Paul F. Schilder M.D.

Dr. Paul Ferdinand Schilder, clinical director of the psychiatric division of Bellevue Hospital and Research Professor of Psychiatry at the New York University College of Medicine, died December 8, 1940, in Misericordia Hospital, of injuries received the night before when he was struck by an automobile. He was but fifty-four years of age.

Dr. Schilder had just left the Doctors Hospital, where he had paid a visit to his wife, Dr. Lauretta Bender Schilder, and their twelve-day-old daughter, when the accident happened. Mrs. Schilder was his constant co-worker at Bellevue.

Dr. Schilder was born on February 15, 1886, in Vienna, the son of Ferdinand and Berta Fürth Schilder. He received his education at the Universities of Vienna and Halle, obtaining a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the latter in 1911. After serving as an assistant in psychiatry at the University Hospital at Halle, where he came under the leadership of Anton who carried on much of the spirit of Wernicke, he entered the Austrian army, serving as a physician throughout the World War. He then was an assistant in psychiatry at the University Hospital in Vienna and a special lecturer at this same university. Here he served under the leadership of Wagner v. Jauregg who permitted psychoanalytic work to be carried out in his clinic.

He came to this country in 1929 and joined the staff at Bellevue on the invitation of Dr. Menas Gregory, then chief psychiatrist at Bellevue Hospital, N. Y., after spending some months at Phipps Clinic in Baltimore. Dr. Schilder was clinical director of the psychiatric division. His connection with New York University also began in that year.

Dr. Schilder came as near to being a genius as any psychiatrist in the United States. He was a philosoper, an expert and well grounded neurologist, an exceptionally acute psychiatrist and psychoanalyst and a person of distinction in numerous fields of intellectual activity.

He was the author of “Introduction to a Psychoanalytic Psychiatry” and “Brai