Erwin Schattner family papers

Erwin Schattner (1893-1977) was born Eisig Schattner in Kolomea, in eastern Galicia (present-day Kolomyia, Ukraine) on 13 April 1893, the son of Jankel and Schewa (nee Ringelblum) Schattner. He was educated at secondary schools in Czernowitz (Chernivtsi, Ukraine) and Prague, graduating in 1917 and serving in the Austrian army in World War I. Following the war, when his native eastern Galicia became part of Poland, he opted for Austrian citizenship and settled in Vienna, where he began his studies at the University of Vienna, leading to medical school there and graduating with a doctor of medicine degree in 1931. During his university studies, he was active in the central office of Poale-Zion in Vienna and Berlin. In 1931 he legally changed his first name from "Eisig" to "Erwin," and in 1933 he married Ernestine Weil (born 29 May 1905, Monasterzyska, Galicia, present-day Monastyryska, Ukraine), who went to school in Stanislawow and later studied at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow. The Schattners had two daughters, Ruth and Hannah, while Erwin initially served as a house physician and surgeon at the municipal hospital of Vienna (1931-1936) as well as in private practice, until his practice was taken away from him due to the Aryanization laws following the Nazi takeover of Austria in 1938. The Schattners left Vienna for London in October 1938, living in England until May 1940, when they immigrated to the United States, rejoining Schattner's brother, Marcus Schatner, who had arrived in New York in 1904. Erwin was able to reestablish a medical practice, and he and Ernestine became naturalized citizens in 1945.