Wilhelm Loewenthal

Wolff Wilhelm Lowenthal
Loewenthal in 1891
Born	(1850-02-15)15 February 1850 Rybnik, Poland
Died	22 April 1894(1894-04-22) (aged 44) Berlin, Germany

Wolff Wilhelm Lowenthal ((1850-02-15)15 February 1850 – (1894-04-22)22 April 1894) was a Silesian-born, naturalized French Doctor of Medicine.

Born in Rybnik, Province of Silesia, now Poland after graduating from the University of Berlin, Lowenthal (or Löwenthal, with the umlaut), went to the Caucasus to continue his medical research. At the same time, he was Professor at the University of Geneva, in its branch at the Lausanne, Switzerland.

He corresponded regularly with the Central Literary Bureau in Berlin. On 17 June 1878, he had an important audience with Victor Hugo, to great public acclaim, where he pledged himself to France as his home country. In the Congrès littéraire international de 1878, held at Théâtre du Châtelet, in 1879.

After that meeting, where he met Georges Maillard, they met again many years later, when Maillard retranslated the first series of the Association littéraire artistique internationale an organisation that was set up after, and in honour to, the Peace Declaration of World War I.

History

In 1879, he participated as a member of the Executive Office of the International Literary Congress in London, representing both French and other foreigners, under instruction from Jules Ferry, the ministre de l'instruction publique (Minister for Education). He was awarded the decoration as an Officer of the Academy.

In Berlin he buoyed 1881 together with his brother Salo the publishing company Adressbuch-Verlag, then named Sozietät der Berliner Bürger-Zeitung W. & S. Loewenthal (formerly D. Collin). In 1895, one year after his death, the publishing company was sold.

In Berlin he bought the Bürgerzeitung and became co-owner of the Berliner Adressbuch Vertag (Society Directory). At the same time, he was the co-owner of the publishing and typography company Wilhelm and Salo Loewenthal in Berlin, which he founded with his brother.

He was a member of the Executive Committee of the Bureau of the International Literary and Artistic Association since its foundation in Paris in 1878 (a position he still held in 1889). Loewenthal took an active part in the conference which opened in Berne in 1883 to draw up and vote on a draft “convention to establish a General Union for the Protection of the Rights of Authors in Literary and Manuscript Works”, a conference whose work would lead to the International Convention of Berne in 1886.

He took part in research on cholera with Robert KOCH, and continued work with Victor André Cornil in Paris (two of his five daughters were born in Neuilly sur Seine: Hedwige, in 1883, and Suzanne, in 1886).

12 July 1886, on the reformation of the Société d'Ethnographie à l’Hôtel de l'Alliance at, 28 Rue Mazarine, in Paris, Lowenthal, to a packed house, he was mentioned in dispatches by the Journal Officiel, that is to say, the equivalent of Hansard, from 9 August that year, in the following terms:

French: Monsieur le Docteur Wilhelm Loewenthal, ancien délégué général pour l'Allemagne, actuellement délégué correspondant à Lausanne (Suisse), fait une communication sur les connaissances actuelles de la science relativement aux microbes. Il présente un projet de classification de ces petits êtres qu’on considère tantôt comme des animaux, tantôt comme des végétaux, et décrit leur mode de reproduction. S’il est vrai que certains microbes sont causes des plus terribles maladies du genre humain, il en est aussi de bienfaisants pour l’homme, et sans lesquels il ne pourrait probablement pas exister., lit. 'Dr. Wilhelm Lowenthal, lately living in Germany, is actually writing to us from Lausanne, in Switzerland, about things he knows about the science of microbes. He has presented, to us, a project to classify these little beasts, which are neither as animal nor vegetable, and describes how they reproduce. If it is true that microbes are the cause of much human sickness, then the man does well to bring it to our attention, so that we can solve a problem that should not have existed.'

— Journal Officiel

In 1886, he received 16 certificates in medicine from the University of Heidelberg, equivalent to a French baccalaureat or roughly an English Bachelor of Science.

In 1887 he was awarded as a Doctor of Medicine, with his thesis entitled l'enseignement actuel de l'hygiène dans les facultés de médecine en Europe (Useful information on hygiene in medical establishments in Europe).

On June 6, 1889, without anyone knowing what followed, many French dailies – some under the title “the Loewenthal affair” – reported the granting by the Minister of the Navy to W. Loewenthal “pending French naturalization” of a “temporary commission as auxiliary doctor of the Navy, as a foreigner”, with a view to allowing him to go on a mission to Tonkin, at the request of the colonial administration, to experiment with “the immediate parasiticidal action of Salol on cholera microbes”. – W. Loewenthal had previously tested its effects on himself by absorbing 10 grams daily, without any other accident than dark-colored urine. After this in vitro experiment, he had tried to cure guinea pigs and mice made cholera-prone by the Robert Koch process.

In 1890, he went to Argentina, to organise the colony there, under the control of the Jewish Colonization Association (JCA), run by Baron Maurice de Hirsch. Hirsch had already corresponded with Salomon Goldschmidt, the president of the Alliance Israélite Universelle. Their aim was to install Lowenthal as a rabbi in the colony, under the Grand Rabbi Zadoc Kahn, in Paris. But differences of views between Loewenthal and Baron Hirsch meant this never came about, and they agreed to separate in November 1891. It's well understood, from banking records, that Lowenthal was in Berlin in 1891, but then went to Brussels. A colony was established, called Moisés Ville, the first colony of the JCA.

Death

It has been proven by banking records that Lowenthal died in the age of 44 in Berlin, after leaving Brussels. Susanne was 8 years old. She survived the Shoah (the Holocaust).

Children

• Käthe Loewenthal (1878–1942), Painter
• Gertraud
• Agnes
• Hedwig, * 1883 in Neuilly-sur-Seine
• Susanne Ritscher, Painter, * 1886 in Neuilly sur Seine

Legacy

In the colony, Lowenthal's name graces the principal thoroughfare.

References

• Daudet, Alphonese (1880). Lecture (in German). Humboldt Academy of Berlin: Société Wilhelm & Salo Lowenthal.
• Etude comparée sur l'Enseignement Actuel de l'Hygiène dans les Facultés de Médecine en Europe [Study comparing hygiene as it is carried out in the Faculties of Medicine across Europe] (in French). Paris: Librairie H. LE SOUDIER. 1887.

External links

• Wilhelm Lowenthal at Gallica