Dr. med.
Adolf Guttentag
1868 - 1942

“I, Adolf Guttentag, was born on December 4, 1868, in Breslau, the son of merchant Georg Guttentag and his late wife Ottilie, née Eckersdorff. I attended the Wanckel boys’ preparatory school and the St. Maria Magdalena Gymnasium in Breslau, which I left on Michaelmas Day in 1887 with my school-leaving certificate. From Michaelmas 1887 to Michaelmas 1889, I studied medicine in Breslau, and from Michaelmas 1889 to Easter 1890 in Munich, where I passed the Tentamen physicum. From 1890 to Easter 1892, I studied in Breslau and Heidelberg. In Heidelberg, I completed my main medical examination on July 17, 1892,” Guttentag wrote in his dissertation. The Guttentag family practiced the Jewish faith.

In December 1893, Adolf Guttentag received his doctoratal degree from the Medical Faculty of the University of Leipzig. Dr. Guttentag had completed his thesis, “On the behavior of elastic fibers in skin scars and in destructive processes of the skin,” in the laboratory of the Department of Dermatology at the Allerheiligen Hospital in Breslau under the supervision of Chief Physician Josef Jadassohn in Albert Neisser’s dermatological clinic.

Education and places of work

After completing his studies, his military service, and six weeks of voluntary service, Guttentag began his training in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Allerheiligen Hospital in Breslau, presumably under Ottomar Rosenbach’s successor. Rosenbach stopped his work at the Allerheiligen Hospital in 1893.

No other documentation regarding Guttentag’s further training and specialization have been recovered.

Starting from 1896, Dr. Guttentag was listed in the Stettin address book as a general practitioner, and from 1901 onwards, he was referred to as a specialist in gastrointestinal diseases. In the following years, he changed his practice location several times within Stettin. He last practiced and lived at Kaiser-Wilhelm-Strasse 9.

On February 5, 1898, he married Helene Pauly in Posen, now Poznan, Poland. Helene Paulys sister was married to Ernst Neisser, the medical director of the Medical Clinic at the Municipal Hospital in Stettin. In his diary, Adolf Guttentag documented a close relationship with his brother-in-law until Neisser’s death.

Following 1933

Guttentag and his wife Helene were subjected to anti-Semitic attacks by the National Socialists from April 1933 onwards. From April 1922 onwards, both Guttentag and his wife Helene suffered from Nazi Anti-semitism.

On January 24, 1934, his health insurance license was revoked, and his medical license too on September 30, 1938. The couple left Stettin and initially lived in Hirschberg, Jelenia Gora, Poland. From Poland, the Guttentags moved to Berlin.

In a diary written for his son Otto, Adolf Guttentag movingly described the period of persecution, their miserable living conditions in 1941/42 in their small Berlin apartment at Carmerstr. 5, and the decision to commit suicide together with his wife (Diary of Adolf Guttentag, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, USHMM, Guttentag family papers, 2001. 42, RG – ).

On August 27, 1942, he reports: “…alerted at around 1 a.m. We got dressed, gathered all our documents (copy of the will, burial plot with receipt, cremation wishes, etc.) and clothes for the journey, as well as all our medication, including Eukodal scopolamine injections and enough Veronal, and…” ).

On September 6, 1942: “Should one resort to Veronal or not? The number of those who have nothing left to expect from life is growing.”

On September 19, 1942, the threat becomes more real: “One day passed like the other, without accomplishing anything. But this morning, we unexpectedly received a request to complete our personal details. At the same time, we were given a number: Th N341/2. Th = Theresienstadt. This means that we will soon be evacuated to Theresienstadt.”

On September 22, 1942, he expresses his uncertainty about what will happen next: “Once you’ve written that down, any reasonable person will ask, is it still worth staying alive when you have a painless sleeping pill to help you fall asleep? It’s always the same question: won’t this nightmare end soon, and can we hope for better days?”

On October 1, he receives news about Ernst Neisser. “Now fate has also caught up with Uncle Ernst. Yesterday afternoon, he received notification that he should be ready tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. to be picked up and transported away…. He was always determined not to go … Presumably, he injected himself with morphine and took Veronal during the night. He was taken to the hospital yesterday … and was still alive this morning … He died on October 3, 1942.”

The situation also becomes life-threatening for Guttentag himself and his wife. He writes: “On October 12, the secret state police came. They immediately took our landlady and her family away without us knowing why, and finally they demanded our identity cards, took them from us, and ordered us to go to Burgstr. Room 308. That is the secret state police. They asked why we had not been evacuated…”

And further: “…. Don’t forget that we always had your best interests at heart, but that our lives

The last entry on October 16, 1942, is written in almost illegible handwriting: “On October 16, Dr. Adolf Guttentag passed away. He had a happy and beautiful life.”

Guttentag and his wife were found alive and transported to the hospital. On October 29, 1942, he died at the age of 73 from the effects of intoxication at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin. He was buried together with his wife at the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf cemetery near Berlin.

In 1995, the Berlin Senate Administration moved the urns within the cemetery to a closed enclosure with graves of victims of war and tyranny.

This grave site, financed by the federal government, serves as a memorial to the dead and maintains the memory of war and tyranny alive for future generations in a powerful way. Adolf Guttentag and his wife shared their cruel fate with countless other victims.

Their son Otto Guttentag also studied medicine and worked as assistant physician at the Medical University Clinic in Frankfurt under Franz Volhard starting in 1927. On May 31, 1933, Otto Guttentag was dismissed without notice by the Frankfurt authorities, because he was considered “non-Aryan” according to Nazi terminology. He left Germany in the same year and found a new field of work in San Francisco, USA.