Walter Steinitz

Walter Steinitz (Hebrew: ולטר שטייניץ‎‎)‎ (12 February 1882 – 14 December 1963) was a German-born Israeli cardiologist, zoologist, and fisheries research pioneer in Israel.

Walter Steinitz was born in Breslau, Germany (now Wroclaw, Poland) in 1882. He was the son of Sigismund Steinitz (1845-1889), a merchant, and Augustin Cohn Steinitz (1850-1906); brother of the mathematician Ernst Steinitz (1871–1928); and also brother of the lawyer Kurt Steinitz (1872-1929).

He studied medicine in the Universities of Breslau and , Germany, and obtained his medical doctoral degree (M.D.) from the in 1905. Following his return to Breslau he earned his living as a cardiologist, and at the same time he also studied zoology. These studies were interrupted temporarily during World War I by service as a physician in the German army. After the war, being interested especially in marine organisms, he wrote a doctoral thesis on the development of the eye in the humpback whale and obtained a Ph.D. degree from the University of Breslau (now University of Wroclaw) in 1918. In recognition of his first and leading research of the marine fauna of the Eastern Mediterranean Basin, the Breslau University granted him a position as Privatdozent and lecturer in zoology.

Walter Steinitz’s first wife, Marta Schindler (1887-1924), was mother of his three sons. After he became a widower he married Alma Friedlander (1887-1977).

The rise at the beginning of 1933 of the Nazi regime brought an end to both his medical and academic career. He immediately recognized there was no future for a reasonable life as a Jew in Germany. Consequently, he emigrated that same year, together with his wife Alma, to Palestine. He joined a group of Jewish German-born settlers who together founded in 1933 Ramot HaShavim, a village organized as an agricultural commune. For five years (1933-1938) he was member of the leading committee of the village. In 1939 he chaired the committee for less than a year. He was a highly educated person, a polymath with wide interests in the fields of life sciences, geology, philosophy and music. With his skills and experience as teacher, he led courses and gave lectures in the village on biological and agricultural topics relevant to farmers, and contributed to the cultural life of the village. Until his death in 1963, he made his living in Ramot HaShavim from a chicken farm, where he attempted to improve egg production by poultry breeding. After his death in Bad Nauheim, Germany, he was buried in Ramot HaShavim.

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