Dr. med.
Fritz Siegmund Schlesinger
1885 - 1966

Fritz Schlesinger was born in Bleicherode in the district of Nordhausen, Thuringia, in 1885 as the son of factory owner Emil Schlesinger and his wife Betty, née Herz.

Education and Places of Work

After graduating from the royal grammar school in Nordhausen on Easter 1906, Schlesinger studied medicine in Munich, Göttingen, Berlin, and then again in Göttingen. He passed the state examination in Göttingen in May 1911, and received his doctorate from the University of Göttingen in 1912 with the thesis “Über das ‘Frühaufstehen’ der Wöchnerinnen in der königlichen Universitäts-Frauenklinik zu Göttingen”. He received his licence to practise medicine the same year. From 1912, Schlesinger was an assistant doctor in the First Medical Clinic of the Rudolf Virchow Municipal Hospital in Berlin under Leopold Kuttner, who was one of the leading and early gastroenterologists in Berlin at the time. From 1914 Schlesinger actively participated in the First World War. From 1916 til 1919 he worked as an assistant physician and senior physician in the medical clinic at the municipal hospital in Stettin under Ernst Neisser.

Schlesinger settled as an internist in private practice in Szczecin in 1919. His focus was on gastroenterology. The practice grew rapidly thanks to his specialisation and a large catchment area. Schlesinger moved to Berlin in 1937, where he worked in private practice located at Pariser Strasse 45.

Escape to Argentina via France in 1938 

Schlesinger fled to Buenos Aires, Argentina, from Germany via Paris and Marseille in 1938. He lived in the Flores suburb of Buenos Aires.

Fritz “Frederico” Schlesinger was initially not granted a licence to have his own practice in Argentina and thus ran a small cosmetics company together with his wife. He later received a 12-year contract as medical director of the polyclinic/outpatient department at the Hospital de Gastroenterologia Dr. Carlos Bonorino Udaondo in Buenos Aires. The clinic had been founded in 1938 and was a special hospital for digestive diseases. He also ran a private practice as an internist and gastroenterologist until the age of 75. He returned to Berlin in 1963. In doing so, he complied with his wife’s request, who had relatives in Germany.

Fritz Schlesinger died in Berlin in October 1966 at the age of 81. His brother Oscar Schlesinger had also fled to Argentina in 1938. Another brother, Paul Schlesinger, reached the USA via England in 1939. His sister Alice Rosette Schlesinger-Heft was also able to flee to the USA via England.