Dr. med.
Richard Leipziger
1874 - 1953

Richard Leipziger was born on August 17, 1874 in Breslau, today Wrocław, Poland, as the son of the merchant Louis Leipziger and his wife Fanny, née Diamant. His mother, Fanny Leipziger, came from Posen, today Poznań, Poland. The family belonged to the Jewish faith community. Leipziger grew up with his younger brothers Eugen (1876–1890) and Alfred (1879–1943).

Richard Leipziger attended the Royal Friedrichs Gymnasium in Breslau, which he left with the high school degree (Abitur) on September 21, 1893. He completed his medical studies exclusively at the University of Breslau, completing the medical state examination in July 1898.

Education and professional career

After his dissertation “On metabolic experiments with edestin,” also completed in July 1898, Leipziger worked from August until November of 1898 as a voluntary physician in the surgical department of the Allerheiligen Hospital in Breslau. Richard Leipziger became a assistant to Wilhelm Weintraud at the Municipal Hospital in Wiesbaden on January 1, 1899. From 1896 onwards, Wilhelm Weintraud worked at the Medical University Clinic in Breslau, where he was also a distinguished early researcher in metabolism and diabetes. Weintraud had been one of Leipziger’s teachers during his time in medical school. In 1898, Wilhelm Weintraud became the head of the Department of Internal Medicine at the Wiesbaden Municipal Hospital. At the same hospital in Wiesbaden, Richard Leipziger proceeded to received his specialist training in gastric, intestinal and metabolic diseases.

In the early summer of 1903, Richard Leipziger established himself in Bremen as one of the very earliest specialists in the still new field of gastric, intestinal and metabolic diseases. In fact, Leipziger only the second specialist in Bremen to represent this new discipline. In 1903, Richard Leipziger converted to the Protestant faith. In the Reichsmedizinalkalender of 1904, Leipziger is documented for the first time as a specialist, marked with the stomach symbol, in Bremen. For the next 35 years until he fled Germany, Dr. Leipziger worked as a specialist in gastroenterology in Bremen. His practice, initially located on Ostertorstrasse and later moved to Domshof 11, quickly developed into a very successful business, also due to the rarity of such specialization at that time.

From April 1910 until 1929, Leipziger operated a private clinic in Bremen at Am Dobben 119, in a threestorey building adjoining his practice. He closed the private clinic in 1929, after which his practice was located at Contrescarpe 169. This practice address remained unchanged until 1937. The family home was located in Kattenesch.

In 1908, Richard Leipziger married Anna Sonntag, the daughter of a Protestant pastor from Bremen. Their respective son Waldemar Ludwig was born in 1911 and their respective daughter Susanne was born in 1913.

An active member in public health policy, Richard Leipziger was a member of the Association of Socialist Physicians (V.S.Ä.), which had been founded in 1918 and emerged from the Social Democratic Physicians’ Association. In 1925, Leipziger published an article in the association’s journal Der sozialistische Arzt titled “The importance of our ‘newsletter’.” Furthermore, Dr. Leipziger participated as a member of the “Reichsbanner SchwarzRotGold” and the “Association of Republican War Veterans,” where he trained medical corps.

After 1933

From spring 1933 onwards, Richard Leipziger and his family experienced humiliation and persecution directed against the Jewish population in Germany

As a result, Dr. Leipziger received a decreasing number of patient referrals from “Aryan” colleagues. This proved problematic, as Dr. Leipziger was dependent on referrals as a specialized doctor. Due to his status as a First World War frontline soldier (“frontline combatant privilege”), he was initially allowed to maintain his authorization to treat insured patients. Until 1937, Richard Leipziger practiced medicine at Contrescarpe 169. In the Reichsmedizinalkalender of 1937 he was stigmatized with a colon before his name, marking him as Jewish. His last recorded address in Bremen was at Doventorsteinweg 54.

Richard and Anna Leipziger fled Germany in December 1937. They joined their son in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands. At the end of 1938, they were forced to leave Spanish territory. They obtained visas for France and moved to the port city of Hyères in the Département Var, about 20 km east of Toulon. In May 1939, the couple was stripped of their German citizenship.

In November 1939, Richard Leipziger’s wife Anna died in Hyères at the age of 68.

Richard Leipziger was able to remain in Hyères for the following four years. When the persecution of Jews in southern France began, he found refuge at the Refuge Protestant de Castres, Département Tarn from September 9, 1943 until June 1, 1945. The town of Castres lies about 70 km east of Toulouse on the River Agout. In the retirement home there, he survived the Holocaust. After the war, Dr. Leipziger lived in a retirement home in PlombièreslèsDijon.

Richard Leipziger died at the age of 78 on April 10, 1953. His burial place is unknown.

Richard and Anna Leipziger’s children, Susanne and Waldemar Ludwig Leipziger (later Lepert), left Germany in 1933 after experiencing the consequences of the Nazi dictatorship early on. In April 1935 in Paris, Susanne Leipziger married Hans Guggenheim (1904–1972), who had been born into a Jewish family in Konstanz. During the war, she temporarily lived in Casablanca, Morocco with her husband, who had joined the French Foreign Legion at the outbreak of the war. The couple survived the Holocaust. Susanne Guggenheim died in 1972 in Paris. The son of Richard and Anna Leipziger, Waldemar Lepert, left Germany via Stockholm and Paris for Las Palmas. After being expelled from Spain, he lived in France. There he was later interned in the notorious Gurs camp in southern France. Waldemar Lepert was able to escape from the camp and survived the Holocaust. He died in August 1999 in France.

Richard Leipziger’s brother, Alfred Leipziger, fled with his family to the Netherlands in 1933. The couple was arrested in Amsterdam by the Gestapo in January 1943, imprisoned in the Herzogenbusch/Vught concentration camp, and deported via Westerbork to Auschwitz. Alfred Leipziger and his wife Katharina Leipziger Sachs were murdered there upon arrival on February 5, 1943. Their son, Kurt Leipziger, was also imprisoned in the Herzogenbusch/Vught concentration camp in January 1943 and later transferred to the Westerbork camp. Kurt Leipziger was murdered at the age of 35 on May 7, 1943 at the Sobibor extermination camp. The couple’s second son, Walter Leipziger (Leipzig), born in 1910, fled from Southampton to the United States in August 1937. He lived in Queens, New York and died in 2003.

Richard Leipziger’s mother Fanny Leipziger, née Diamant, followed her son Alfred from Breslau to the Netherlands. She died in September 1940 at the age of 89 in Gouda and is buried in the local Jewish cemetery.