Philipp Schwartz

Philipp Schwartz (born 19 July 1894 in Versec, Banat, Hungary, died 1 December 1977 in Fort Lauderdale, United States) was a Hungarian-born neuropathologist, who lived in Germany, Switzerland, Turkey and the United States.

He studied medicine in Budapest and earned his doctorate there in 1919. In the same year, he became an assistant of Bernhard Fischer at the Senckenberg Institute of Pathology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University Frankfurt, where he worked for the next 14 years. He earned his Habilitation in 1923, became an associate professor in 1926 and a full professor in 1927. After his dismissal due to being Jewish in 1933, he emigrated to Zurich, Switzerland, where he founded the Advisory Office for German Scientists to help other refugees find new employment, notably establishing contacts with Turkish universities. Together with Albert Malche, Schwartz convinced the Turkish government to appoint the persecuted German professors for the free positions in the higher education. Finally, contracts up until five years were signed. Over time around 150 academics immigrated to Turkey while most of them were from the economic, finance, law or medical fields. Social sciences played a less important role. He later became director of the Department of Pathology at the University of Istanbul. From 1953 he worked as a pathologist at the Warren State Hospital in Pennsylvania and chaired a research department there. In 1957 he was formally reinstated as a Professor at the Goethe University, but the university declined his wish to actually return to his chair due to his age.

His daughter is the Zurich psychiatrist Susan Ferenz-Schwartz. He is interred at the Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich. Gabor Hamza: Studies on Legal Relations between the Ottoman Empire/the Republic of Turkey and Hungary, Cyprus, and Macedonia. Selected Essays in Hungarian, English, German, and Turkish. Klaus Schwarz Verlag, Berlin, 2017. ISBN 978-3-87997-463-4