Emerich Weindling

Born:	10-04-1906
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Deprivation of academic degree

Emerich WEINDLING (born on October 4th, 1906 in Czernowitz/Romania [Tscherniwzi/Ukraine], entiteled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Vienna), had graduated at the Medical School at the University of Vienna  on April 3rd, 1930 with the academic degree 'Dr. med.'.

He was able to emigrate to Great Britain, was one of the forty Austrians allowed to study dental surgery in 1939, and requalified at Guy's Hospital. During the war he ran a dental practice and was supported by Erika Gutmann (1921-2002), who came to Britain on a Kindertransport in 1939 and had studied for pre-medical qualifications at Chelsea College until 1944.
In times of Nazism he was deprived of his academic degree on February 28th, 1942 with the racist argument, that he as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ('eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwuerdig').  

Emmerich Weindling married Erica Gutmann in 1946, they became british citizens in December 1949 and had three sons: Michael (born in 1949), Paul (born in 1953) and Oliver (born in 1955).
It took 13 years since the deprivation – and a very long time since the end of Nazism – until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on May 15th, 1955.

Emmerich Weindling died in Vienna in 1975 and his widow Erica Weindling, who had studied at the University College Hospital Dental School until 1952, took over his dental surgery at 29a Connaught Street, London W2, which she ran for over twenty years.

Lit.: Obituary of Erica Weindling, in: British Dental Journal 194 (2003), 581, information from his son Prof. Paul Weindling, 2015

Katharina Kniefacz