Eduard Hermann Strasburger
1907 - 1945

Eduard Hermann Strasburger was born in Bonn on January 15, 1907, the son of Professor Dr. Julius Strasburger and Marie-Edith Strasburger, née Nothnagel. He had three siblings: Marie Anna Dorothea Strasburger, married name de Liagre Böhl (1905-1996), Hermann Julius Strasburger (1909-1985) and Gerhard Oskar Paul Strasburger (1912-1993). Julius Strasburger's father had a Protestant father, Professor Eduard Strasburger (1844-1912). His mother was Alexandrine von Wertheim (1847-1902). Her father, the banker Julius Wertheim, was born in Warsaw and had converted from Judaism to Protestantism in 1844. Her mother Johanna Dorothea Flamm, also born in Warsaw and the daughter of Dawid and Zofia Flamm, had probably converted to Christianity, too.

The Protestant family moved from Breslau to Frankfurt on the Main in 1913 because his father had taken over the management of the Therapeutikum and the medical outpatient clinic in the city hospital. In 1914, Julius Strasburger also became Professor of Internal Medicine at the newly founded University of Frankfurt. Julius Strasburger's family lived at Miquelstraße 44, later renamed Siesmayer-Straße, in Frankfurt's Westend district.

Eduard H. Strasburger became engaged to Dr. Else von Gierke (Königsberg 1907-1987 Geislingen an der Steige) in Göttingen in 1933. As she also had a Jewish grandparent, her grandmother Lilli Loening/Loewenthal (Frankfurt on the Main 1850-1936 Berlin), the couple were not granted a marriage license in the German Reich due to anti-Semitic legislation. They therefore married in London (UK) in November 1937. They had a child in August 1938: Eva Maria Strasburger, later married Rooschüz (passed away in 2017). At the time, Eduard Strasburger's family lived with his mother at Beethovenstraße 34, 2nd floor, also in Frankfurt's Westend.

Eduard H. Strasburger first went to the humanistic Lessing-Gymnasium in Frankfurt on the Main and from 1920 to the Musterschule, then a reform grammar school. After completing his Abitur, he studied medicine at the universities of Bonn, Frankfurt on the Main and Göttingen, first in the summer semester of 1925 in Bonn, then natural sciences in Frankfurt until the winter semester of 1927/28 and finally zoology in Göttingen. He passed his doctoral examination there in July 1932 with the grade "very good". His dissertation dealt with the topic "Über den Formwechsel des Chromatins in der Eientwicklung der Fliege Calliphora erythrocephala Meigen" and was published in 1933 in volume 17 of the  periodical "Zeitschrift für Zellforschung und mikroskopische Anatomie". Eduard H. Strasburger was subsequently awarded his doctorate in March 1933. In 1935, a further paper was published under the title "Drosophila Melanogaster Meig. An introduction to construction and development" by the publisher house Springer in Berlin.

Eduard H. Strasburger worked as an assistant to Professor Dr. Albert Kühn at the University of Göttingen until the fall of 1934, but was no longer allowed to habilitate due to his Jewish ancestry. Prof. Kühn wrote about Strasburger's research in 1957: "Alle Arbeiten Dr. Strasburgers zeichnen sich durch Überlegung und Gründlichkeit aus. Wenn nicht politische Hemmungen bestanden hätten, wäre ihm bestimmt der Eintritt in die akademische Laufbahn offen gestanden, und er hätte Aussicht gehabt, darin fortzuschreiten." (All of Dr. Strasburger's work is characterized by deliberation and thoroughness. If there had not been political inhibitions, he would certainly have been able to enter an academic career and would have had the prospect of advancing in it.)

Strasburger then went to Berlin and worked at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Brain Research under Professor Dr. Oskar Vogt until 1937. After Vogt had to leave the institute because of his attitude towards Jews and communists, which contradicted the National Socialist position, Strasburger went with him to the privately financed Institut für Hirnforschung GmbH in Neustadt (Black Forest). His wife Dr. Else Strasburger also worked there. They were both dismissed in 1938. Oskar Vogt wrote about this from Edinburgh in 1950:

"Im Juni 1938 wurde ich zu meinem größten Bedauern genötigt, Herrn Dr. E. Strasburger, der damals eine Assistentenstelle am Neustädter Hirnforschungsinstitut inne hatte, zu kündigen. Das Institut verlor damit zwei beliebte und wertvolle Mitarbeiter. Die Nötigung zu dieser meiner Kündigung war ausschließlich dadurch veranlasst, dass Herr Dr. Strasburger durch seine Verheiratung mit Fräulein Dr. von Gierke gegen die damaligen Nürnberger Gesetze verstoßen hatte." (In June 1938, to my greatest regret, I was forced to give notice to Dr. E. Strasburger, who at that time held an assistant position at the Neustadt Brain Research Institute. The Institute thus lost two popular and valuable employees. The coercion that led to the dismissal was solely due to the fact that Dr. Strasburger had violated the Nuremberg laws of the time by marrying Miss Dr. von Gierke.)

