Fritz Meyer Collection

Fritz (Friedrich) Mayer was born in 1875 in Berlin, Germany, the son of a physician. He studied medicine at the universities of Heidelberg, Munich, Berlin, and Freiburg, receiving his medical degree from the latter in 1899. He earned an Iron Cross for his work in the First World War and became a professor at the University of Berlin. He was a prolific writer, and authored more than eighty papers on medical topics. While at the University of Berlin he developed a new vaccine for the treatment of tuberculosis and a serum for the treatment of strep throat, which prior to the discovery of antibiotics one of the most successful treatments for the disease. He also worked on the uses of sulfonamide and was considered Europe's leading specialist in heart diseases. In 1935 he left Germany for the United States.

In New York he settled on Staten Island, where he found a position at Sea View Hospital. His research there focused on serology and bacteriology as it related to tuberculosis but also maintained his own medical practice, and included well-known individuals among his patients. Among his patients were Else Einstein, wife of Albert Einstein, and Secretary of War George H. Dern.

In 1948 he returned to Germany to lecture at the University of Marburg on the modern treatment of communicable diseases. In 1951 he went to lecture in Berlin; he died there on August 17, 1953.