Ferdinand Mainzer

Who is Ferdinand Mainzer?

Ferdinand Mainzer was a German-Jewish gynaecologist and historical author.

Born 16 January 1871, Mainzer wrote his doctoral disseration on wandering spleen. In the 1890s he worked at the Berlin clinic of the gynecologist Leopold Landau.

Mainzer had artistic connections and historical interests. He married Gertrud Sabersky, a student of the artist Walter Leistikow, and his own portrait was painted by Lovis Corinth in 1899. After a hand injury meant that he could no longer perform surgery, he turned to writing about antiquity. He was interested in numismatics, and a friend of the numismatist Edward Gans. His biography of Julius Caesar was translated into French and English, and widely reviewed. The book inspired Thornton Wilder to write his own novel about Caesar, The Ides of March.

Mainzer was a close friend of the Catholic priest Friedrich von Erxleben, who was a member of the Solf Circle of intellectuals involved in the resistance against Nazism. Mainzer and his family were helped to escape to England by the daughter of Wilhelm and Hanna Solf, the Countess So'oa'emalelagi "Lagi" von Ballestrem-Solf, who escorted them with their jewellery hidden in the lining of her clothes.