Oskar Fehr

Oskar Fehr (1871 to 1959) was a German ophthalmologist and internationally renowned eye surgeon whose specialties included swimming pool conjunctivitis, tumours of the eye and retinal detachment. Born in Braunschweig to a Jewish family, he studied at Heidelberg, Berlin and Kiel and took his doctorate at Heidelberg in 1897. He worked as assistant physician at Julius Hirschberg's eye clinic in Berlin until 1906, and from 1907 was head physician of the eye department at the Rudolf Virchow Hospital, receiving the title of professor in 1919. In 1934 he was forbidden to enter the clinic where he had worked for more than 25 years, but he kept a private practice and in 1938 was among the few Jewish doctors allowed to continue. He emigrated to the United Kingdom in 1939 with the help of Frank Foley, passed the British examinations at Edinburgh, practised in London from 1943 until a second heart attack in 1955, became a British citizen in 1947 and died in London in 1959.