Dr. med.
Friedrich Heinsheimer
1872 - 1935

On August 26, 1872, Friedrich Wilhelm Heinsheimer was born in Mannheim to Maximilian (Max) Heinsheimer and his wife Anna, née Rosenthal originally from Würzburg. Maximilian Heinsheimer was a legal scholar and acted as the Grand Ducal district court councilor in the German state of Baden. In 1884 when Friedrich was 12 years old, his mother died. Thereafter his father remarried; his stepmother, Cecilie Heinsheimer-Dreyfuss, née Netter, brought a son and a daughter into the family. Friedrich Heinsheimer grew up with his three brothers and his family belonged to the Jewish community. One of Friedrich’s brothers, Professor Dr. Karl Heinsheimer (1869–1929) was a lawyer and taught at the University of Heidelberg from 1907 onwards.

After completing his secondary education, Heinsheimer studied medicine and passed the state examinations at the University of Munich. There, he also received his doctorate in 1895 with his dissertation in regards to the “Development and present state of thyroid therapy.”

working under the support of Carl von Noorden and Hugo Salomo in the Department of Internal Medicine at the Municipal Hospital in Frankfurt am Main. Heinsheimer’s experiences under Carl von Norden in clinical practice influenced his interest in the relatively new field of gastric, intestinal and metabolic diseases was awakened. In fact, during this time period, Dr. Heinsheimer published “Metabolic studies in two cases of gastroenterostomy” in the journal Grenzgebiete der Medizin und Chirurgie (1896) Heinsheimer continued his medical training as assistant to the distinguished Professor Theodor Rosenheim’s specialized gastroenterology practice and polyclinic for gastric and intestinal diseases.

In 1899, Freidrich Heinsheimer established himself as a general practitioner in Karlsruhe. In the same year, he married Emma Willstätter. Emma Willstätter was born in Karlsruhe in 1879 to teh Karlsruhe banker Leopold Willstätter and his wife Henriette, née Homburger. Friedrich and Emma Heinsheimer had three children together: Hans Walter born in September 1900, Gertrude Anna born in 1904 and Rudolf Otto born in 1908.

In 1905, Dr. Heinsheimer and his wife founded the Waldpark Sanatorium as a specialist health resort for gastric and intestinal diseases, metabolic disorders and nutritional disturbances in Baden-Baden. The Waldpark Sanatorium moved into a newly constructed building in July of 1906. Between the years of 1905 and 1906, Dr. Heinsheimer conducted research on gastric secretion and the enzymatic breakdown of fats in the stomach as a guest researcher together with the physiologist Adolf Bickel in the experimental-biological department of the Institute of Pathology at the Charité Berlin. In fact, he presented this particular data on April 30, 1906 as a lecture for the Berlin Society for Internal Medicine.

From 1908 onwards, the Reichsmedizinalkalender designated Heinsheimer with the stomach symbol, identifying him as a specialist for gastric, intestinal and metabolic diseases.

The Waldpark Sanatorium quickly became very successful and developed into an institution (see Heinsheimer Waldpark Sanatorium). Approximately forty patients could be treated in single rooms at the sanatorium. Interestingly enough, the Hamburg-born art historian Aby Warburg one of the most famous patients, residing there intermittently between 1910 and 1928.

During the first World War, Dr. Heinsheimer participated as a staff physician from 1914 onwards. In the initial months of the war, he served in the province of West Flanders near the towns of Ypres, Roeselare (French: Roulers), Staden and Diksmuide. Friedrich Heinsheimer was awarded the Iron Cross on November 3, 1914 [unpublished letters by F. Heinsheimer to his wife, 23 October 1914 to 8 January 1915

Following the end of the war in the 1920s and early 1930s, the sanatorium continuously prospered, especially treating countless patients between the months of March and November. Heinsheimer traveled to the United States in 1931 to learn about the medical institutions on the East and West Coasts. He reported on his corresponding impressions in the journal Die medizinische Welt in 1932.

1933 – 1938

Friedrich Heinsheimer experienced Jewish persecution from the spring of 1933 and onwards under National Socialism. Jewish doctors’ practices were officially boycotted on April 1, 1933. Even with a decreasing patient population, Dr. Heinsheimer was initially given permission to run the sanatorium.

At the age of 61 years, Friedrich Heinsheimer died on April 13, 1935 during a stay at the guesthouse Haus Eckerlin Badenweiler. Dr. Heinsheimer is buried in the Jewish section of the municipal cemetery Lichtental in Baden-Baden.

1935

Die ärztliche Leitung des Wald-Parksanatoriums übernahm der Internist Martin Goldner, der seine internistische Ausbildung an der Universität Breslau, heute Wroclaw, Polen, bei Oskar Minkowski sowie an der II. Medizinischen Klinik der Berliner Charite erhalten hatte und der als Gustav von Bergmanns Assistent wesentlich an der Publikation dessen „Funktioneller Pathologie“ beteiligt war (in der Ersten Auflage 1932 wurde Goldner ausdrücklich als Mitautor genannt. Dessen Namen erwähnte von Bergmann in der Zweiten Auflage 1936 nicht mehr).

