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Otto Meyer * 1898

Lenhartzstraße 1 (Hamburg-Nord, Eppendorf)

HIER WOHNTE
DR. OTTO MEYER
JG. 1898
DEPORTIERT 1941
LODZ
???

Dr. Otto Meyer, born on 20 Aug. 1898 in Cologne, deported in Oct. 1941 from Cologne to the Lodz Ghetto

Lenhartzstrasse 1

"I was born on 20 Aug. 1898 in Cologne on the Rhine as the son of the merchant Hermann Meyer and his wife Emilie, née Haas. After I had gone through the pre-school of the municipal high school on Kreuzgasse in Cologne and later on turned toward the Realgymnasium [a high school focused on science, math, and modern languages] section of this institution, I was drafted to serve in the military from the twelfth grade [of 13 grades] in Jan. 1917. After being discharged in Dec. 1918 and obtaining my high school diploma (Reifezeugnis), I registered for the first intermediate semester of 1919 in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Bonn. I also passed the preliminary medical exam there. In addition, I also studied at the universities of Freiburg, Cologne, and Hamburg. At the latter university, I took the medical state examination on 2 Jan. 1926. Currently, I am working as a medical intern at the St. Georg General Hospital.”

Otto Meyer wrote this curriculum vitae for his doctoral thesis in 1926. He was conferred the doctoral degree for a dissertation on Trichomonas vaginalis at the Women’s University Hospital in Hamburg-Eppendorf. There and at the Cologne University Hospital for skin and sexually transmitted diseases, he examined 149 women for trichomonads. In his work, he did research on the factors favoring this disease.

After his residency at the St. Georg Hospital, he set himself up as a general practitioner in Barmbek at Langenrehm 46, holding office hours in the mornings and late afternoons.

In April 1933, an ordinance of the Reich Labor Ministry (Reichsarbeitsministerium) declared "the work of statutory health insurance physicians with non-Aryan descent as well as of statutory health insurance physicians [who had been] politically active along Communist lines” to be terminated. In September, most substitute health insurance schemes and private insurance companies complied with this ordinance. In his medical practice, Otto Meyer was allowed to treat only Jewish patients or persons able to pay their doctor’s bills out of their own pocket. To him, the loss of licensing for the health insurance companies meant a drastic deterioration of his financial circumstances.

In Aug. 1935, he gave notice to the Hamburg Jewish Community that he was departing and moving back to his native city of Cologne. There he set up a practice in his apartment at Raunerstrasse 12. In addition, he worked as a volunteer at the "Israelite Asylum” ("Israelitische Asyl"), Cologne’s Jewish Hospital. The "Israelite Asylum” was one of the seven large Jewish hospitals in the German Reich. Its geographical coverage included the Rhineland and all the way to Westphalia. In the 1930s, it attracted Jewish physicians because since 1933 it looked after the training and further education of those persons barred from other means of advanced training.

Two years later, Otto Meyer relocated his place of residence to Bad Neuenahr, taking over the local practice of Hermann Simon, who had emigrated to Palestine, at Hermann Göring Strasse 26. In the health cure lists (Kurlisten) of Bad Neuenahr, the Jewish doctors were marked with a star. According to this list, Otto Meyer relocated his practice to the house of the Jewish livestock dealer Ludwig Vos on Hindenburgstrasse. After all Jewish physicians had been deprived of their medical licenses on 30 Sept. 1938, no Jewish doctors appeared on the health cure lists of Bad Neuenahr anymore starting in 1939. Only a few of them were permitted to continue practicing as so-called "treaters of the sick” (Krankenbehandler). We do not know whether Otto Meyer was among them or what other means he tried to earn a living.

Perhaps he, like many others at this time, looked after Jewish patients as a private caregiver. On 22 and 30 October 1941, two transports with 2,029 persons went from Cologne to the Lodz Ghetto. Otto Meyer was one of their number.


Translator: Erwin Fink

Kindly supported by the Hermann Reemtsma Stiftung, Hamburg.

Stand: October 2017
© Maria Koser

Quellen: 1; Kur- und Fremdenlisten des Heilbades Neuenahr von 1934, 1936 und 1938; Recherche und Auskunft von Hans-Jürgen Ritter vom 4.5. und 5.5.2010; Recherche und Auskunft von Dr. Barbara Becker-Jakli vom 6.4.2010; Recherche und Auskunft von Steffen Schütze, Stadtarchiv Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler vom 10.2.2010; Becker-Jakli, Das jüdische Krankenhaus, Schriften des NS Dokumentationszentrums, Bd.11, 2004; AB 1930/31 und 1933; Von Villiez, Mit aller Kraft verdrängt, Studien zur jüdischen Geschichte Bd. 11, 2009, S. 360.
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