Dr. med.
Franz Julius Meyer
1868 - 1954

“I, Franz Meyer, son of merchant Julius Meyer and his wife Emma, née Derenburg, was born in Frankfurt am Main on September 19, 1868.

After completing preschool at the Realgymnasium der Musterschule in Frankfurt am Main, I attended the municipal high school there from Easter 1879 to fall 1887, graduating with a high school diploma (Abitur, Reifeprüfung). After spending six months in London, I began my medical studies at the University of Bonn in  spring 1888 and passed the preliminary medical examination there in February 1890. During the winter semester of 1890/91, I studied in Berlin, and during the summer semester of 1891, I studied in Freiburg. I spent the rest of my studies at the University of Bonn, where I passed the state medical examination,” Franz J. Meyer wrote in his dissertation. The Meyer family professed the Jewish faith. Franz J. Meyer grew up with two sisters, Paula Meyer, born on June 18, 1870, and Anna Meyer, born on April 9, 1880, as well as his brother Robert Meyer, born on June 4, 1877.

At the University of Bonn, Meyer attended lectures by physiologist Eduard Pflüger and internist Julius Strasburger. In 1893, Meyer received his doctorate from the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn with a thesis entitled “On the elementary composition of dog urine after meat consumption.” In the same year, he received his medical license.

Education and place of work

After passing his state examination and completing his compulsory military service, Franz J. Meyer worked for five years at the Berlin Municipal Hospital Am Urban. In 1900, he established his own practice in Berlin. The 1901 Reichsmedizinalkalender (Medical Calendar of Germany) lists him as a registered general practitioner with the address Berlin, Kronprinzenufer 25. He practiced here until the early 1930s. Soon after establishing his practice, Meyer converted it into a specialist practice for internal medicine and pediatric diseases.

Franz J. Meyer participated in World War I as a staff physician from September 1914 onwards. He was deployed in the battles at Ypres and on the Yser in Flanders. In 1918, he was medical director of a reserve military hospital.

In October 1918, he married Frida Luise Lehmann, a Protestant nurse born in 1887 in Sohland an der Spree, Bautzen district. Their son Peter Meyer was born in 1920, followed by twins Franz D. and Gabriele Emma Luise Meyer in 1923.

After World War I, Meyer worked primarily in his specialty as a pediatrician. In the 1926 Reichsmedizinalkalender, the specialist symbol for pediatrics appears following his name.

He was awarded the title of Sanitätsrat (medical councilor) for his services. In 1932/33, he practiced at Rankestrasse 16 in Berlin.

Franz J. Meyer was an enthusiastic violinist, played chamber music, and gave house concerts. He was friends with cellist Annlies Schmidt-de Neveu and played with her in a quartet. Annlies Schmidt taught cello at the State College of Music Education in Berlin from 1940 onwards.

 1933

From April 1933 onwards, Meyer witnessed the humiliation and persecution of the Jewish population. The number of his patients declined steadily from the spring of 1933 onwards. His license to practice medicine was revoked by the statutory health insurance funds. He was forced to work private practice.

As a “non-Aryan,” he was protected by his non-Jewish, “Aryan” wife. Thanks to her and with her help, Franz Meyer was able to remain in Berlin and survive the Holocaust. According to the Nazi racial laws of September 1935, the three children were classified as “first-degree Mischlinge” (“Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor,” “Nuremberg Laws”). In December 1938, the family had to pay the so-called Jewish property tax.

In 1940, his son Peter was forced to leave the Technische Universität Berlin by order of the university administration. He had to interrupt his studies and worked temporarily as a factory worker. After 1945, he resumed his studies in physics.

In addition to being a member of the Society for Digestive and Metabolic Diseases, Franz J. Meyer was also a member of the German Society for Pediatrics, from which he was expelled in 1933.

During the Nazi dictatorship, Meyer moved his practice to Knesebeckstrasse 35 in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1936. On September 30, 1938, his medical license was revoked. From October 1938, Meyer was one of the “Krankenbehandler” specializing in internal medicine who were authorized by the Nazi authorities in Berlin to treat exclusively the Jewish population. The term “Krankenbehandler” was introduced by the NS-administration to avoid to call the jewish physicians as doctors. From January 1, 1939, Meyer was forced to use “Israel” as his middle name.

In 1939, Meyer moved his practice again, this time to Carmerstrasse 5. From September 1941 onwards, Meyer was forced to wear the “yellow star” (“Jewish star”).

