Dr. med.
Siegfried Jonas
1874 - 1954

Siegfried Jonas grew up in a Jewish family in Vienna. His father was the Budapest-born wholesaler Ignaz Jonas (1842-1916), his mother was Jeanette (“Jenny”) Jonas, née Heitner (1855-1938).

After graduating from the State Gymnasium in Vienna’s Leopoldstadt district, S. Jonas studied medicine at the University of Vienna. He completed his studies with his final medical examinations and his doctorate in 1900. In 1906, he married Nina Fuchs, born on May 15, 1882. Their daughter Susanne was born in 1907 and their son Hans Georg was born in 1908.

Education and places of work

After completing his studies, Dr. Jonas opened a private medical practice in Vienna.

Between 1904 and 1910, he worked as an assistant physician in the department of the Vienna General Polyclinic under the direction of Professor Leopold Oser (1839-1910).  Prof. Oser`s clinical work focused on diseases of the gastrointestinal tract. In 1875 in Vienna, Prof. Oser introduced a flexible gastric tube otherwise known as Oser`s stomach tube for diagnostic purposes in stomach examinations, thereby replacing the rigid gastric tube previously introduced by Kussmaul in 1867. A similar flexible rubber gastric tube had been presented by C.A. Ewald in Berlin in 1874.

During his medical training, Dr. Jonas specialized in gastrointestinal diseases. He worked at the Laboratory for Radiological Diagnostics and Therapy at the Vienna General Hospital with the radiologist Guido Holzknecht (1872-1931).

From 1920 to 1924, Dr. Jonas was the chief physician and the director of the outpatient clinic for stomach and intestinal diseases at the Brigitta Hospital in Vienna.

As a practicing physician, Jonas ran his practice at 18 Esslinggasse in Vienna’s 1st district.

1933 – 1954

After the German Wehrmacht crossed into Austria in 1938, the country was annexed to the German Reich. Thereafter, Siegried Jonas and his family suffered persecution because of their Jewish heritage. In the summer of 1939, Jonas and his wife Nina initially fled to England. They continued on the SS Samaria from Liverpool to New York on March 1, 1940, after which they settled in Manhattan. In 1945, they were both granted US citizenship.

At the age of 66 years, Dr. Siegfried Jonas found temporary employment in the research department at New Amsterdam Hospital, New York City, now New Amsterdam Medical Center.

The Jonas` daughter Susanne had already emigrated to New York, USA, in 1938 with her husband, the pianist, composer, and conductor Arthur Kleiner. After arriving in New York in 1940, Siegfried and Nina Jonas lived with their daughter and son-in-law in an apartment 614 West 152 St, Assembly District 22 in New York City. From 1939 until 1967, Arthur Kleiner was the music director of the film department at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and from 1968 until his death in 1980, he worked at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. The son of Nina and Siegfried Jonas, Hans Georg Jonas, fled in 1938 to Tel Aviv, Palestine.

Siegfried Jonas died on February 8, 1954, at the age of 79, in New York at what was then St. Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx. He was buried at Cedar Park Cemetery, Paramus, Bergen County, New Jersey, where his wife Nina was also buried in 1972. Their graves are preserved.