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J Youth Adolescence (2007) 36:57 DOI 10.1007/s10964-006-9146-2
FESTSCHRIFT ESSAY
Daniel Offer, M.D.: A Narrative of the Life of an Empiricist
Marjorie Kaiz Offer
Received: 14 April 2005 / Accepted: 8 May 2005 / Published online: 14 November 2006
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Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2006
The professional life of a psychiatric researcher can easily be reviewed by examining his curriculum vitaethe empirical data that quantify his professional achievements: his degrees, appointments, awards, and grants, and the books and papers he has written and edited. But Daniel Offers vita presents only a black and white portrait of him. And while it is true that as his student I trained to be an empiricist, as his wife I nd that a narrative rendering of his story is essential to a full understanding his life.
Daniel was born Thomas Edgar Hirsch on December 24, 1929, in Berlin, Germany, into a distinguished family that had lived for many generations within the walls of the old city. Throughout her life, Daniels mother Ilse proudly displayed the centuries-old document that granted this privilege to her Jewish ancestors. As the rst child of Walter Hirsch, M.D., and his wife Ilse, and as the rst grandchild of Ludwig Ferdinand Meyer, M.D., and his wife Lotte, Daniel, as he would later be called, had been preceded by three generations of physicians. He was showered with love.
In the early 1930s, Daniels family watched as Hitler, Nazism, and virulent anti-Semitism arose in Germany. Ludwig, the chief of pediatrics at Berlin University, and Walter, an assistant professor of pediatrics, were ardent German citizens who had served their country honorably in World War I. Yet both lost their positions when Hitler became chancellor and immediately barred all Jews from government positions. Also disturbing was the fact that three-year-old Daniel enjoyed marching about the playroom shouting Heil Hitler! and salutingwith the wrong arm.
M. K. Offer ([envelopeback])
Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Northwestern University Medical School,100 Avon Road, Northbrook, Illinois 60062, USAe-mail: [email protected]
With the domestic situation deteriorating, Ludwig and Walter traveled to Palestine in 1934 to see what opportunities might exist for them there; Ilse, Daniels mother, was an ardent Zionist and had argued for emigration to Israel rather than to the United States. So, in the...