Dr. med.
Siegfried Plaschkes
1886 - 1964

Siegfried Plaschkes was born on July 4, 1886 in St. Pölten to the horse dealer Hermann Tzvi Plaschkes (1858–1935) and Rosa Plaschkes, née Toch (1856–1925). He grew up with four siblings in St. Pölten and Vienna. The Plaschkes family was very involved in the Jewish community and supported Zionist goals. Hermann Tzvi Plaschkes was politically active as a Jewish national district councilor in Leopoldstadt. Siegfried`s brothers Leopold and Jakob also fled to Palestine. Two of his siblings, Angela and Samuel, both died in childhood.

Siegfried Plaschkes graduated from the k.k. Erzherzog Rainer-Gymnasium (High school) in Vienna’s 2nd district. He went on to study at the Medical Faculty of the University of Vienna from the winter semester of 1905/06 until the summer semester of 1910. In the summer semester of 1907, Plaschkes received a scholarship from Johann K. Seyfert. He passed the rigorous medical examinations on January 31, 1908, on October 25, 1910, and on January 20, 1911. On January 27, 1911, he received his doctorate in medicine.

Education and place to work

Even as a student, Siegfried Plaschkes was involved in Zionism and founded the Association of Jewish Doctors in Vienna together with Dr. Alfred Löwi. Dr. Plaschkes received his training at the General Hospital in Vienna. He worked as a resident doctor at the Vienna Polyclinic under Julius Mannaberg. During his time in the Department of Experimental Pathology, Dr. Plaschkes published a paper with Heinrich Schur on the treatment of pneumothorax in tuberculosis.

He was an assistant doctor in the 1st Medical Department of the Vienna Merchants’ Hospital (Krankenhaus der Wiener Kaufmannschaft) when in 1914, he was called to serve in World War I. Initially deployed in Serbia, he was assigned to the Imperial and Royal 5th Army (Isonzo Army) in 1915. Siegfried Plaschkes was awarded the Golden Cross of Merit with Crown on Ribbon on January 5, 1915 and was promoted to senior physician on April 30, 1916. In the fall of 1916, he was assigned to the mobile reserve hospital of the Isonzo Army, which he developed into a “state-of-the-art medical facility primarily for stomach and intestinal diseases” (Rutkowski: Dr. Siegfried Plaschkes – Arzt im Weltkrieg 1914-1918). He summarized his experiences in the 1918 publication “Klinisch-experimentelle Untersuchungen über die Aetiologie der Kriegsgastritis” (Clinical and Experimental Investigations into the Etiology of War Gastritis). On June 26, 1917, he was awarded the Knight’s Cross of the Order of St. Francis

After the war, he established himself as a specialist in internal medicine.

He continued to work with Heinrich Schur at the General Hospital for Merchants and with Julius Mannaberg at the Vienna Polyclinic, publishing a paper on rectal polyps in 1928. The exact date when he established his practice as an specialist for internal medicine is unknown, but he continued to publish his work thereafter (case report on the mesenterium ileocolicum commune in 1931).

On August 14, 1924, he married Hedwig Pisk, née Landgraf (born April 25, 1894), the widow of Oskar Pisk. Hedwig and Oskar`s daughter Lisbeth, born in 1919, was part of the Plaschkes family. Siegfried and Hedwig welcomed their son Johann on January 18, 1926. Johann also became a doctor and died in 1984.

Siegfried Plaschkes was involved in numerous Jewish and Zionist associations. He was the chairman of the Jewish National Fund (Keren Kayemeth Lejisrael) in Vienna, the chairman of the Jewish Medical Association (Jüdischer Ärzteverband), and a member of the OSE (Oeuvre de secours aux enfants), a charitable organization dedicated to protecting sick Jewish children. Furthermore, Dr. Plaschkes was also a member of the Vienna Medical Association.

He was on the board of the Association of Jewish Doctors in Vienna (Vereinigung der jüdischen Ärzte in Wien) . In fact, Dr. Plaschkes represented the Association of Jewish Doctors in Vienna at conferences of the World Association of Jewish Doctors.  At the congress in Paris in 1937, he initiated an aid campaign for young Jewish doctors especially from Eastern Europe with limited training opportunities because of rising anti-Semitism to obtain further medical training at the Rothschild Hospital (hospital of the Jewish community) in Vienna. Dr. Plaschkes was fired from his position as a doctor for workers in the hospitality industry (gastgewerbliche Arbeiterschaft) on April 27, 1938.

After 1933

Even before Austria’s annexation to the German Reich in 1938, Jews in Austria suffered from increasing anti-Semitism. Due to his strong involvement in the Jewish community and medical profession, Siegfried Plaschkes was confronted with the problems of his fellow citizens. After the German Wehrmacht marched into Austria in March 1938, he became head of the medical counseling center of the Jewish Community.

On September 23, 1938, he fled with his wife and two children to Palestine. Dr. Plaschkes was already familiar with Palestine, as he first visited in 1925 for the opening of the Hebrew University. Furthermore, he traveled there in 1935 as a tourist and in 1936 as Austria’s delegate to the first World Congress of Jewish Physicians in Palestine. He settled in Tel Aviv at 21 Sirkin Street as an specialist in internal medicine and was one of the first medical professionals to own an X-ray machine in private practice.  Dr. Plaschkes gained recognition as a gastrointestinal specialist. He also continued his medical publishing work in Palestine with an article published in Gastroenterologia in 1948 on “Vagus resection as ulcer surgery.”

In Palestine, Siegfried Plaschkes remained committed to social causes as a member of the Israeli Medical Association, as the chairman of the Association of Austrian Immigrants (Hithachdut Oleg Austria), as a representative of immigrants from Austria in the Association of Central European Immigrants (Irgun Olej Merkas Eruropa), as a member of the Council of Jews from Austria, and as a member of the presidium of the Solidarity Work. He was also a member of the state presidium of the Israel-Austria Society, which worked to promote relations between Israel and Austria

With a special interest in medical history, Siegfried Plaschkes was a committee member of the Society for the History of Medicine and Natural Science and published numerous articles. He assembled an extensive and valuable collection of historical documents, medals, and medical instruments, which formed the basis of the Israeli Medical Museum, opened in 1957. Shortly before his death, Dr. Plaschkes submitted a manuscript to the Journal for the History of the Jews in which he portrayed Jewish doctors in Austria since the 13th century, paying tribute to Ernst Peter Pick, Otto Loewi, Hermann Schlesinger, Maximilian Weinberger, Heinrich Schur, Julius Donath, Albert Herz, Otto Porges, Richard and Julius Bauer, Adolf Edelmann, and Gottwald Schwarz, all of whom were members of our former professional association for digestive and metabolic diseases.

On June 10, 1964 (another source cites August 10, 1964), Siegfried Plaschkes died in Tel Aviv and was buried in the Nahalat Yitshak Cemetery, Tel Aviv.

Siegfried’s older brother by two years, Leopold Plaschkes studied law and was a lawyer in Vienna. He was involved in the Zionist section of the Viennese Jewish community, became chairman of legal protection in the Zionist People’s Association, and was a member of the board of the Jewish Community from 1919 to 1928. Leopold Plaschkes was a member of the Vienna City Council for many years. He co-founded the Association of Democratic Zionists (later the Association of Radical Zionists), which was absorbed into Nachum Goldmann’s World Zionist Organization in 1935. After the annexation of Austria, he continued to participate in the activities of the Jewish Community, which were then considered illegal. In the fall of 1938, Leopold Plaschkes fled to Palestine and died there in 1942.