Search for Names, Places and Biographies

Dr. Clara Poll-Cords * 1884

Binderstraße 24 (Eimsbüttel, Rotherbaum)

HIER WOHNTE
DR. CLARA
POLL-CORDS
JG. 1884
FLUCHT 1939 SCHWEDEN
FLUCHT IN DEN TOD
5. AUGUST 1939
LUND

further stumbling stones in Binderstraße 24:
Dr. Heinrich Poll

Dr. med. Clara Poll-Cords, née Cords, born 13. August 1884 in Olszewice, Hohensalza, Provinz Posen, death by suicide 5. August 1939 in Lund, Schweden

Binderstraße 24

On 10 August 1939, the Hamburg merchant and banker Cornelius von Berenberg-Gossler noted in his diary: "We are very saddened because this morning we received an obituary from Professor Poll-Cords (which she had written herself), who took her own life on her husband's birthday in Lund. As Prof. Degkwitz, one of her best friends, told me by telephone, she had made prior arrangements about all her belongings. She had suffered too much through the persecutions of the Jews, of which her husband, one of countless, had also been a victim."

Clara Maria Katharina Poll-Cords was the youngest of five children of Carl Anton Cords, owner of a knight`s manor (Rittergutsbesitzer) and Clara Maria Cords, née Nehring. She was a gynaecologist and did not have a professorial title, but was called "Frau Professor" after her husband, as was customary at the time. One of her two sisters also became a doctor.


We learn about her career up to her doctorate from the curriculum vitae printed in her doctoral thesis: "From 1891 to 1900 I attended the Proxsche höhere Mädchenschule in Berlin and then prepared myself for the Abitur at Helene Lange's grammar school courses for women, which I passed at the Augusta-Gymnasium in Charlottenburg in Easter 1906."

She took up medical studies at the age of 22 and completed the first semester in Freiburg im Breisgau. There, young women had been able to enrol in the university's medical faculty since the winter semester of 1899. They were the first regularly enrolled female students in the German Reich and later the first female doctors with a German licence to practise medicine.
She spent the following three semesters in Berlin "working for Professors Engler [...] Poll and [Hans] Virchow." This is probably how she met her future husband Heinrich Poll. In 1908 she returned to Freiburg.


In the summer semester of 1911, Clara Cords passed her state examination in Berlin. From November 1912 she worked as a trainee at the University Women's Clinic. In that year she was also granted her licence to practise medicine, and in 1913 she received her doctorate from the Friedrich Wilhelms University.
From 1915 to 1917 she worked at the Johanniter Hospital in Bonn, then as a doctor in private practice in Berlin.


In October 1924, at the age of 40, she married Professor Dr. Heinrich William Poll, seven years her senior, born in Berlin on 5 August 1877 to Jewish parents. In the same year, Poll accepted a position at the University of Hamburg as professor of anatomy and director of the Anatomical Institute. He was a eugenicist, i.e. researched in the field of hereditary health [Erbgesundheitslehre].
Clara opened a gynaecological practice in Hamburg, initially at Binderstraße 24, where the couple also lived. Besides she offered consultation hours at Esplanade 43, and from 1928 the practice address Neuerwall 69 is also recorded.
In July 1933 Heinrich Poll organised a week`s seminary on hereditary biology and eugenics in Hamburg on behalf of the Central Institute for Education and Teaching. 
Soon after he had to resign from his chair. A representative of the "Deutsche Dozentenschaft", a Nazi organisation, had denounced him as being "non-Aryan". He was dismissed from the University of Hamburg and forced to resign on 31 December 1933. The couple moved back to Berlin, where Clara ran a practice again, first at Kaiserallee 14, then from 1937 at Meierottostraße 5.

