Prof. Dr. med.
Walter Zweig
1872 - 1953

Education and Places of Work

After graduating from the Brünn/Brno Gymnasium, Walter Zweig studied medicine at the University of Vienna from 1890 to 1896, graduating with the state examination and doctorate in 1896.

He undertook his training in internal medicine under Hermann Nothnagel at the I. Medical Clinic of the University of Vienna from 1896 to 1901. He specialised in the new field of gastroenterology early on, and temporarily worked in Berlin with Ismar Boas in his clinic and polyclinic for gastrointestinal diseases.

Zweig was head physician (Primarius) of the department for gastrointestinal diseases at the Kaiser Franz Josef-Ambulatorium und Spital in Vienna from 1902 and was appointed as its medical director in 1929. Zweig habilitated at the University of Vienna in 1909 in internal medicine – with a special focus on digestive diseases. He was appointed professor (extraordinarius) in 1932.

He was a doctor at the Military Hospital No 2 in Vienna during the First World War from 1914 to 1918.

Walter Zweig was part of the close circle of friends and students of Ismar Boas. He supported his teacher Boas in Vienna in as many ways as he could from 1936 to March 1938, after the latter had to leave Germany in 1936 and sought refuge in Austria.

After the German Wehrmacht invaded Austria in March 1938, Zweig lost his leading position at the Franz-Josef-Ambulatorium und Spital in Vienna on 22 April 1938. His authorisation to teach was revoked in June 1938.

Escape to England in 1938

Walter Zweig fled Vienna together with his wife in 1938. They joined their son Konrad Zweig, who had been living in London since 1934. The economist Konrad Zweig had been working at the Kiel Institut der Weltwirtschaft (Kiel Institute for the World Economy). Walter Zweig lived at Kensington Court in London in 1938/39 and at Woodstock Road in Oxford from 1942 to 1947 before returning to London.

Zweig was one of the co-editors of the ‘Archiv für Verdauungskrankheiten’ (“Boas-Archiv”) and its successor journal ‘Gastroenterologia’ from 1936.
Walter Zweig died in London on 24 September 1953 at the age of 82.