Dr. med.
Hans Ury
1873 - 1937

“The author of this work, Hans Ury, of Jewish faith, son of the factory owner Emil Ury, was born in Berlin on 15 January 1873. He received his first school education in the pre-school of Dr. Kürten in Berlin, then attended the Köllnisches Gymmnasium, from which he graduated on Easter 1891 with the certificate of maturity,” Ury states in the curriculum vitae of his dissertation. His father was the director of the Berlin tobacco factory Doussin, his mother was Franziska Ury, née Schlesinger. Else Ury, the children’s book author of – a.o. the “Nesthäkchen” books – was Hans Ury’s sister.

Education and Places of Work

Hans Ury studied medicine at the Friedrich-Wilhelms University in Berlin, where he passed his state examination on 22 February 1895. He received his doctorate on 22 February 1895 with the thesis “Ein Fall von mal perforant du pied”. He obtained his licence to practise medicine in 1896.

Ury was an employee of Ismar Boas and temporarily worked at his polyclinic and private clinic for gastrointestinal diseases. He also worked and did research for a while at the chemical laboratory of the Institute of Pathology at the Charité under Ernst Salkowski in 1905. He compiled numerous papers and summaries of the German-language specialist literature on gastroenterology, hepatology and metabolic diseases for the Archiv für Verdauungskrankheiten (“Boas Archiv”) from 1910.

Ury actively participated in the First World War and accompanied one of the first military trains to France as a military doctor.

Ury successfully ran a highly respected practice for gastrointestinal and metabolic diseases from 1903, which later included X-ray diagnostics. The practice was initially located at Kaiserdamm, later for many years at Kantstrasse 30 in Berlin, where he also lived with his mother and his sister, Else Ury. He also ran his own polyclinic in the Prenzlauer Berg district. Ury was interested in music, played the violin, and was member of a string quartet.

His health insurance licence was revoked after 1933.

1937

Hans Ury committed suicide in Berlin on 7 September 1937. He was buried at the Jewish Cemetery Berlin-Weissensee. His tomb is located in urn field III.

Hans Ury’s sister, the writer Else Ury, was murdered in Auschwitz in January 1943. His second sister Käthe Heymann, née Ury, fled to the Netherlands. She was detained at the Westerbork camp in April 1943, later transported to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, and then to the Theresienstadt ghetto. From there she was deported to Auschwitz on 28 October 1944, where she was murdered. Hans Ury’s brother, the lawyer and judicial councillor Dr. jur. Ludwig Ury, was able to flee from Germany to London.