On July 29, 1944, Franz J. Meyer was arrested by the GESTAPO as a Jew and taken to a prison in Potsdam. After two weeks, he was transported to a GESTAPO prison in the area of the former Sammellager (“collection camp”) on Hamburger Strasse in Berlin. At the age of 76, Meyer fell seriously ill. He was then housed in a special ward for prisoners (“police station”) at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin from September 7, 1944, to May 8, 1945. Here he experienced liberation by Russian soldiers.

After 1945

After World War II, Meyer resumed his practice as a pediatrician and internist at Carmerstrasse 5 in Berlin. In 1946, he was recognized by the Berlin magistrate as a victim of fascism and racial persecution.

Franz J. Meyer died at the age of 86 on December 5, 1954, in his apartment at Carmerstrasse 5 in Berlin-Charlottenburg. His wife, Frida Luise Meyer, died on September 3, 1969, in Berlin. Their grave is located in the municipal cemetery on Heerstrasse / Trakehnen Allee in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

Franz Meyer’s brother Robert managed to flee to Great Britain. He died in London in December 1939 at the age of 62. Their mother, Emma Meyer, née Derenburg, had moved to Berlin with her two daughters in 1914 and lived at Uhlandstrasse 140. She died at an advanced age in 1940. Franz Meyer’s sister Paula worked as a medical technician until 1935 at the Institute for Cancer Research at Berlin’s Charité hospital, which was headed by Ferdinand Blumenthal until 1933. Paula Meyer was deported from Berlin to the Litzmannstadt/Lodz ghetto in Poland in October 1941. All traces of her were lost there.

After her sister’s deportation from Uhlandstrasse 140 in Berlin, the second sister, Anna Meyer, moved in with Franz J. and Frida Meyer at Carmerstrasse 5. From there, she was also deported from Berlin on November 1, 1941, on the fourth transport to the Litzmannstadt/Lodz ghetto in Poland. From there, Anna Meyer was transported to the Chelmno extermination camp in Poland on May 8, 1942, and murdered.

Franz J. and Frida Meyer’s son Peter continued his studies in physics after World War II and transferred to the University of Göttingen in 1948. There he became an assistant to the future Nobel Prize winner (1989) and physicist Wolfgang Paul and moved to Chicago in the United States in December 1952. In the United States, he became a well-known astrophysicist. He was director of the Enrico Fermi Institute and head of the physics department at the University of Chicago. Peter Meyer died in March 2002.

Their son Franz D. Meyer, born in 1923, finished high school in 1943. He then worked at Elektro-Optik GmbH in Berlin and at the Elektrotechnische Werkstätten in Rielasingen am Hohentwiel. In the winter semester of 1945/46, he began studying medicine in Tübingen, received his doctorate at the University Medical Center / Department of Internal Medicine there, and transferred to the University of Heidelberg in spring 1950, where he completed his medical studies in March 1952. Like his brother, he emigrated to the USA and arrived in Chicago in April 1954. He later moved to the state of New York. He worked as a professor in the Department of Microbiology at the Upstate Medical Center, State University of New York, in Syracuse, N.Y. Franz D. Meyer died in 2019 at the age of 97.

In late summer 1944, Franz J. and Frida Meyer sent their daughter Gabriele from Berlin to Bavaria for her own protection after receiving a warning. She had helped a young Jewish couple find accommodation. The couple was arrested by the GESTAPO shortly afterwards. Gabriele initially stayed in several small towns in Bavaria and finally found a job as a watchmaker’s apprentice in Peissenberg, Bavaria. In 1945, while traveling by train, she was temporarily detained and imprisoned by Russian soldiers in Czechoslovakia on suspicion of spying for the Americans. She arrived in Regensburg at Christmas 1945. She subsequently spent thirteen months in a refugee camp. In April 1948, at the age of 24, she moved to the USA, first to New York and later to Chicago, where she lived with a Quaker family. There she found a job as a senior research assistant in a university physiology lab. In 1952, she married the physician Gordon F. Vawter. Gordon Vawter specialized in pediatric pathology and worked at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Boston. In 1965 / 66, the family spent a year in Germany as part of Gordon Vawter’s visiting professorship at the Institute of Pathology at the University of Marburg. The three Meyer siblings had been friends with the head of the institute, pathologist Peter Gedigk, since their school days in Berlin. Gabriele Vawter became Director of Medical Records at the Dana – Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, a position she held for more than 20 years. Gabriele Vawter-Meyer died in 2010 at the age of 86 in Roseville, Minnesota.