Ferdinand Mainzer

Ferdinand Mainzer (16 January 1871 – 3 January 1943) was a German-Jewish gynaecologist and historical author.

Born 16 January 1871,^[1] Mainzer wrote his doctoral dissertation on wandering spleen. In the 1890s he worked at the Berlin clinic of the gynecologist Leopold Landau.^[2][3]

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.^[4] After a hand injury meant that he could no longer perform surgery, he turned to writing about antiquity.^[5] He was interested in numismatics, and a friend of the numismatist Edward Gans.^[6] 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.^[7]

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.^[5] 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.^[8]

Mainzer died 3 January 1943^[1][9] in Los Angeles.^[10] His daughter Lucie Manén married Otto John in 1949.^[11] He also had a son Max Mainzer (1902–1987) who married Eva Perlis (1908–2006). In May 2021, a portrait of Ferdinand Mainzer by Lovis Corinth was accepted for the nation in lieu of a UK inheritance tax bill.^[12] Corinth also painted a portrait of Max entitled Max Mainzer with a Siberian Greyhound (1912).