Stop 4: Sanatorium Bethesda
Friedrichstraße, bordering on Kirschbaumer Hof – go to map – go to starting point
Dr. Emil Kronenberg founded the Sanatorium Bethesda in 1899, together with three specialists in eye diseases, gynaecological conditions and childhood illnesses. It was a private clinic with just 25 beds to start with. The patient rooms had one to three beds each – an improvement, compared to the general hospitals of the time. Besides their job at Bethesda, the founding doctors kept working at their respective medical practices. After the “Diakonissenverband Bethesda” (“Deaconess’ Association Bethesda”) had purchased the sanatorium in 1910, the specialists continued to work at the clinic. However, after the Reich Citizenship Law as of 15 September 1935 had stripped the so-called “non-Aryans” of their Reich citizenship, Jewish doctors lost their employments at public as well as private hospitals. Having had to give up his job at Bethesda prompted Emil Kronenberg to also give up his own medical practice. He would have had to work at a loss, since he was only making a quarter of what he had earned before.
He sold his house, which included his medical practice, to his brother-in-law and rented a flat in Solingen-Höhscheid, at Neuenkamper Straße 70. His monthly pension now amounted to a meagre 120 Reichsmark.
Aforementioned niece Grete Blumenthal moved back in with her uncle Dr. Emil Kronenberg in April 1935, after already having lived at his house from 1922 to 1924. Grete, born in 1906, studied medicine and went on to complete her elective (practical year) at the Israelite Hospital of Frankfurt am Main. In February 1935, she successfully completed her doctoral examination. However, she received neither her diploma nor her approbation due to her Jewish descent, even though she had converted to Protestant faith. In early 1936, she managed to emigrate to Belgium. After waiving the German approbation, she finally received her diploma at the end of 1937. When Belgium came under German occupation during World War II, she illegally lived in Antwerp, Marseille and Aix-en-Provence from December 1940 onwards. She then fled to Switzerland in September 1942, where she was retained in various detention camps. She returned to Belgium after the war had ended. Following a number of different stays abroad, she eventually emigrated to Israel at the end of 1950 and started working there as medical director of a clinical laboratory in 1951.
At the same time as Dr. Emil Kronenberg, internist Dr. Hans Rüppel lost his position as director of the department for internal medicine at Bethesda, even though he was neither of Jewish faith nor descent.