Adolf Edelmann was born on February 14, 1885 in the Polish town of Działoszyce, about 45 km northeast of Krakow, then part of Austria–Hungary. In the village, the proportion of the Jewish population in the total number of inhabitants was very high at that time.

Education and Places of Work

Edelmann studied medicine at the Universities of Krakow, Poland and Vienna. He completed his studies and doctorate in 1911 at the Faculty of Medicine in Krakow. After completing his studies, he moved to the First Medical University Hospital in Vienna as an assistant physician under Carl von Noorden and Karel Frederik Wenckebach. From 1912 he was a member of the Vienna Medical Association. After training as an internist, he was temporarily acting head of the Department of Internal Medicine at Vienna‘s Wilhelminen Hospital.

From 1915 onwards, Adolf Edelmann ran a practice at Borschkegasse 7 in the IX district of Vienna, where he practiced during the summer months in Karlsbad, today Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic (see Vienna Address Book 1915, p. 231). From 1927 to 1938, Edelmann’s specialist practice for internal medicine was located at Kreindlgasse 15 in Vienna’s XIXth district. He ran the practice together with his wife Dr. Fryda Edelmann, born 1.10.1885 in Krakow, who worked as a spa doctor. Until 1938, the two worked together during the summer in Karlovy Vary. Occasionally, Edelmann held consultations in the Galician spa town of Truskawiec, now Truskavets, Ukraine.

Edelmann’s work mainly focused on infectious diseases as well as haematological and oncological diseases. For example, he described the so-called kinetocytes as the fourth blood element. Gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases were another area of work for him. He also dealt with questions of balneology

In the summer of 1929, Adolf Edelmann met the American philanthropist Samuel Canning Childs in Karlsbad, who ran a large number of grocery stores and department stores in the USA in New Jersey and Philadelphia. Childs donated a considerable part of his fortune to charity. S. C. Childs was born in England in 1859, came to the United States with his parents in 1867 and lived in Collingswood, Camden County, New Jersey from 1905. After the death of his first wife, Childs was married to the wealthy Mary Louise Milliken in 1923, with whom he continued to donate. Childs died in 1932 and is buried in Harleigh Cemetery, Camden, New Jersey.

In 1929, Childs founded the “Samuel Canning Childs Foundation for the Research and Treatment of Internal Diseases and Cancer“ in Vienna. In the same year, the foundation acquired the former Dr. Anton Loew Sanatorium at Pelikangasse 15 in Vienna‘s IX district. From then on, it was called Samuel Canning Child‘s Hospital and Research Institute. Adolf Edelmann was medical director and primarius in this institution from 1929 to 1938. After leaving the Vienna Medical University Clinic, Otto Porges worked in the Medical Clinic of the Childs Hospital from 1935 to 1938, as did the internist Ernst Rudolf Hammerschlag. Both Porges and Hammerschlag fled to the USA in 1938.

Escape to Poland in 1938

After the annexation of Austria to the German Reich on 13 March 1938, the Childs Hospital was expropriated by the Nazi authorities on 28 March 1938 and transferred to the ownership of the City of Vienna. The latter sold the hospital in 1941 to the “Wiener Privatklinik Gesellschaft”.

Edelmann was exposed to anti–Jewish persecution by the National Socialists. He was forced to submit a declaration of assets in 1938. In Vienna‘s address book of 1938, he and his wife are still listed with their practice at Kreindlgasse 15.
In November 1938, both fled from Vienna to Warsaw. On 28.11.1938, the Nazi authorities temporarily transferred the management of their practice in Karlsbad to a lawyer and was thus placed under compulsory administration until 17.12.1938

Adolf Edelmann stirbt am 8. Juli 1939 54-jährig im damals zu Polen gehörenden Lwów (Lemberg). Die Todesumstände sind ungeklärt, seine Grabstätte ist nicht bekannt.

Adolf Edelmann died on 8 July 1939 at the age of 54 in Lwów, which at the time belonged to Poland. The circumstances of his death are unclear, his grave is not known.

Edelmann‘s wife, Dr. med. Frieda (Fryda) Edelmann survived the Holocaust. [https://collections.yadvashem.org/en/names/8990810 ]. Frieda Edelmann was able to return to Vienna, obtained the title of senior medical councillor and died in 1969. Her surviving grave is located in Vienna‘s Stammersdorf Central Cemetery.