As a Jew, Goldner was forced to leave Berlin with his wife in 1933 and initially fled to Zurich, Switzerland. Following Heinsheimer’s death in April 1935, Martin Goldner (born July 1, 1902, in Berlin) became chief physician at the Waldpark Sanatorium that same month. Heinsheimer’s wife, Emma, continued to manage the sanatorium’s financial affairs until the fall of 1938. Martin Goldner lost his medical license on September 30, 1938. Pressure from the National Socialists had intensified to such an extent that Emma Heinsheimer was forced to sell the sanatorium. On October 1, 1938, she sold the building and property for a price significantly below the complex’s value at the time. [https://gedenkbuch.baden-baden.de/person/heinsheimer-emma-geb-willstaetter/].

Emma Heinsheimer later wrote: “I am of Jewish descent; without religious affiliation. I attended the Viktoria School in Karlsruhe. In 1899, I married the physician Dr. med. Friedrich Heinsheimer, [who was] born on August 26, 1873, [and who] died April 13,1935. Three children resulted from the marriage, all of whom now live abroad. [Up] Until 1906, I lived in Karlsruhe. In 1906, I founded the Waldpark Sanatorium together with my husband, of which I was in charge of the economic and administrative management until October 1, 1938. On that day, the operation was closed, as the entire property had been sold to the Protestant Deaconess Institute in Karlsruhe-Rüppur. I am now still engaged in winding [down] the business and in the aforementioned work for handing over the house to the purchaser.” [https://gedenkbuch.baden-baden.de/person/heinsheimer-emma-geb-willstaetter/]

At first, the sanatorium continued to operate. With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, it was used to house wounded Wehrmacht soldiers. From 1945 to 1950, the sanatorium served as quarters for French soldiers. In 1951, the Baden State Insurance Agency took over the building. By 2026, it will serve the German Pension Insurance under the name Rehaklinik Höhenblick as a specialized clinic for orthopedics and rheumatology.

Emma Heinsheimer fled Germany in December of 1938. Traveling from Cherbourg, France, she reached New York on December 23, 1938. Her son, Hans Heinsheimer, had already been living in New York since the summer of 1938. Emma Heinsheimer died in New York on August 30, 1957. Her grave is located at Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York.

Dr. Martin Goldner fled Baden-Baden with his wife, Dr. med. Elisabeth Goldner, and their four-year-old son, Andreas, on the night of the November Pogrom in 1938 and initially made his way to Paris. On December 1, 1938, the family was able to travel from Le Havre to the United States aboard the S.S. Washington. He initially worked at the University of Chicago, collaborating with Lester Dragstedt and George Gomori. Goldner became a well-known diabetologist in the United States. In 1950, he moved to New York and served as Medical Director at the Jewish Hospital and Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. As a professor of internal medicine, he was a member of the faculty at the State University of New York, Downstate Medical Center. Martin Goldner died on April 13, 1987, in Santa Clara, California.

Hans Heinsheimer became a very well-known music publisher, author and journalist. Beginning in 1923, he held a significant position at Universal Edition, the Austrian music publishing house founded in 1901 in Vienna. Thereby, he supported many composers, including both Alban Berg and Leoš Janáček. [https://forbiddenmusic.org/2016/10/29/heinsheimers-hidden-history/] For work-related reasons, Hans Heinsheimer traveled on the SS Bremen from Cherbourg to New York state in early March 1938. After the German invasion of Austria on March 15, 1938, Hans Heinsheimer did not return to Austria. Following a temporary stay in Havana, Cuba, he returned to the United States on June 3, 1938, after which he applied for U.S. citizenship in New York. In 1957, Hans Heinsheimer became the head of the major music publishing house Schirmer and eventually was named vice president. He died at an advanced age in New York on October 12, 1993.

Friedrich and Emma Heinsheimer’s other son, Rudolf, studied law.  He was dismissed from his position as a research assistant at the Faculty of Law at the University of Berlin in the spring of 1933 because he was a Jew. In March 1933, Rudolf Heinsheimer fled to Palestine. In 1934, he received a license from the British Mandate authorities to practice law and open his own firm. After the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, Rudolf Heinsheimer worked in the Attorney General’s office and later became Deputy Attorney General of Israel. In 1949 he changed his name to Uri Yadin. In the 1970s, he taught law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Uri Yadin died in 1985 in Jerusalem.

Friedrich and Emma Heinsheimer’s daughter, Gertrude Anna Heinsheimer, married Georg Jakob Best in 1928. Georg Jakob Best (1903–2003) was a student of Paul Klee’s and worked as a painter, graphic artist, sculptor. Gertrude Heinsheimer and Georg Best divorced in 1931. Gertrude Heinsheimer-Best fled from Germany to Palestine in 1936, where her brother, Rudolf Heinsheimer, had been living since 1933. She died at the age of 37 years old in an accident in Jerusalem in 1943.