Dr. med.
Siegbert Kamnitzer
1892 - 1985

Siegbert Kamnitzer was born in 1892 to merchant Wilhelm (Willi) Kamnitzer and his wife Emma, née Hirschfeld, in the former West Prussian town of Dirschau, not far from Danzig /Gdansk on the Vistula (Weichsel) River. The family professed the Jewish faith.

“I attended the Oberrealschule zu St. Petri und Pauli in Danzig, where I passed my Abitur exams in Easter 1911. I then enrolled at the University of Berlin to study medicine. I remained there until the end of the summer semester of 1914. In August 1914, I joined the army as a war volunteer and served as a field surgeon and assistant field surgeon from November 1914 to November 1918. I spent the winter semester of 1918/19 in Königsberg, Prussia. From there, I came to Rostock in February 1919, where I passed the state examination on June 28, 1919. On July 10, 1919, I received my license to practice medicine” (CV Siegbert Kamnitzer, University Archive Rostock).

His brother, Dr. Bernhard Kamnitzer, born in 1890, was a well-known lawyer, attorney, representative of the Jewish community in Danzig/Gdansk, and, as a member of the SPD (Social Democratic Party), a fighter against the efforts of the NSDAP to gain influence in the free city of Danzig, which was under the League of Nations, in the early 1930s. Bernhard Kamnitzer was a member of the Danzig People’s Assembly (parliament) from 1920 and Senator for Finance in Danzig in 1929/1930. In 1938, he was briefly imprisoned by the National Socialists. Their mother, Emma Kamnitzer, died in March 1939 in Danzig-Langfuhr.

Education and career

In February 1919, Kamnitzer was able to complete a so-called interim semester (war emergency semester) for war participants at the University of Rostock. In August 1919, he passed his oral doctoral examination. He completed his doctoral thesis “On the Question of Wound Diphtheria” under Theodor von Wasielewski at the Institute of Hygiene at the University of Rostock.

After passing his state examination in 1920, Kamnitzer worked as an assistant physician until 1923 and then as a specialist in internal medicine until 1927 at the First Medical Department at the Moabit Municipal Hospital in Berlin under Georg Klemperer. In 1920, that Department was granted the status of the Fourth Medical University Clinic of Berlin. Kamnitzer actively participated in scientific training, published in the journal Therapie der Gegenwart (Contemporary Therapy) edited by Klemperer, and, together with gynecologist Siegbert Joseph, developed a method for detecting early pregnancy: the phloridzin test, “Maturin” – pregnancy diagnostic according to Kamnitzer-Joseph.

Georg Klemperer, a highly respected internist and medical director of the First Medical Department Berlin-Moabit, was dismissed in 1933 because he was Jewish. He was able to flee to the USA in 1937. – Siegbert Joseph, head of the newly established independent department of obstetrics and gynecology at Moabit Hospital since 1927, was also dismissed by the Nazi authorities in 1933 for racist reasons. He worked at the Jewish Hospital in Berlin until 1939, fled to Riga/ Latvia, worked there as a doctor in the Jewish ghetto, and died in December 1944 in the SS special camp Libau / Liepāja, Latvia, during a Soviet air raid.

In April 1922, Kamnitzer married Henriette Henny Eber, née Bing, who was born in Hamburg in 1889. In November 1922, their son Jürgen Peter Kamnitzer (Peter J. Kamnitzer in the US since 1941) was born in Berlin, followed by their daughter Hannelore in August 1924.

In 1927, Siegbert Kamnitzer settled in Danzig / Gdansk as a specialist in internal medicine. He is first mentioned as a practicing physician in Danzig / Gdansk in the 1928 Reich Medical Calendar. His practice was initially located at Kasubischer Markt 11. After 1933, he moved his practice to Karrenwall 3.

 1933 – 1938

From 1933 onwards, the rise of the NSDAP also led to increasing discrimination against Jews in the free city of Danzig, which was under the supervision of the League of Nations. As early as May 1933, Kamnitzer was stripped of his position as medical advisor to the Commercial Substitute Health Insurance Fund. He also lost his position as medical advisor to various insurance offices in 1933 (cf. E. Lichtenstein 1973, p. 159).

In 1935, the NSDAP won 59% of the vote in the Danzig People’s Assembly elections. In 1937/38, the persecution of the Jewish population and the political opposition by the National Socialists intensified significantly in Danzig.

On September 28, 1938, Jewish doctors in Danzig were informed that they would be prohibited from practicing medicine as of January 1, 1939, and that their medical licenses would be revoked (cf. S. Echt, p. 184).

Flight to England in 1939 and to the USA in 1941

After receiving a warning, Siegbert Kamnitzer fled to Gdynia, Poland, on the last day of December 1938. Four weeks later, his wife and two children followed him. In April 1939, the family moved from Gdynia to England, where they found refuge in the London borough of Kensington. After the outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, Kamnitzer was temporarily interned as an enemy alien, but was released again in July 1940.

On March 29, 1941, the family traveled from Liverpool to New York on the S.S. Morska Wola of the Gdynia America Shipping Line. After passing language tests and the American state examination, Kamnitzer received a license to practice privately in New York in April 1943. He worked early on in the Outpatient Department of Mount Sinai Hospital New York as a clinical assistant, later as a senior clinical assistant. After 1945, Kamnitzer became the medical advisor to the Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New York.

In 1946, he and his family members received US citizenship.

Siegbert Kamnitzer died in 1985 at the age of 93 in Hamilton, a town near Cincinnati, Ohio. His wife, Henny Kamnitzer, had died in May 1959. Their graves are located in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, Greenburgh, Westchester County, about 40 km north of Manhattan, in the state of New York.

Their daughter Hannelore Kamnitzer-Yager died in 1961 at the age of 36 in Security-Widefield, El Paso County, Colorado. Their son Peter Kamnitzer was a talented musician who played the violin from childhood and was a member of the Jewish Cultural Federation Orchestra in Danzig as a teenager. He fled with his parents to England in 1939 and to the USA in 1941. After further training, Peter Kamnitzer was a member of the LaSalle Quartet for four decades as a violist. He also taught violin and viola at the College-Conservatory of Music, University of Cincinnati, and taught music history. He died in February 2016 in Israel at the age of 93.

Siegbert Kamnitzer’s brother, Dr. jur. Bernhard Kamnitzer, fled from Danzig in 1938, first to England and then from Liverpool to New York in April 1939. Here he was involved in advising Jews who were claiming reparations from the Federal Republic of Germany. Bernhard Kamnitzer died in New York in 1959.

Siegbert Kamnitzer’s sister Margarete Beck, born in 1897, fled first to England in 1939 and then to New York, USA, in October 1939. She died in New York in 1980.