Rahel Hirsch

Rahel Hirsch (September 15, 1870 – October 6, 1953) was a German doctor and professor at the Charité medical school in Berlin. In 1913 she became the first woman in the Kingdom of Prussia to be appointed a professor in medicine.

Rahel Hirsch was born on 15 September 1870 in Frankfurt am Main, one of eleven children of (German) (1833–1900). Mendel Hirsch was the director of the girls' school of the Jewish religious community in Frankfurt am Main. Mendel's father, Rahel's paternal grandfather, was the eminent rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch.

From 1885 to 1889, Rahel Hirsch studied for her degree in education in Wiesbaden; she then worked until 1898 as a teacher. After her doctorate she became assistant to Friedrich Kraus at the Charité.

Since she was Jewish, the takeover by the Nazis meant she could no longer practice medicine. In October 1938 she moved to London, where one of her sisters lived. Since her degree was not recognized by the British, she worked as a laboratory assistant and later as a translator.

She spent her last years plagued by depression, delusions and persecutory fears. She died in a mental hospital on the outskirts of London on 6 October 1953 aged 83.

She is remembered by a sculpture in a square at the Charité, and by the naming after her of a stretch of road in front of the new Berlin Hauptbahnhof.

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