Dr Emanuel Firnbacher had set up practice as a junior doctor in Chemnitz in March 1928. What is known about this doctor, who lived in the town for less than eight years?

Emanuel Firnbacher was born in the municipality of Goßmannsdorf am Main (Lower Franconia). His parents were Josef Firnbacher and Berta Rau, a married couple who traded in livestock. He first attended the Realschule in Straubing and later the Oberrealschule in Regensburg. On 15 May 1917, he volunteered for military service as a ‘one-year conscript’ and was sent to the front four months later. He was demobilised following the armistice. In February 1919, he returned to Straubing and attended War Course A
at the Oberrealschule in Regensburg. In mid-April 1919, he joined the Straubing Freikorps and obtained his university entrance qualification on 15 July 1919.

Emanuel Firnbacher subsequently studied medicine for five semesters at the University of Munich, where he passed the preliminary medical examination in February 1922. He completed two of his clinical semesters in Würzburg, where he sat his medical examinations and was awarded a doctorate in medicine (Dr. med.) in December 1924. In January 1926, he received his licence to practise medicine in Munich. Dr Emanuel Firnbacher began his medical career in Chemnitz in March 1928. He initially worked as a junior doctor at the Stadtkrankenhaus am Küchwald. On 1 March 1930, he set up practice in Chemnitz as a specialist in internal medicine. His practice was initially located at 2a Stollberger Straße. It also included an X-ray laboratory.

On 2 August 1928, Emanuel Firnbacher married Liselotte Bing, the daughter of a doctor ten years his junior, in Würzburg. The couple lived at 18 Hohenzollernstraße. Their neighbours included, amongst others, the Michael Degens family. Margarete, their only daughter, was born at the State Maternity Hospital in Chemnitz. The family found a flat befitting their social standing on the ground floor of the house at 24 Wittelsbacher Straße. The NSDAP’s seizure of power on 30 January 1933 led to a rapid deterioration in the legal situation of many Jewish doctors, which could result in the loss of their medical licence. At the end of March 1933, Firnbacher’s practice was listed in the ‘Directory of Jewish Businesses, Lawyers and Doctors’ in Chemnitz, published by the ‘Kampfbund für den gewerblichen Mittelstand’ (Fighting League for the Commercial Middle Class). The aim was to deter non-Jewish patients from visiting the practice.

In these rather turbulent times, Frieda Horn, the mother of Liselotte Firnbacher-Bing, moved from Würzburg to Chemnitz in March 1935. Sigmund Horn, her second husband, had passed away a few weeks earlier. She hoped to find new strength in the fight against her incurable illness by being with her closest relatives. Nevertheless, her condition deteriorated within a few weeks. Frieda Horn died on 11 July 1935 at her son-in-law’s flat and was laid to rest in the Jewish cemetery in the Altendorf district.

Following the enactment of the Nuremberg Race Laws in September 1935 and a threatening confrontation with the local medical association, Liselotte and Emanuel Firnbacher decided to flee Germany. Emanuel Firnbacher was warned that he would be imprisoned, so the family fled to Karlsbad in October 1935. Emanuel Firnbacher was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and was able to find accommodation with a doctor friend who ran a sanatorium there. From there, he sought a way to flee further abroad. They ultimately chose Palestine. He organised the rest of the journey by train to Trieste. From there, they continued on the passenger ship ‘Tel Aviv’. The family finally reached the city of Haifa on 7 February 1936.

In 1956, the couple returned to Germany. They lived in Augsburg for a short time, and then in Munich. Dr Emanuel Firnbacher died in Grub, near Munich. His wife had already passed away in Munich 22 years earlier. Both were laid to rest there at the New Jewish Cemetery.

Margarete Firnbacher grew up in Palestine and left the newly established State of Israel in 1949 to study medicine in Zurich. On 24 December 1954, she married the economist Franz Ritzmann in the Swiss capital. The couple had five children. Dr Margarete Ritzmann died on 17 June 1999 in Zurich.