Oswald Schwarz

Born:	10-31-1883
Faculty:	Medical School | Medical University Vienna
Category:	Expelled teacher

Oswald SCHWARZ (born on October 31st, 1883 in Bruenn [Brno], Moravia/Czech Republic) After his graduation from high school in Brno in 1901 he started his Medical studies at the University of Vienna, later for one term also at the University of Strasbourg and graduated on December 22, 1906 at the Medical School of the University of Vienna to a "Dr. med. Univ." He continued his medical education, first as "Operationszoegling" at the I. surgical university clinic (1908/09), then at the university gynecological clinic (1919-1911) and for a few months in Germany, for example in Munich. Oswald Schwarz returned to Vienna and became a doctor at the urology department at the "Allgemeinen Poliklinik" in Vienna in 1912, medical assistant ("Assistenzarzt") in 1913 and then assistant medical director ("Oberarzt"). At the same time he continued his medical education and practice at various chemical laboratories in Vienna and Strasbourg as well as at the serotherapeutic and pharmacological Institute at the University of Vienna. During WW I he joined the Austro-hungarian army 1914-1918. In 1919 Oswald Schwarz became lecturer ('Dozent') for urology at the Medical School of the University of Vienna and also held lectures at the Post Graduate School of the American Medical Association in Vienna. Schwarz was a member of the German Society of Urology ("Deutsche Gesellschaft fuer Urologie"), of the Medical Society in Vienna ("Gesellschaft der Aerzte in Wien") and a founding member of the Austrian Society of Urology ("Oesterreichischen Gesellschaft fuer Urologie"). He worked as an urologist with patients with sexual disorder and started to work with methods of "individual psychology".
He was a member of the Association of Individual Psychology, of the German Association of psychotherapy, of the Academic Association of medical psychology, as well as of the Association of medical psychology, and he was also interested in the field of anthropology.
Schwarz struggled for combining medicine, psychology and philosophy. In the beginning of the 1920ies ha published about sexual pathology and aspects of medical psycholgy. In 1925 he published the pioneering work of psychosomatic medicine "Psychogenese und Psychotherapie koerperlicher Symptome". Together with Rudolf Allers he was part of the catholic-conservative group within individual psychology, that resigned from the Association of Individual Psychology in 1927. In 1934 Oswald Schwarz applied for some sabbatical years and went with his family to England and focused his research and practice more and more on urological-psychological problems. Because of the political climate in Austria (austrofascism and national socialism) he did not return to Vienna anymore. He was persecuted in times of Nazism as a Jew lost his position and "venia" on April 22nd, 1938. Although  Oswald Schwarz 1934 went to England with his family, his son Hans Peter Schwarz studied medicine at the University of Vienna, could finally finish his studies and graduated on July 21st, 1938, but only with the discriminating ceremony of a 'Nichtarierpromotion' (and in 1943 he was deprived of his academic degree as a jew).

In times of Nazism Oswald Schwarz was deprived of his academic degree (that he earned in 1906) on July 22nd, 1943, also 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'), as happened to his son.
It took 12 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. Oswald Schwarz was no more alive then, he had died in October 14th, 1949 in London/Great Britain because of a heart attack.

Oswald Schwarz' last opus was published in 1949, the year of his death: "The Psychology of Sex". It was republished several times in the next decades. His scientific merit is the bridging of medicine and philosophical anthropology. He was, aside with Felix Deutsch, a pioneer of psychosomatic thinking in Vienna. His opus was modified and continued by his disciples Viktor Frankl and Hans Giese.

Lit.: Gerhard DANZER, Wer sind wir? Auf der Suche nach der Formel des Menschen. Anthropologie für das 21. Jahrhundert - Mediziner, Philosophen und ihre Theorien, Ideen und Konzepte, Berlin/Heidelberg 2011, 407-419; EMÖDI/TEICHL 1937; FISCHER Vol. 1 1932; KIESER 2001; Alfred LÉVY, Oswald Schwarz - Pionier der Psychosomatik, in: LÉVY/MACKENTHUN 2002, 239-250; MERINSKY 1980, 250-251; Austrian Biographical Lexicon|OeBL 2001; UB MedUni Wien/van Swieten Blog; universimed.

Katharina Kniefacz and Herbert Posch