Karl Landsteiner, 1868-1943

Abstract

Landsteiner was born in Vienna on 14 June 1868, of Jewish parents. His father Leopold, a journalist, died when the boy was six and he grew up the devoted companion of his mother, Fanny Hess Landsteiner, with whom he led so retired a life that the companions of his young manhood cannot recall even having seen her. She ruled through solicitude. Together they joined the Roman Catholic church when he was a stripling, and a Catholic he declared himself to be in a public statement made almost fifty years later. The announcement of his marriage was deferred until his mother had died and her death mask hung on the wall of his bedroom until his own life ended.