Heinrich Poll received a pension, which was transferred to his wife's account. His attempts to find a new job abroad were unsuccessful.
In spring 1939, "Heinrich Israel Poll, Professor i.R.", wrote to the Kultur- und Schulbehörde, Abteilung Hochschulwesen, Hamburg, requesting permission to move his residence to England or Sweden. "I do not have a work permit. I will try to occupy myself with free scientific work in the field of anatomy and biology. I have no prospect of paid employment. I am only dependent on the support promised to me during my stay [...]. Since my wife [...] is Aryan and remains in Berlin, and her income is not sufficient to support me, I am dependent on the continued payment of my domestic allowance [...] and therefore request that the payment of my pension to my wife be approved."

In May 1939, he was granted permission to transfer his residence to Sweden for two years, on condition "that you do not pursue a scientific teaching activity in Sweden [...]. The pension payments will be transferred to your wife's account as before". Heinrich intended to do research at the medical faculty of Lund University. According to the information in his wife's suicide note, he received a scholarship.

Shortly after his move, on 12 June 1939, Heinrich Poll succumbed to a heart attack. Clara immediately travelled to Lund and, after his funeral on 20 June, returned to Berlin. In July she paid a brief visit to her husband's grave. A Swedish acquaintance, who had been friends with the couple since 1924, later testified that Clara had been very upset by her husband's death. She said that life was over and there was no reason for her to go on living.


On 1 August, Clara arrived in Lund again and stayed at the Grand Hotel as before. She wanted to celebrate her husband's birthday on 5 August alone, the following night she took her own life. She was 54 years old. In her suicide note she asked to be cremated and buried with her husband's urn.

The inscription on the Stolperstein commemorating Clara Poll-Cords is not quite correct: It was her husband who fled to Sweden - as described in the biography - not her. But she took her own life there.


The grave is in Lund North Cemetery and still exists. A small foundation at Lund University's Faculty of Medicine, established in memory of Heinrich Poll by his longstanding friend Professor Flexner (Princeton University) and a Professor Strauss from Jerusalem, pays for the upkeep of the grave and disburses grants for genetic research.

Stand: September 2023
© Sabine Brunotte

Quellen: StaH 113-5_BV 106; Die Verfolgung und Ermordung der europäischen Juden durch das nationalsozialistische Deutschland 1933-1945, Band 2, München 2009; Promotionsschrift Clara Cords, Injektionen von Thyreoidea-Extrakt bei graviden Kaninchen, Inaugural Dissertation zur Erlangung der medizinischen Doktorwürde an der Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin von Clara Cords aus Olczewice (Posen), Tag der Promotion 31. Oktober 1913, Berlin NW; James Braund, Douglas G. Sutton, The Case of Heinrich Wilhelm Poll (1877-1939): A German-Jewish Geneticist, Eugenicist, Twin Researcher, and Victim of the Nazis in "Journal of the History of Biology (2008) 41:1-35 DOI 10.1007/s10739-007-9122-z; h HYPERLINK "https://geschichte.charite.de/aeik/biografie.php?ID=AEIK00077", letzter Zugriff 16.8.2023; Geburt Heinrich William Poll, Eintrag Standesamt Berlin XI, Urkunde Nr. 2330, eingesehen unter www.ancestryinstitution.de/discoveryui-content/view/2485831:5753, Zugriff 5.9.2023; Heirat Clara Cords und Heinrich Poll, Eintrag Standesamt Berlin XiiA, Urkunde Nr. 383, eingesehen unter www.ancestryinstitution.de/discoveryui-content/view/189795094, Zugriff 5.9.2023; Schriftliche Auskunft Universität Lund, Stiftungsabteilung, E-Mail vom 20.2.2023; Schriftliche Auskunft Riksarkivet i Lund, RA-FF 2023/024254, E-Mail vom 15.5.2023, Dank an Ingela Hellerstedt und Steffi Rückner für Übersetzung und Transkription des Polizeiprotokolls; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Poll_(Mediziner) Zugriff 16.2.2023; https://agora.sub.uni-hamburg.de/subhh-adress/digbib/start, Adressbücher Hamburg 1925-1933, letzter Zugriff 16.8.2023; https://www.med.uni-freiburg.de/de/fakultaet/geschichte-der-fakultaet Zugriff 17.02.2023.