Dr. med.
Ernst Georg Wilhelm Hoffstaedt
1895 - 1980

“The author of the work, Ernst Georg Wilhelm Hoffstaedt, son of the councilor of justice Wilhelm Hoffstaedt and his wife Käte, née Cohn, was born in Berlin on November 6, 1895,” wrote Ernst Hoffstaedt in his dissertation “Tuberculosis and Pregnancy”.  After graduating from Friedrich-Wilhelm-Gymnasium in 1913, he studied medicine in Berlin and Heidelberg. In August 1914, he joined the army voluntarily, was granted leave to continue his studies and passed the preliminary medical examination in Berlin in April 1918 and the state medical examination in 1920.  He received his license to practice medicine on August 14, 1920. He was awarded his doctorate at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin under Alfred Grotjahn, the first professor of social hygiene, on December 11, 1920.

Education and Place of Work

He received his clinical training in the Second Department of Internal Medicine at the Auguste Victoria Hospital in Berlin-Schöneberg (director: Prof. Dr. F. Glaser) and became a specialist in internal medicine on October 1, 1926.  Hoffstaedt published several articles in the 1920s, including on tuberculosis, heat application, ECG, but also on criminal abortion in the Zeitschrift für die gesamte Strafrechtswissenschaft.

Since the late 1920s, he practiced as a specialist in internal medicine in Berlin at Innsbruckerstrasse 5.

After 1933

Ernst Hoffstaedt was exposed to anti-Jewish measures by the National Socialists at an early stage. He was still listed in the Reich medical calendar in 1937, marked as a Jew with a colon in front of his name. His health insurance license was taken away. His license to practice medicine was revoked on September 30, 1938.

Ernst Hoffstaedt fled to England together with his wife Martha, née Köhne (1897 to 1980).

He was briefly detained as a hostile foreigner and was freed on April 16, 1941. He was admitted to the medical register in England on July 18, 1941, initially living in London, then in Doncaster and from 1946 in Wolsingham, Durham, near Newcastle.

As Clinical Tuberculosis Officer in Doncaster, he published on tuberculosis in 1945 and again in the following years. He worked at Holywood Hall Sanatorium in Wolsingham as Assistant Physician and then as Consultant Chest Physician. Numerous publications and commentaries in medical journals show his clinical focus on tuberculosis. In the last years of his career, he was actively involved in anti-smoking campaigns.

After ending his professional career, he and his wife continued to live near Newcastle in Heddon on the Wall.

On March 3, 1980, at the age of 84, he committed suicide together with his wife.

His mother Käte (Katherina) Hoffstaedt died on February 7, 1943 in the Theresienstadt ghetto. His sister Meta Badt committed suicide in Berlin on August 14, 1942. She is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Berlin-Weissensee. His brother-in-law Heinrich Alfred Badt and his niece Lieselotte Badt were murdered in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

His nephew Ernst Theodor Badt-Hoffstaedt, born in 1920, survived the Holocaust and died in the Canary Islands in 2010.