Ernst Witebsky
1901 - 1969

Ernst Witebsky was born in Frankfurt on the Main in September 1901. His parents were Dr. Michael Witebsky, a doctor born in Jurbarkas (Lithuania) in 1869, and Hermine Witebsky, née Neuberger, born in Arnstein in 1873. At the time of Ernst's birth, the Witebsky family lived at Adalbertstraße 11 in Frankfurt-Bockenheim. The father was a practicing doctor specializing in women's diseases and obstetrics and, according to Mahlau's Frankfurt directory of 1901, ran a polyclinic at Trierische Gasse 16. During the First World War, Ernst Witebsky's father worked for the military hospital of the Frankfurt Association for Jewish Nurses under the direction of Dr. Adolf Deutsch (1868-1942) in the Jewish nurses' home, where the Jewish physician Dr. Arthur Marum (a member of the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Apline Club since 1912) worked, too.

Ernst Witebsky had no siblings. He went to the Goethe Gymnasium in Frankfurt on the Main and graduated from there in 1920. At that time, the Witebsky family lived at Bockenheimer Landstraße 111. After the First World War, Dr. Michael Witebsky was listed in the Frankfurt directory as a gynaecologist. In Heidelberg, where Ernst Witebsky lived later, he had a flat at Albert-Ueberle-Straße 12 and later, until his emigration to the United States of America, at Goethstraße 18.

In 1936, in Buffalo (USA), Ernest Witebsky married Ruth Müller-Erkelenz (born in February 1909), also from Germany. They had a daughter named Grace Eleonor Witebsky, married name Hamilton (1941-2004), and a son named Frank G. Witebsky, who worked as a captain in the Air Force Medical Corps in the late 1960s.

From the summer semester of 1920, Ernst Witebsky studied medicine at the University of Frankfurt on the Main. This was probably encouraged by his father, who worked as a gynecologist, and his uncle Julius Neuberger (his mother's older brother), who worked as an ear, nose and throat specialist in Frankfurt at Bockenheimer Landstraße 68. Ernst Witebsky passed his final medical examination at the University of Frankfurt in 1925. In the same year, he received his doctorate from the University of Heidelberg with the thesis "On the generation of "lability reactions" by calcium chloride in the serological detection of Lues by means of flocculation". This work was published in Jena in 1924 and at the same time in 1925 in the "Zeitschrift für Immunitätsforschung und experimentelle Therapie".

Dr. Ernst Witebsky then worked at the Third Medical Clinic of the University of Berlin and at the Institute for Experimental Cancer Research at the University of Heidelberg. In 1929, Ernst Witebsky habilitated at the University of Heidelberg with the thesis "Dispositionibilität und Spezifität alkohollöslicher Strukturen von Organen und bösartigen Geschwülsten", which was also published in the "Zeitschrift für Immunitätsforschung und experimentelle Therapie". In June 1929, he was awarded the venia legendi for immunology and serology by the Medical Faculty of the University of Heidelberg. He taught in Heidelberg from the winter semester of 1929/30 until the summer semester of 1933 as a private lecturer. In the summer semester of 1931, for example, he lectured on "Results and problems of blood group research". This lecture was intended for medical and legal students. In 1933, Ernst Witebsky's teaching license was revoked by the National Socialists because he was Jewish, although he had been a Swiss citizen since at least 1925.

By 1933, Ernst Witebsky had already published 74 scientific papers and, according to Reinhard Rürup, was considered "one of the best experts in the field of serology". He emigrated to Switzerland in 1933 and the following year to the US. He continued his scientific career there. In 1970, Noel R. Rose called him one of the founders of modern immunology and characterized him as follows: "Through his brilliant research and inspired teaching, he has left an imprint on contemporary medicine equaled by few."

Ernst Witebsky joined the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alpine Club as a student in 1922. He is listed as the only family member in the 1925 list of Frankfurt club members. Whether he left the section after emigrating to Switzerland in 1933 or was excluded as a Jew due to the so-called "Aryan paragraph" enshrined in the Frankfurt section's statutes in 1934 is currently beyond our knowledge. Nor do we know to what extent Ernst Witebsky took part in events organized by the Frankfurt section until 1933.

After the Witebsky family emigrated to Switzerland in 1933, Ernst Witebsky worked briefly at the University of Geneva. In 1934, he went to the USA and first worked at Mount Sinai Hospital and Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. In the US, he changed his first name to Ernest. In 1936, he became an associate professor at the School of Medicine at the University of Buffalo (state of New York). At the same time, he worked for the Buffalo General Hospital. Ernest Witebsky was granted US citizenship in 1939.

From 1941 to 1967, Dr. Ernest Witebsky was Professor and Director of the Department of Bacteriology and Immunology at the University of Buffalo. He was one of the most important immunologists in the USA. In 1958 he received an honorary doctorate in medicine from the University of Freiburg im Breisgau (Germany). He also occasionally worked in Germany, for example at the University of Munich in 1965. The following year, he was elected a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina for his extensive research. Professor Ernest Witebsky became the first director of the Center for Immunology in Buffalo, which opened in June 1968, and remained there until his sudden death in December 1969.

His wife Ruth Witebsky died in Buffalo (New York, USA) in 1995 at the age of 86. His daughter Grace E. Hamilton died in 2004. Like Ernest Witebsky, both are buried at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo.