Dr. med.
Richard Spiro
1869 - 1938

Richard Spiro was born in South Bohemia in 1869 as the son of the jewish factory owner Ignaz Spiro and his wife Sofie, née Fischl. Spiro grew up in a large industrialist family (“Ignaz Spiro und Söhne”, Ignaz Spiro and Sons) with many siblings. They ran the largest paper mill in Krumau, today Český Krumlov, Czech Republic on the Vltava River and in Wettern, today Větřni, in former Austria-Hungary. His father, Ignaz Spiro, was socially active; he built housing for workers and a workers’ hospital, and he also rendered many services to the Jewish community in Krumau. The company was “aryanised” in 1938.

Studies and Places of Work

Richard Spiro grew up in a large family with ten siblings. He took up his medical studies at the University of Vienna in the winter semester of 1889/90, after graduating from the königlich kaiserliches Obergymnasium (royal imperial high school) in Krumau. He completed his studies in February 1897 with the final viva voce examination and his doctorate.

It is still unknown at which institution Spiro completed his further training in internal medicine and his further specialisation.

He was listed in the Vienna address book with a specialist practice for gastrointestinal diseases at Ferstelgasse 6, in the IXth district in Vienna from 1903. In May 1920, Spiro married Louise (Aloisia) Andorfer, who was from Vienna.

He practised at Lange Gasse 65 in the VIII. District of Vienna from 1932 to 1938

After 1938

Richard Spiro died in Vienna on April 1, 1938, at the age of 68. He was buried in the family plot of his parents-in-law, Franz Xaver and Josefa Andorfer, at the Vienna Central Cemetery on Simmeringer Hauptstrasse. Spiro’s wife, Louise (Aloisia), was not affiliated with any religious denomination and survived the Nazi dictatorship and World War II in Vienna. She died on April 30, 1965.

Spiro’s sister, Regina Spiro-Schulhof, was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in 1942; she died under the conditions in the ghetto on September 7, 1942. Another sister, Adele Ida Spiro-Reiser, was murdered in the Treblinka extermination camp in 1942. Younger members of the family managed to flee to the United States.