In the summer of 1931, Marie Strasburger and Max Tasche recommended the admission of Eduard H. Strasburger, then a student and living with his parents at Miquelstraße 44. According to the Frankfurt on the Main section's periodical "Nachrichten-Blatt", he was actually admitted to the section in October 1931. However, he had already been climbing before then. Walter Schmitthenner writes about his younger brother Hermann Strasburger, who studied in Innsbruck in the summer of 1928 and reserved Thursdays to Sundays for summer hiking:

"Die Leidenschaft für die alpine Kunst war 1925 bei einem Engadinaufenthalt mit den Eltern erwacht. Seither verging bis zum Kriegsausbruch [im September 1939] kein Jahr, in dem er nicht auf 'große Bergfahrten', wie es damals hieß, gegangen wäre, am häufigsten und liebsten mit dem Bruder Eduard und mit Albert Schweitzer (1909-1952), dem aus Köln gebürtigen Medizinier und Freund, der 1935 nach England emigrierte." (His passion for alpine sports was awakened in 1925 during a stay in the Engadin with his parents. From then until the outbreak of war [in September 1939], not a year went by in which he did not go on 'big mountain trips', as they were called at the time, most often and preferably with his brother Eduard and with Albert Schweitzer [1909-1952], the Cologne-born physician and friend who emigrated to England in 1935.)

In fact, Hermann Strasburger had already become a member of the Frankfurt section of the Alpine Club in March 1928, presumably in preparation for his study trip to Tyrol. He had been recommended by bank officer Maria Broich (a member since 1927) and Dr. Elias Bergmann (a member since 1922). We do not know whether Eduard H. Strasburger took part in events organized by the Frankfurt on the Main section of the German and Austrian Alps Club. However, as he did not live in Frankfurt most of the time, he was probably not active. As a so-called "Mischling second degree", he could not have been excluded without further ado. Due to a lack of sources, there is currently no evidence that he left the section in 1933 or was later expelled.

Eduard H. Strasburger was persecuted by the National Socialists because of his Jewish ancestors as a so-called "Mischling second grade". He was therefore no longer allowed to habilitate after 1933, meaning that the university career he had aspired to was impossible due to the persecution. In 1938, Strasburger went to the Netherlands and worked at the Amsterdam Institute for Brain Research on the recommendation of his sister Marie's husband, Professor Dr. Franz Marius Theodor de Liagre Böhl (1882-1976). He returned to Frankfurt at Easter 1940 and worked from May to September 1940 in the laboratory at the mental hospital run by Prof. Karl Kleist at the City and University of Frankfurt on the Main.

In October 1940, Eduard H. Strasburger was drafted into the Wehrmacht. As a so-called "non-Aryan half-breed", he was assigned to a punishment company. In 1943, he joined a medical unit and reached the rank of medical corporal. After September 1943, he fought in Italy and later on the Eastern Front. He was considered missing in action from March 1945 and was finally declared dead in 1961.

His father Julius Strasburger was forcibly retired on October 1, 1934, because of his Jewish ancestors, although he had been a "front-line fighter" in the First World War, recipient of the Iron Cross 1st Class (awarded in December 1917), and a Prussian civil servant before 1914. Shortly afterwards, he died of a heart attack. Walter Schmitthenner wrote: "Niemand bezweifelte, daß der Tod des zuvor gesunden Mannes durch diese ihn tief kränkende und ihm im Grunde unverständliche Behandlung verursacht war." (No one doubted that the death of the previously healthy man was caused by this treatment, which deeply offended him and was basically incomprehensible to him.)

His brother Hermann Strasburger was also not allowed to habilitate in National Socialist Germany. According to a document from March 1948 in the Frankfurt University Archives, he was persecuted as a "Mischling second grade" and was therefore definitively banned from habilitating in November 1936. He was only able to publish a few historical articles, such as "Nobiles" and "Optimates" for the famous Realenzyklopädie der klassischen Altertumswissenschaft. In May 1940 he had to join the Wehrmacht, was sent to the Eastern Front at the end of 1942 and suffered a serious wound there in April 1943, so that he returned as a "severely war-damaged person". He was only released from the military hospital in May 1945. Hermann Strasburger eventually became Professor of Ancient History in Frankfurt on the Main and Freiburg im Breisgau. Hermann Strasburger died in Switzerland in 1985 and was buried in Freiburg.