Alfred Münz was born in Nuremberg on June 27, 1897 as the son of the Sanitätsrat (honorary title for a doctor) MD (Dr. med.) Philipp Münz who came from Western Galicia and Martha Sauerbach from Rhine Hesse. Three years later, his only brother, Heinrich Münz, was born who could later emigrate to the USA. 

In 1903, six-year-old Alfred and his parents moved to his new second home, the sanatorium in Theresienstrasse 7 (now 1) in Bad Kissingen where his father worked as a spa doctor in the summer months till 1939. The family, however, kept their first place of residence and doctor’s practice in Nuremberg till 1932 where they lived on a regular basis in the winter season from November to April when he also practiced there. At the inauguration of the Bad Kissingen Children’s Sanatorium in Salinenstrasse – his father was its founder and head doctor - the eight-year-old Alfred Münz was chosen on June 12, 1905 to recite a poem written by his father. His recitation with “heartfelt dramatic emphasis” was praised even in “Allgemeine Zeitung des Judentums” and the poem was printed there. When he was a 19-year-old student at high school, Alfred Münz became a soldier in 1916, in the middle of World War I. After the end of the war, he belatedly graduated in June 1919 and checked out for Würzburg on May 6, 1920 in order to study medicine at Julius-Maximilians-Universität there. In Würzburg he also became a member of the Students’ Association ‘Rheno-Palatia’. He is reported as having been enrolled at the universities of Erlangen and Munich as well. Alfred Münz received his doctorate in Würzburg in 1927. His thesis had the topic “Über den Einfluss von Thoraxdeformitäten auf Lunge und Herz“ (On the effect of deformities of the thorax on the lung and the heart). He had already got his approbation as a doctor two years earlier, on March 1, 1925.

From then on, Alfred Münz worked as a general practitioner side by side with his father in Nuremberg as well as Bad Kissingen. The winters of 1925 to 1928 he didn’t spend in Nuremberg, however, but in Berlin. I can be assumed that he stayed with his brother Heinrich there who practiced in Berlin as a dentist. The doctor Alfred Münz had the same fate as all his colleagues, however. Immediately after the seizure of power of the Nazis in 1933, about 8,000 Jewish doctors were “detached” from their employee-employer relationship. Only 3,000 doctors were allowed to practice on a self-employed basis under hampered conditions till 1938. In Bad Kissingen, in Spring 1938, there were two other Jewish doctors apart from Alfred Münz and his father – Siegfried Wahle and Sally Mayer. For both of them Stumbling Stones were put into the ground in Bad Kissingen. The legal basis for a final withdrawal of the approbation as a doctor for all Jewish doctors came with the “4. Verordnung zum Reichsbürgergesetz” of June 25, 1938, according to which “Jewish” was treated as meaning the same as “enemy of the state”. Officially only a small number of the Jewish doctors were allowed to work as Jewish “Krankenbehandler” (person treating ill people) exclusively for Jewish patients. The basis of the existence of the people working in this profession and their families was completely destroyed that way. It is not known how Alfred Münz earned his living till 1943. 

What is sure is that he left Bad Kissingen together with his father on July 21, 1939 and moved to Berlin. Their address there was Kurfürstendamm 22 at the beginning, since 1941 it was Marburger Strasse 12. On January 13, 1943 Alfred Münz was deported to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp together with his father. On September 29, 1944 he was taken to Auschwitz/ Oświęcim Extermination Camp where he was murdered soon afterwards. 

(Marianne Tolksdorf)