Austrian doctor stripped of title by Nazis
I was surprised that not more collectors were bidding on this exciting travel document of an Austrian Jewish doctor. So, I was lucky to get this fascinating document for a very decent price. Austrian doctor stripped Nazis
Background
Beginning in 1933, the German Government revoked German citizenship for tens of thousands of German Jews and persons seen as political opponents, e.g., communists. This affected people in Germany and persons who had left Germany and were residents in other countries. It took similar action against persons resident in parts of Czechoslovakia which had been annexed. These public actions, totaling nearly 90,000 names of persons and firms mixed, whose property had been seized by the Nazi-led German Government, were published in the Deutscher Reichsanzeiger, the Government’s official newspaper. Most of these were listed under the category as having had their citizenship revoked, usually either due to being Jewish, political opponents of the Nazis, or having emigrated from the Reich. Austrian doctor stripped Nazis
Peter Ludwig BERGER (born on November 7, 1896, in Baden/Lower Austria, died 1978 in Vienna), had graduated from the Law School at the University of Vienna on February 21, 1921, with the academic degree ‘Dr. iur.’. Peter Ludwig Berger became a journalist, lawyer, and sociologist. Until 1938 he lived in Baden, Welzergasse 11. Together with his wife Angela, he emigrated to Rio de Janeiro/Brasilia in 1938 and to the USA in 1940.
*He managed to obtain a professorship in the United States. In Washington, he taught law at The Catholic University of America and took part in the Free Austrian Movement, as well as led the Christian Social Party of Austria, founded in the United States in 1944. He was the son of jurists Johann Berger and Angela Neumann. In his youth Berger, fought in the First World War, then studied Law and Sociology at the University of Vienna, graduating in 1921 with a doctorate in Law, then in 1924 obtained another doctorate in Political Sciences. *Biographical dictionary of refugees of Nazi fascism in Brazil Austrian doctor stripped Nazis
*He was deprived of German citizenship on January 15, 1941. In times of Nazism, he was deprived of his academic degree on May 8, 1941, with the racist argument, that he as a Jew was not considered dignified with an academic degree from a German university (‘eines akademischen Grades einer Deutschen Hochschule unwürdig’). He returned to Austria in 1953 and became a university professor and the chief editor of the journal “Der Donauraum” and general secretary of the “Forschungsgemeinschaft für den Donauraum” in Vienna. *Source: Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna 1938
It took 62 years since the deprivation – and a very long time since the end of Nazism – until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on April 10, 2003, posthumously in a solemn ceremony. He died in Vienna in 1978 and could sadly not see his doctorate to be reinstalled. Berger is also found in the Holocaust victims database of the USHMM. Austrian doctor stripped Nazis
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