Friedrich Silberstein

Born:	11-20-1888
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled teacher

Friedrich SILBERSTEIN (born on November 20^th, 1888 in Teschen/Austrian Silesia [polish-chech double-city Cieszyn/Český Těšín]) was assistant teacher and lecturer with the title of an extraordinary professor ("Privatdozent tit.ao.Univ.-Prof.") for general and experimental pathology at the pathology department (head: Prof. Rothberger) at the Medical School of the University of Vienna. Since his habilitation in 1920 ha was working at the Medical School of the University of Vienna but was persecuted in times of Nazism as a Jew, lost his position on April 22^nd, 1938, and was forced to leave the university. His daughter Maria Margarete Silberstein, who studied at the Medical School, was also expelled from the University of Vienna after the socalled "Anschluss". Friedrich Silberstein had to flee from Austria and was able to emigrate to Great Britain. He became head of the "Association of Austrian doctors in Great Britain" 1942-1945, that organised help for physicians, forced to emigrate from former Austria in times of National-socialism. In February 1939, together with the German veterinary researcher Hans Enoch, he presented a plan for animal serum manufacturing in British governed New Zealand. The scheme was rejected, as during the war, New Zealand was hardly an “open society” for european refugees and New Zealand medical professionals were defending professional integrity against the Continental “know-alls” . Both Enoch and Silberstein remained in Great Britain. Friedrich Silberstein died 1975 in Perth, Australia.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna: Rectorate GZ 677 ex 1937/38, GZ 680 ex 1937/38, Senat S 304.1200;
KOSIK 1935, 335; MERINSKY 1980, 224-225; MÜHLBERGER 1993, 32; Renate FEIKES, Exil der Wiener Medizin in Großbritannien, in: Charmian Brinson, Richard Dove u. Jennifer Taylor, Eds., Immortal Austria? Austrians in Exile in Britain, The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile studies, 8 (2006), 61-74, 69; UB MedUni Wien/van Swieten Blog; 100 Jahre Österreichische Krebshilfe 2010, 40f., 53; information from Dr. Barbara Sauer, Vien 2018; REITER-ZATLOUKAL/SAUER 2022; Paul WEINDLING, Restricted Refuge: Medical Refugees in New Zealand 1933-45, in: Anthony Grenville, Swen Steinberg, eds., Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 2019.

Herbert Posch