Dr. med.
Richard Spiro
1869 - 1938

Richard Spiro was born in South Bohemia in 1869 as the son of the factory owner Ignaz Spiro and his wife Sofie, née Fischel. 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/Český Krumlov on the Vltava River and in Wettern (today Větřni) in former Austria-Hungary. The company was “aryanised” in 1938.

Studies and Places of Work

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

After 1938

Richard Spiro’s practice address does not appear in the Vienna address book in 1939. So far, no further biographical information on Richard Spiro has been found.

Two of Richard Spiro’s sisters, Adele Reiser and Regina Schulhof, were murdered in the Holocaust. Another sister, Ely Offenheimer-Spiro, fled to England in 1938 and later to the USA.