Josef Gerstmann

Born:	07-17-1887
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled teacher

Josef GERSTMANN (born on July 17th, 1887 in Lemberg/Galicia [L'vov/Ukraine], died on March 23rd, 1969 in New York/USA) was the son of Joachim Gerstmann and Bertha, nee Zucker. After he had graduated from high school ('Deutsches Gymnasium') in Lemberg in 1907, he began to study at the Medical School at the University of Vienna. He graduated on November 29th, 1912 with the academic degree 'Dr. med.' Subsequently he was aspirant respectively assistant physician at the 2nd Medical Department at Vienna's General Hospital (‘Allgemeines Krankenhaus’) until February 1914. During World War I Gerstmann served with distinction as the sanitary officer in an military hospital for neurological and mental disorders on the Italian front. Then he worked at the Clinic for Psychiatry-Neurology in Vienna with Julius Wagner-Jauregg, and was promoted lecturer ('Dozent') for Psychiatry und Neurology at the Medical School of the University of Vienna in 1921. In 1929 he received the title of an extraordinary professor. In 1930 he became head of the Neurological Institute "Maria-Theresien-Schlössel" in Vienna. His main area of specialisation were Psychiatry, Neurology and Brain Pathology. Gerstmann syndrome (1924-30) and Gerstmann-Sträussler-Scheinker syndrome (together with Ernst Sträussler and Ilya M. Scheinker, 1936) are named after him. Josef Gerstmann was persecuted in times of Nazism as a Jew lost his position and was thrown out of the university on April 22nd, 1938. He was also dismissed as head of the Neurological Institute. Gerstmann decided to emigrate from Austria and obtained a US immigration visa on March 25, 1938. He was able to emigrate via London/Great Britain to the USA together with his wife Martha. Otto Marburg, a fellow neurologist, was on the same ship (S.S. Aquitania), which arrived in New York on June 14th, 1938. In October 1939, Gerstmann obtained a volunteer position at New York Presbyterian Hospital’s Vanderbilt Clinic. In December 1939 he received his medical license. Gerstmann initially worked at the Springfield/Ohio State Hospital, before he was from 1940 to 1941 research assistant and neurology consultant at the St. Elisabeth's Mental Hospital in Washington, D.C. In 1941 he returned to New York, where he first became research assistant, then research associate at the New York Neurological Institute until 1946. In addition, he worked as an attending neuropsychiatrist at the Post-Graduate Hospital and as a visiting neurologist at the am Goldwater Memorial Hospital.
On September 1st, 1943, Josef Gerstmann received the US citizenship. The Gerstmann’s property in Vienna was seized by the Gestapo in March 1941 and claimed as property of the “Greater German Reich” in 1944. After the war, it took until the end of 1948 until the property was returned to them. He was deprived of his academic degree on July 14th, 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 unwürdig').  
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. Gerstmann opened a private practise at 240 Central Park South, New York, and was member of numerous specialist societies.
He died on March 23, 1969 in New York.

Lit.: MERINSKY 1980, 71-73b; Lazaros C. TRIARHOU, Josef Gerstmann (1887–1969), in: Journal of Neurology, Vol. 255, issue 4 (April 2008), 614-615; Lawrence A. ZEIDMAN, Matthias Georg ZILLER u. Michael SHEVELL, “With a Smile Through Tears”: The Uprooted Career of the Man Behind Gerstmann Syndrome, in: Journal of the History of the Neurosciences: Basic and Clinical Perspectives 2014; Lawrence A. ZEIDMAN, Matthias Georg ZILLER u. Michael SHEVELL, Gerstmann, Sträussler, and Scheinker. The persecution of the men behind the syndrome, in: Neurology 83/3 (15.Jul.2014), 272-277; UB MedUni Wien/van Swieten Blog.

Katharina Kniefacz and Herbert Posch