Prof. Dr. med.
Heinrich Schur
1871 - 1953

Heinrich Schur grew up in a large Jewish family in the former Bohemian town of Nachod in Austria-Hungary with ten siblings − around 1890 there was a relatively large Jewish rural community in Nachod with a long history. His father was David Salomon Schur, his mother Therese, née Hahn. The extensive Schur family owned a textile company.

After attending the Braunauer Stiftsgymnasium (today Broumov, Czech Republic), Schur studied medicine at the German Karl Ferdinand University in Prague. He passed the state examination and received his doctorate in 1894.

Schur was married to Maria, née Jirenec (born 07.03.1887, died 13.06.1966). Their son Franz was born on November 17, 1921, and passed away on November 14, 1955.

Education and Places of Work

From 1894 to 1897, Heinrich Schur worked as an intern and trainee at the Vienna II Medical University Clinic under Edmund Neusser. In 1897/ 98 he worked at the Institute for Experimental Pathology and briefly at the Vienna University Clinic for Psychiatry under Richard Krafft-Ebing. He then became a secondary physician at the General Hospital in Vienna. From 1902, Schur was an assistant at the General Polyclinic under Julius Mannaberg. In 1905, he was habilitated in internal medicine at the University of Vienna.

From 1905 to 1910 Heinrich Schur headed the medical department at the Mariahilfer Ambulatorium (later Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Ambulatorium and Hospital). From 1910, he worked as primary physician (chief physician) and later board member at the I. Medical Department of the Vienna Merchants’ Hospital. In 1915 he was appointed associate professor at the University of Vienna.

His scientific work mainly focused on metabolic physiology and pathology, in particular purines, gout and diabetes mellitus. He also dealt with diseases of the stomach and duodenum as well as questions of nutrition at an early stage. He published monographs, for example on gastric diseases, wrote handbook articles and around 100 scientific studies and papers in medical journals.

1933

After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht and the “Anschluss” of Austria to the German Reich in March 1938, Heinrich Schur’s venia legendi was revoked by the Nazi authorities and he was also banished from his position as the director of the Vienna Merchants’ Hospital.

Schur was protected by his non-Jewish wife and was able to survive in Vienna. Until the end of the Nazi dictatorship, he was admitted to the Vienna Jewish Hospital in Malzgasse as a “medical practitioner” and was able to head the internal medicine department there.

In May 1945, he was appointed provisional head of the Jewish Community of Vienna (IKG) by State Secretary Ernst Fischer. Schur resigned from this office in September 1945.

Heinrich Schur passed away in Vienna at the age of 82 on November 21, 1953. His preserved burial place is in the Simmering Urn Cemetery in Vienna’s 11th district.

Heinrich Schur’s older sister, Elisabeth Löbl-Schur, who was born in 1863, was deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in December 1942. She died there on March 22, 1944, at the age of 81. His younger sister, Fanny Trumet Bass / Fany Bassova, born on February 11, 1873, was murdered in Auschwitz in 1944.

Heinrich Schur’s nephews, lawyer Dr. Hans Schur, was murdered at the age of 40 near Raasiku / Estonia in 1942 and Wilhelm Schur was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943 at the age of 38. Other family members such as Heinrich Schur’s niece Emma Steiner / Emma Steinerova and nephew Dr. Arnošt Bass were also murdered during the Holocaust.