Dr. med.
Franz Louis Ehrlich
1869 - 1942

Franz Louis Ehrlich was born on May 13, 1869 as the son of the judicial counselor Max Ehrlich (1832– 1892) and his wife Charlotte, née Schlesinger, in Belgard in former Pomerania (today Białogard, Poland). The family belonged to the Jewish faith community.

Education and professional career

In 1895, Franz Ehrlich completed his medical studies at the Bavarian Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg. At Würzburg medical faculty, he received a doctorate with the thesis “Is formaldehyde suitable for the preservation of foodstuffs?”. In the same year, he also received his medical license.

The stages of his further training and specialization as of yet remain unknown. From 1900 onward, he worked as a private physician in Stettin (Reichsmedizinalkalender / RMK, 1900). He would remain active in this city for the next 38 years. From 1903, the Reichsmedizinalkalender listed him in Stettin as a specialist in gastric, intestinal and metabolic diseases. From this time onward, Dr. Ehrlich also ran a private clinic for his field of specialization, which he maintained until the late 1920s

His practice was located at Friedrich-Karl-Strasse 3 in Stettin. Alongside the Jewish physician Adolf Guttentag and the physician Franz A. Rollin, Franz Ehrlich was among the first three specialists in the new field of gastroenterology in Stettin and its surrounding region.

Ehrlich was married to Franziska Jelski-Godin. Their marriage ended in divorce. His second wife Lucie, née Frankenstein, came from Landeshut in Lower Silesia (today Kamienna Góra, Poland). Their respective son Max Ehrlich was born in 1900, followed in 1903 by their daughter Annemarie Nanni.

Franz and Lucie’s second son, Otto Peter Ehrlich, was born in 1909. The children’s mother, Lucie Ehrlich, died on December 5, 1914 at the age of 39. After the death of his wife, Franz Ehrlich later married Elsbeth Recha Richter, née Faber, born on October 19, 1876 in Neuwedell, West Pomerania (today Drawno, Poland).

1933

On April 1, 1933, Franz Ehrlich experienced the boycott of doctors’ practices and, as a result, the disenfranchisement of the Jewish population by the National Socialists.

Dr. Ehrlich lost his authorization to treat publicly insured patients. According to the Reichsmedizinalkalender 1937, his practice continued to be listed at Friedrich-Karl-Strasse 3. His medical license was revoked as of September 30, 1938.

Deportation

On February 13, 1940, Franz Ehrlich and his wife Recha were among the one thousand Jewish men and women deported from Stettin to Lublin in Poland, after which they were distributed to surrounding small towns.

The Ehrlich couple was forced to live in the local Jewish ghetto in the town of Głusk, about 9 km from Lublin.

Franz Louis Ehrlich died as a result of a typhus infection on  April 1, 1942 in the Ghetto Głusk. His wife, Elsbeth Recha Ehrlich, died in the Ghetto Głusk on May 7, 1942.

Closest family members

The son, merchant Max Ehrlich (born 1900), lived in Berlin-Schöneberg and fled in 1940 via Genoa to the USA. The family arrived in New York on April 1, 1940 on the SS Washington. Max Ehrlich died in 1965.

Franz and Lucie Ehrlich’s daughter, Annemarie Nanni, born on March 18, 1903, married grain merchant Max Löwy (born August 6, 1889, in the former Sypniewo in West Prussia) after separating from her first husband, Erich Levy (born August 6, 1896, in Altsarnow in the former Pomerania; married in 1922, divorced in 1928). From her first marriage came her daughter Ruth Lucie Levy, born on July 24, 1923, in Stettin. Annemarie Löwy-Ehrlich had been living with her daughter in Luxembourg since October 1939. From there, both of them, along with Erich Levy, Annemarie’s first husband, were taken to the Spanish border in November 1940 via an illegal transport through France. Their original plan was to emigrate via Spain or Portugal. Together with other Luxembourgers, Annemarie Löwy-Ehrlich, Ruth, and Erich Levy were detained at the Mousserolles internment camp in Bayonne, in the far southwest of France at the foot of the Pyrenees. When the camp was dissolved in March 1941, the three of them were able to escape.

Erich Levy was later arrested by the Gestapo, deported to Auschwitz, and murdered. Annemarie and Ruth escaped arrest and lived in Marseille and Lyon. Annemarie Löwy-Ehrlich witnessed the liberation from German occupation in Lyon on September 3, 1944. Her daughter had gone into hiding in a small town in the Jura region and experienced the liberation there. Annemarie Löwy-Ehrlich moved to the United States in 1946.

She subsequently lived in Brookline, Massachusetts, and later in West Roxbury near Boston, Massachusetts. She died in February 1973 in Luxembourg City, near her daughter. her grave is located in the Jewish Cemetery in Luxembourg City.

Her daughter Ruth survived the Holocaust in France, where she met Paul Wassermann, later the owner of the large department store Centre Rosenstiel in Luxembourg City. Paul Wassermann had fled from the National Socialists in Luxembourg to France, went into hiding with farmers in the Jura, joined the Resistance Movement, and was integrated into the French army. After liberation, Paul Wassermann and Ruth Levy married in 1945 in Luxembourg, after which they lived in Luxembourg City. Ruth (Raymonde) Lucie Wassermann died in 2005, Paul Wassermann died in 2010.

Franz and Lucie Ehrlich’s son Otto Peter, born on December 20, 1909, began his medical studies in April 1931 in Breslau (today Wrocław, Poland) and continued after two semesters at the University of Heidelberg. He passed the state examination in December 1936 and earned his medical doctorate at the Heidelberg Faculty of Medicine in 1937.

Otto Ehrlich fled to the USA with his wife, received a license to practice medicine, worked as a surgeon and lived in the small town of Caseyville, St. Clair County, Illinois, near the Missouri border, about 20 km east of St. Louis. Otto Peter Ehrlich died at age 61 in 1971

Their son-in-law, Max Löwy, was deported from Stettin in February 1940, along with Franz and Elsbeth Recha Ehrlich. He was murdered in the Jewish ghetto in the town of Piaski in the Lublin District.

Franz Ehrlich’s younger brother, the gastroenterologist Dr. Ernst Emanuel Ehrlich, born in 1874 and practicing in Erfurt, was deported in 1942 to the Theresienstadt Ghetto (today Terezín, Czech Republic) and died there in the same year from an intestinal infection.