Edith Klemperer

Life & Legacy

Edith Klemperer (August 9, 1898 – September 23, 1987), born and educated in Vienna, Austria, was one of the first women to practice neurology and psychiatry. In the U.S., she became a pioneer in the psychotherapeutic use of hypnosis. She earned her medical degree in 1923 from the Medical University of Vienna.
Continuing her research there, Dr. Klemperer was one of six women physicians working for Julius Wagner-Jauregg in 1927, when he won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. All six women being of Jewish descent, they were forced to flee Austria under the Nazis. Among them were Drs. Alexandra Adler, one of the first women neurologists at Harvard University; Fanny Halpern, co-founder of the first psychiatric hospital in Shanghai; and Annie Reich, a leading psychoanalyst in post-war New York.
In the 1930s, Wagner-Jauregg, their employer, embraced ideas of racial hygiene and eugenics, becoming a fervent Nazi.