarried WANKO), born on August 15^th, 1920 in Vienna (entitled residancy ("heimatberechtigt") in Vienna, citizenship 1938: Austria), daughter of the ophthalmologist Dr. med Franz Subal (1893-1967) and the youth physician Dr. med Mathilde Subal, née Weiss (1887-1939) lived in Vienna's 1^st district, Bösendorferstrasse 5. After graduating from the German Girls' Secondary School in Moedling, Lower Austria, on March 21^st, 1939, she completed several months of compulsory labor service in Arbing/Upper Austria and in Krakow/Poland and began her medical studies at the University of Vienna in the fall term of 1939/40. After the death of her mother in June 1939, she also had to run the family household for her father and two siblings.

She had been Protestant since birth - her mother had converted from Roman Catholicism to Protestantism (A.B.) before her marriage - but was persecuted under National Socialism as a "Mischling of the 1^st or 2^nd degree" (as were her siblings Elisabeth Subal (1923-2019) and Franz Karl Subal (1924-1944), who were also studying medicine), as her deceased maternal grandfather, principal of a German factory school in Bosnia and baptized Roman Catholic in 1885 had belonged to the Israelite religious community at birth in 1861.

When "Mischlinge" were forced to apply to the Reich Ministry of Education in Berlin for admission to studies beginning in the 1^st trimester of 1940, she submitted an application to continue his studies. In accordance with the regulations, the dean of the responsible medical faculty, Prof. Eduard Pernkopf, enclosed an expert opinion dated April 26^th, 1940 with the application, which "had to deal in particular with the personal impression of the applicant's personality and appearance. It must mention whether and to what extent characteristics of the Jewish race are externally recognizable in the applicant." [Decree of the Reich Ministry of Education, January 5^th, 1940]. It stated: "is mixed race II. degree. No Jewish appearance; has completed the RAD.")
When the Gausippenamt discovered that her other grandmother was Aryan but "temporarily" married to a Jew, the Gausippenamt considered her to be a "Mischling of the 1^st degree". As such, she would not have been able to continue her studies or gain a doctorate and would not have been licensed as a doctor. The study permit was approved by the Reich Ministry of Education on April 2^nd, 1942 (WF 969) for an initial 3 semesters ("Under these circumstances, I would not raise any objections to the candidate [...] being allowed to continue her medical studies. If she is treated as a mixed race 2^nd degree, she will be admitted to the medical examination; she then also has the prospect of being licensed as a doctor for the territory of the German Reich"). She applied to the Reich Governor's Office in Vienna to be considered only as a "Mischling of the 2^nd degree", as three of her grandparents were "racially Aryan" and after the corresponding positive decision, the Reich Ministry of Education approved the continuation on April 5^th, 1943 and she was "admitted to the medical examinations with the proviso that she would not thereby acquire the right to be licensed as a doctor. She would receive a license to practice medicine if the subsequent findings to be made shortly before the decision on the license show that there are no objections to be raised against the political and moral reliability of the candidate and her family. as a second-degree half-breed, insofar as she is actually descended from only one Jewish grandparent, [...] complete her medical training".

Although she had successfully passed all the strict examinations ("Rigorosen") in November 1944, she was unable to complete her doctorate for racist reasons under National Socialism and had to leave the University of Vienna without a degree.

In her application for further studies, she defined her career goal and her self-image as a prospective doctor as follows: "Despite all my different inclinations and abilities, my studies are the most important, most beautiful and dearest thing to me and I strive to make a whole person out of myself, as a real doctor should be, in order to be able to meet people in the most difficult hours of their lives not only as a scholar, but also as an understanding friend. Perhaps this attitude towards my future profession can justify my application."

Her father had already studied medicine at the University of Vienna and, after an interruption due to his participation in the First World War, received his doctorate in 1921 and was a clinical assistant doctor at the 2nd University Eye Clinic from 1921 to 1925. From 1926 he was an assistant at the Vienna General Polyclinic and ophthalmologist in his own practice, was considered an "Aryan" and was allowed to continue working under National Socialism.

