Dr. med.
Erich Schweinburg
1888 - 1941

Erich Schweinburg was born in Vienna in 1888, as the son of Dr. Ludwig Schweinburg (1854–1923) and Hermine Schweinburg, née Popper (1857–1932).

Dr. Ludwig Schweinburg’s Sanatorium and Water Cure Facility AG

Erich Schweinburg’s father, Ludwig Schweinburg, was an assistant physician to Professor Wilhelm Winternitz in Vienna. At the time, Winternitz was one of the leading hydrotherapists and played an important role in the field of balneology. Professor Winternitz was an honorary member of the Balneological Society (E.V.) in Berlin and Ludwig Schweinburg was also a member of this society.

The origins of the spa operations in Zuckmantel (now Zlaté Hory, Czech Republic) date back to the establishment of a healing and balm bath and a hydrotherapy institute by paper manufacturer Josef Weiß in the 1840s. In 1879 in Zuckmantel, the Prague doctor Karl Anjel built a modern sanatorium with sixty rooms and a swimming pool offering hydrotherapy, massages, and electrotherapy. In 1887, the composer Leoš Janáček visited the spa. Anjel’s colleague, the Viennese doctor Ludwig Schweinburg, took charge over the sanatorium in 1889, expanding and modernizing it considerably.

He renamed it “Dr. Ludwig Schweinburg’s Sanatorium and Water Cure Facility AG” and converted it into a joint-stock company. Approximately 220 patients had access to 170 rooms, a large dining room, a salon, a reading room, and a covered promenade. The sanatorium was equipped with electric lighting and gas central heating. Every year, around 600 patients were treated for gout, anemia, diabetes, obesity, or mental weakness. Schweinburg’s treatments consisted of a combination of hydrotherapy, electrotherapy, gymnastics, diet, and walking. While Ludwig Schweinburg was the chief physician at the Zuckmantel Sanatorium during the summer months from April to early November, he continued to run a medical practice in Vienna. The registered office of the joint-stock company also remained in Vienna and was not moved to Zuckmantel until 1922.

In a 1900 monograph on the sanatorium, Ludwig Schweinburg highlighted its scenic location, comfort, and elegance, as well as the wide variety of methods praciting physical and dietary healing methods, describing the sanatorium as one of the “best and most perfectly equipped institutions on the continent.” He further emphasized that “the cures are carried out only according to his instructions in a rational manner and according to strictly scientific principles, with the most careful individualization and continuous attentive supervision” and “only through the interaction of all factors offered by modern science and the great therapeutic achievements of recent years—particularly in the field of physical and dietary healing methods—could the highest assurance of success be achieved.” He emphasized the great importance of the scientific approach to his therapeutic measures. The sanatorium’s diagnostic and therapeutic equipment was state-of-the-art.

Franz Kafka was the most famous patient at Dr. Schweinburg’s sanatorium in 1905 and 1906. He was considered a “nervous” patient and was treated accordingly for “neurasthenia” in Zuckmantel. It remains unclear whether Dr. Siegfried Löwy (1867-1942), Kafka’s uncle and brother of his mother, referred his nephew to the sanatorium in Zuckmantel [Siegfried Löwy practiced in Triesch, Moravia, now Třešt, Czech Republic, since 1899. Kafka had a close relationship with Löwy and visited him regularly. Siegfried Löwy most likely inspired Franz Kafka to write his story “The Country Doctor.” Dr. Löwy committed suicide in October 1942 shortly before his deportation to the Theresienstadt ghetto].

Education and place of work

Erich Schweinburg first attended high school in Troppau, now Opava, located 60 km away from Zuckmantel. He then moved to Vienna to attend the k. k. Akademisches Gymnasium, where he graduated in the fall of 1907. Immediately afterwards, he began studying medicine at the University of Vienna in the winter semester of 1907/08.

In 1911, Erich Schweinburg transferred to the Ruprecht Karls University of Heidelberg for one semester before returning to Vienna for the winter semester of 1911/12. He completed his studies in Vienna on April 22, 1913 and was awarded a doctorate in medicine. Dr. Schweinburg devoted himself to fencing while still a student. After completing his doctorate, he joined the army. His career there is well documented: in 1913, he was an “assistant deputy physician” and in January 1914 he was an assistant physician in the 6th Dragoon Regiment. In 1915, Dr. Schweinburg  was promoted to an assistant physician in the reserve, and eventually in 1917 received the position as a senior physician in the army. He was decorated several times during World War I.

In December 1915, he married Irma Fried in Vienna. The couple had three children: in 1918, in 1920 and in 1923. After the First World War, Erich Schweinburg worked with his father and became a senior physician and deputy chief physician at the sanatorium. In 1922, he became an equal co-director of the sponsoring company together with his father. In the same year, the sponsoring company moved its headquarters from Vienna to Zuckmantel.

In 1923, Ludwig Schweinburg died, leaving Erich Schweinburg as the sole medical director of the sanatorium in Zuckmantel, which had been open year round since 1924. “In Erich Schweinburg’s institution, hydrotherapy and electrotherapy, massage, therapeutic gymnastics, hot air, sunlamps, diathermy, carbon dioxide and oxygen baths, fango packs, drinking and terrain cures, and all kinds of dietary cures were used.” (Hubertus Averbeck). In 1930, the sanatorium’s 50th anniversary was celebrated on a grand scale in Zuckmantel. At the end of 1932, Hermine Schweinburg passed away.

After 1933

As part of the global economic crisis, the number of private patients at the sanatorium declined. From 1937 onwards, the financial losses could only be offset through contracts with health insurance companies. The ongoing economic problems and anti-Semitic tendencies caused by the rise of National Socialism in Germany led to the decision to sell the sanatorium. However, the Schweinburg family was unable to find a buyer, which was exacerbated by the fact that “Reich Germans” were not allowed to do business with Jews. Even before the Munich Agreement and the “Anschluss” of the Sudetenland in October 1938, almost 90 percent of the Jewish population fled the Sudetenland.

Erich Schweinburg and his family were also forced to leave Zuckmantel and the sanatorium in September 1938. They fled via Olmütz (now Olomouc, Czech Republic), which was not occupied by Nazi Germany until 1939, to Birmingham in Great Britain. By the start of the war, an estimated 40,000 Jewish refugees from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia had arrived in Great Britain. For a long time, the British Medical Association refused to admit the large number of Jewish doctors who had fled. By the end of the war, only 50 of the 1,000 Austrian doctors who had fled were admitted after completing a two-year internship and passing an exam.

We know nothing about Erich Schweinburg’s subsequent fate in England. He died in Birmingham on May 24, 1941, leaving his relatives a small sum of money. His three children emigrated to the USA. His wife Irma died in Stourbridge near Birmingham in 1967

The sanatorium after 1938

As early as 1939, the German Reichswehr appeared in the land register as the owner of the sanatorium. The santorium was later set up a hospital for members of the Wehrmacht and Berlin women suffering from tuberculosis. After Germany’s surrender in 1945, the building was temporarily occupied by the Soviet Army. Later the sanatorium came under the administration of the Czechoslovak Ministry of Defense. The building fell into disrepair until 1948, when the sanatorium was taken over by the Ministry of Health. After extensive renovations, it became a state children’s hospital, initially for children suffering from malnutrition or for families with tuberculosis, and later also for children with respiratory diseases. In the early 1980s, the facility was renovated and its capacity reduced. In 1996, the sanatorium was privatized and still exists today as a clinic for children with respiratory diseases.