Dr. med.
Berthold Stein
1874 - 1947

Berthold Stein was born in Bayreuth in 1874 as the son of the Royal Bavarian Surgeon General Dr. Julius Stein and his wife Josefine, née Ginsberg, who came from a family of doctors in Frankfurt.

Education and Places of Work

Berthold Stein attended grammar school in Bayreuth, from which he graduated in 1894. He then studied medicine in Heidelberg, Würzburg, Erlangen, and again in Heidelberg, where he passed the state examination in 1900. He was awarded his doctorate in 1901 with the thesis “Herpes zoster arsenicalis”, which he had written under Oswald Vierordt at the Medical Polyclinic of Heidelberg University.

There is currently no information on where Stein undertook his further education and training. Stein lived in Nuremberg from 1903, where he ran a practice. It is not known whether he first settled as a general practitioner and then trained as a specialist in gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases. He published the 23-page article “Der Meteorismus gastro-intestinalis und seine Behandlung” in the ‘Würzburg Abhandlungen aus dem Gesamtgebiet der praktischen Medizin’ in 1904.

Stein actively participated in the First World War in a reserve military unit in Nuremberg, among other places.

After 1933

Berthold Stein was forced to close his practice on 20 August 1937, and his licence to practise was withdrawn on 30 September 1938. Stein practised in Nuremberg at Karolinenstrasse 47 until March 1934, after which he changed his home address at least three times until he fled.

Stein fled to England in April 1939 and initially lived in West Hampstead, London. Later he moved to Dartmouth, County Devon, and was able to temporarily work as a general practitioner. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he was released from internment as an enemy alien in December 1939.

Berthold Stein died in England on 1 October 1947 at the age of 72. One of Berthold Stein’s sisters was able to escape from Germany to the USA. She lived in Richmond, Virginia.