Her mother, the paediatrician Dr. med. Mathilde Subal, née Weiss (1887-1939), who died in June 1939 at the age of 52, was born in Vienna-Liesing, Roman Catholic, completed her school education in Vitkovice, Moravia [Czech Republic] and prepared privately for her school-leaving examination (Matura), which she passed in 1912 at the state grammar school in Moravská Ostrava [Czech Republic]. She then studied medicine at the University of Vienna, where she also obtained her doctorate in early 1918. During the First World War, she worked as an auxiliary doctor in war hospitals in Jaice/Bosnia [Јајце/Bosnia-Herzogovina] and in Sternberg/Moravia [Šternberk/Czech Republic]. After completing her doctorate, she continued her specialist training at the Vienna General Hospital. In 1920, she converted to the Protestant faith on the occasion of her marriage, but continued her hospital work afterwards. She worked in a mother's advice center of the Alpine Mining Society in Eisenerz, Styria, returned to Vienna after a year and worked unpaid at various Viennese children's hospitals before working as a youth doctor for the municipality of Vienna in the mother's advice centers in Vienna 21 and Vienna 5 in 1927.

Annemarie Subal was only able to obtain her doctorate as a "Dr.med. univ." (MD) from the University of Vienna after the end of National Socialism in the first post-war doctorate on June 8^th, 1945 - retroactively as of November 7^th, 1944 - according to the old and now reintroduced Austrian study regulations.

She became a specialist in internal medicine (after her first marriage she was called Annemarie Demmer) and married Dr. Theodor Wanko (1923-1964), a native of Vienna, in Imst/Tyrol on August 26^th, 1953. He had studied medicine with her at the University of Vienna, interrupted by the war effort in the Second World War, and had then continued his studies and received his doctorate on June 24^th, 1952 as "Dr.med.univ." (MD). Their daughter Martina (1954-2016) was born in Vienna on March 12^th, 1954.
Her husband was invited to the NIH in the USA as a visiting scientist in October 1956 and they all three emigrated to the USA. They flew from Copenhagen/Denmark via Hamburg/Germany and Prestwick/Scotland to the USA on October 2^nd, 1956, arriving in New York, NY on October 3^rd. They then lived in Washington, D.C., where Annemarie Wanko opened her own practice in May 1959 and her husband - a pioneer in electron microscope studies of eye and nerve tissue - became head of the Electron Microscopy Program of the Ophthalmology Branch, National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness. She worked and researched at Georgetown University and Mount Alto Hospital in the late 1950s and published her research findings in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (1958: Chlorothiazide in Hypertensive and Normotensive Patients) and in the Journal of Clinical Investigation of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (1960: Mechanism of The Altered Blood Pressure Responsiveness Produced by Chlorothiazide).
Annemarie Wanko became a US citizen on January 9, 1962 in Chevy Chase, MD, and continued to live and work in the USA, in California, most recently in Monterey, CA, after the death of her husband in 1964.

Her daughter Martina Wanko Knee, a lawyer, became a passionate anti-genocide activist, was co-chair of the International Human Rights portfolio of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs' Task Force on Israel, World Jewry, and International Human Rights, member of the Board of Directors of the Helen and Joe Farkas Center for the Study of the Holocaust; Member of the Advisory Board of the University of California, Berkeley Law School Human Rights Center; Board Member and Director of Living Ubuntu; Member of the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, the Peninsula, Marin, Sonoma, Alameda and Contra Costa Counties; Member of the Jewish Public Affairs Council; Member of American Jewish World Services and has supported many other human rights organizations.

Annemarie Wanko, widowed Demmer, née Subal, died on May 21^st, 2003 and is buried with her husband at Rock Creek Cemetery in Washington, D.C./USA.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") MED 1937–1944, graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") MED 1941–1949 No. 1265, Rectorate GZ 944 ex 1939/40/41, Rectorate GZ 97/I ex 1944/45, MED GZ 1115 ex 1939/40, MED S 51.1 No. 12, MED S 51.2 No. 14; Austrian State Archives OeStA/AdR/02-Unterricht/Kurator d. wiss. Hochsch. Wien (K. 13)/GZ 5201 ex 1940-1943; www.ancestry.de; Martina Knee Obituary im San Francisco Chronicle 2019; Dr. Wanko, of NINDB, Dies of Heart Attack, in: NIH Record vom 21. April 1964, 8; REITER-ZATLOUKAL/SAUER 2025; information by courtesy of Dr. Barbara Sauer, Vienna 09/2022.

Herbert Posch