Dr. med.
Paul Weiss
1878 - 1946

Paul Weiss was born into a Jewish family in Bad Homburg in 1878. His father was the merchant Leopold Weiss, his mother Therese Weiss, née Wertheimer.

Education and Workplaces

After attending the Realgymnasium (grammar school) in Bad Homburg, Paul Weiss studied medicine in Munich and Berlin, after working briefly in banking and catching up on his school-leaving examinations. He passed his state examination in 1904 and was awarded his doctorate in November of the same year at Munich University with the thesis “Ueber den Wert der Serumtherapie bei Tetanus mit spezieller Berücksichtigung der Duralinfusion”.

His further training in internal medicine focused on gastroenterology. Paul Weiss temporarily worked as an external assistant physician for Carl Anton Ewald at the Kaiserin-Augusta-Hospital in Berlin. Further training stations were the Municipal Virchow Hospital in Berlin and the polyclinics of Ismar Boas and Albert Albu in Berlin. Moreover, Weiss worked temporarily for Carl von Noorden in Vienna. He also travelled to London and Paris for further training.

Paul Weiss had been practising as a specialist in gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases in Bad Homburg since 1907. He also worked as a spa doctor specialising in dietetics and nutritional therapy. During the summer months he practised in Bad Homburg at the “Villa Nova” health resort, and during the winter months at the “Villa Schlüter” in Oberhof, Thuringia. Weiss promoted Bad Homburg as a spa location in many ways and advocated the Bad Homburg diet introduced by Curt Pariser in many lectures. Numerous well-known personalities from Germany and abroad sought his advice.

Paul Weiss married Recha Fuchs, a laboratory assistant from Stettin, in March 1910.

After 1933

Paul Weiss gave up his practice in 1937 due to the pressure of the anti-Semitic measures of the National Socialists. His licence to practise medicine was revoked on 30 September 1938. Weiss’ flat in Bad Homburg was vandalised during the November Progrom of 1938. Paul Weiss had been undergoing medical treatment in Berlin at the time. It was from here that he prepared his escape from Germany.

Escape to Palestine in 1939 

Paul Weiss and his wife Recha left Germany in the spring of 1939. The couple reached Palestine, Haifa, on 23 March 1939 via Milan and Genoa. Weiss’ situation was precarious, especially as he was in poor health. It was not until 1943 that he received a licence to practise medicine in Palestine. Weiss was still able to run a small, modest practice for a short time. His financial situation remained strained.

Paul Weiss died at the age of 67 in Haifa in February 1946. His grave is located at the Hof HaCarmel cemetery. His wife Recha Weiss died in Israel in February 1973.

His older brother, Hugo Henry Weiss, language teacher in Prague, born on 29 September 1876 in Bad Homburg, was deported from Prague to the Theresienstadt ghetto in July 1942. He died at the ghetto in July 1943. A younger brother, Herbert Weiss, born on 27 April 1887, was murdered at Auschwitz in 1942. Paul Weiss’ mother-in-law, Paula Fuchs, was deported from Berlin-Halensee to the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942. She died at the ghetto in December 1942.