The Viennese neurologist Richard Stern and the discrimination and persecution of Jewish physicians in Austria and Slovakia

Abstract

Summary This article reconstructs the life and career of the Viennese neurologist and neuropathologist Richard Stern (1878–1942) and situates his trajectory within the longue durée of antisemitic discrimination against Jewish physicians in Austria. Drawing on archival sources and contemporary scientific publications, it examines Stern’s academic training in the largely forgotten tradition of Lothar Frankl-Hochwart (1862–1914), his clinical and scientific work, and his professional activities in social insurance medicine. The study emphasizes that the exclusion of Jewish physicians in Austria did not begin with the Anschluss in 1938 but rather built upon pre-existing and increasingly radicalized forms of antisemitism within the medical profession, academic institutions, and public health administration since the late nineteenth century. Stern’s career exemplifies both the structural constraints faced by Jewish physicians and the unequal career opportunities, which were severely limited in university medicine but more accessible within social insurance institutions. By tracing Stern’s marginalization after the First World War, the article highlights the gradual transition from discrimination to total exclusion. Following the Anschluss , this process culminated in the systematic expulsion of Jewish physicians from Austrian medicine. Stern’s forced migration to Slovakia exposed him to a new phase of persecution under conditions of political dependency on Nazi Germany. His subsequent deportation and murder in Auschwitz illustrate the transnational dimension of antisemitic violence and the precariousness of escape routes in Central Europe.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Wiener klinische Wochenschrift, 2026 · DOI ↗