Landstraße 12, Practice of Dr. Eduard Bloch
Behind the atlantes of this baroque palais, the Jewish doctor Eduard Bloch treated Klara Hitler's cancer in 1907 and was thanked by her son forever. In 1938 that gratitude bought him a Gestapo guard while every other Jew in Linz was driven out or murdered.
Sobre este lugar
The Palais Weissenwolff, built in 1715 by Johann Michael Prunner with two stone giants carrying its balcony, today serves as the entrance to a shopping arcade. From 1901 to 1940 its first floor held the practice and home of Dr. Eduard Bloch, the doctor of the poor, who rode to patients by carriage at any hour and charged the Hitler family only four crowns a visit while he dressed Klara Hitler's cancer wound with iodoform through the autumn of 1907. Her son sent him grateful postcards from Vienna. When Hitler returned in triumph in March 1938 he called Bloch an Edeljude, a noble Jew, and the Gestapo both confiscated the postcards and placed the doctor under unique protection: no yellow markings on his door, no J on his ration card, a house sold at full value. His practice was still closed on 1 October 1938, his daughter had to flee, and around him the roughly 600 Jews of Linz were dispossessed, expelled or deported. In November 1940 Bloch and his wife Emilie left for New York, where he died in June 1945. A brass memorial stele at the corner of Spittelwiese, erected by the city in 2022, now bears their names beside those of neighbours murdered in Auschwitz, Minsk and Stutthof.
Datos clave
- 1901 year — Bloch opened his practice on the first floor of the Palais Weissenwolff after leaving the army
- 4 crowns — What Bloch charged the Hitler family per home visit while treating Klara's cancer in 1907
- 16 Reichsmarks — The sum Bloch was allowed to take abroad in 1940, against the usual 10 for Jewish emigrants
📍 Landstraße 12, 4020, Linz