Dr. med.
Edwin Jakob Picard
1889 - 1942

Edwin Jakob Picard was born in Constance in 1889. His parents were Moses and Regina Picard.

Education and Places of Work

After graduating from high school in 1908, Edwin J. Picard studied medicine in Munich, Freiburg (Breisgau), Strasbourg, and again in Munich. He passed the state examination in Munich in the winter semester of 1913/14 and received his doctorate with the thesis “Über den Einfluss der Muskelarbeit auf den Cholesteringehalt des Blutes und der Nebennierenrinde”. He obtained his licence to practise medicine on 1 August 1914.

Picard actively participated in the First World War in Belgium (Flanders) and later headed a military hospital in Bavaria.

After his surgical and urological training, he worked as a practising surgeon and urologist in Berlin from 1922. At the same time, he operated at the Franziskus Hospital in Berlin together with the leading urologist of the time, Leopold Casper. They jointly published the “Lehrbuch der urologischen Diagnostik” in 1930.

After 1933

Picard lost his health insurance licence in 1933. He was forbidden to operate at the Franziskus Hospital in Berlin. He could still operate at the private clinic of the surgeon Ernst Unger until 1936 sporadically. This was no longer possible, when the Nazi authorities forced Unger to sell his clinic.

Escape to Peru in 1938 

Picard fled Germany in 1938, first to the Netherlands and then to England. He and his wife left Liverpool on 14 July 1938 aboard the British ocean liner Orbita, which operated on the Liverpool-Panama Canal-Valparaiso route, to the port city of Callao in Peru and from there to Lima.

He was stripped of his German citizenship on 15 April 1940. His doctorate was revoked by decision of the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich in July 1940.

In Peru, the 50-year-old Picard had to redo multiple examinations in order to obtain a licence to practise medicine. He was only able to practise for two years.

Edwin Jacob Picard died in Lima in 1942 at the age of 53.