Kartagener, Manes (1897–1975)

English Names

Manes Kartagener

Original Names

Manes Kartagener

Date, Country, and City of Birth

January 7, 1897, Przemyśl, Poland

Date City of Death

August 5, 1975, Zürich, Switzerland

History of Life

Manes Kartagener was born in Przemyśl, Poland, in 1897, as the only son of the factory owner and rabbi Lazar Kartagener and his wife Tzluva Cluwa. He was Polish and Jewish, but the family roots went back to Spain and to the expulsion of Spanish Jewry in 1492.

Manes studied classical languages at the gymnasium in his home town and later continued his study at a gymnasium for natural sciences in Lemberg (now Ukraine, approximately 100 km away), where he graduated in 1915. He immigrated to Switzerland at the age of 18 in 1916. Here he studied medicine at the University of Zürich, where he obtained his medical qualification in 1924. Four years later he defended his doctoral thesis entitled “Ueber einen Fall von Kankroid der Schilddrüse mit peritheliomartigen Bildern” (About a case of...