Attached is a painting by famous painter Max Lieberman of Richard Cassirer, painted in 1918, presented to the Tate Gallery by H. Cassirer, the son of the sitter, in 1963.1054 Professor Richard Cassirer was born in 1868 in Breslau and was Professor of Neurology at Berlin University between 1912 and 1925, the year of his death. His brother Paul Cassirer commissioned this portrait on the occasion of Richard Cassirer's fiftieth birthday.

See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Cassirer

Biography: Richard Cassirer German neurologist, born April 23, 1868, Breslau; died August 20, 1925, Berlin. Richard Cassirer studied in Freiburg im Breisgau. He received his doctorate in 1891 and subsequently was assistant at the psychiatric clinic in Breslau under Karl Wernicke (1848-1905) until 1893. He then went on a sustained educational tour to Vienna in order to continue his studies, with Richard von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) and Heinrich Obersteiner (1847-1922) among his teachers. In 1895 he came to the Berliner Poliklinik für Nervenkranke as the assistant to Hermann Oppenheim (1858-1919). With R. Hirschfeld he directed this clinic from 1919 until his death in 1925. In 1903 Cassirer was habilitated on the basis of a clinical study on tabes and psychosis, becoming titular professor in 1912.

Cassirer chiefly concerned himself with clinical neurology as well as the anatomy of the central nervous system; he investigated the vasomotor-trophical and here succeeded in defining the acroasphyxia chronica. He also investigated the anatomy of the vegetative system, the bulbar and spinal marrow diseases, poliomyelitis chronica, multiple sclerosis, prognoses and indications of the operative treatment of lesions of the peripheral nerves, muscular atrophy, etc. Literary his later years were mainly devoted to the new edition of Oppenheimer’s textbook.

Bibliography:

* Die vasomotorisch-trophischen neurosen. Berlin, 1901; 2nd edition, 1912.

* Die multiple Sklerose. Leipzig, 1905.

* Die beschäftigungsneurosen.
Deutsche Klinik, volume 6, page 1; Leipzig and Vienna, 1906.

* Die vasomotorisch-trophischen Neurosen.
In: Handbuch der Neurologie; volume 5, Berlin. 1914.

* Krankheiten des Rückenmarks und der peripherischen Nerven.
In: Julius Schwalbe (1863-1930), publisher: Diagnostische und therapeutische Irrtümer und deren Verhütung. Leipzig, 1921; 2nd edition with Richard Henneberg (1868-1962), 1926.

* Vasomotorisch-trophische Erkrankungen.
In: Friedrich Kraus (1858-1936), Theodor Brugsch (1878-1963): Spezielle Pathologie und Therapie. Volume 10, page 3 [19 volumes, Berlin and Vienna, 1919-1929].


Source: http://www.whonamedit.com/doctor.cfm/2517.html

For a fascinating account of evidence given by Professor Dr Richard Cassirer see

Armin T. Wegner THE TRIAL OF TALAAT PASHA1055

In this trial, Cassirer gives evidence as to the mental state of the defendant Soghomon Tehlirian who is accused of being guilty of having intentionally killed Talaat Pasha on Charlottenburgstrasse on March 15, 1921 was not able to form a conscious sane decision to carry out the murder because of psychosis induced as a result of the massacre of his family and relatives.

“The defendant was born in Pakarij and came to Erzinga when he was four years old. This city, one of the largest in the region, is 100 to 150 kilometers west of Garin, on one of the two branches of the Euphrates River which extends nearly as far as Erzerum. There is along, wide valley here which is the way southward, in the direction of the Middle Euphrates and toward the desert, to which Armenians were to be exiled.

In Erzinga, there were some 20,000 Armenians and approximately 25,000-30,000 Turks. The defendants parents were middle-class. His father was a fairly successful merchant. His parents had accumulated modest savings. They were a large and peaceful family. They had suffered somewhat from the war but, until June 1915, everything was quiet and orderly.

Then the disastrous news came from Constantinople that the Armenians were being deported. An announcement was made: You should get together everything that you can carry within a few days, as you will be deported. On June 10th, the deportation began. First the rich and the well-to-do, who had horses and carriages, were deported. This was the first group. The defendant and his parents were in the second group. The defendant is not in a position to testify as to how large that group was. There were many other groups that followed these. Outside the city limits they were joined by the Armenians rounded up from the neighboring villages. The defendant was unable to see the end of the caravan; he walked in the middle of the caravan with his fifteen year-old sister. I believe his sixteen year-old sister was with him as well. His twenty-six year-old sister and her child were there too. In addition there were his two brothers, who were twenty-two and twenty-four years old respectively, and finally his mother and father, who were fifty and fifty-five years old respectively. Thus the whole family walked with their oxcart.

They had not gone very far before they were attacked. Who attacked them? The gendarmes did — General Liman von Sanders described them as they were then — as well as mobs of Kurds, Turks, and others. First they took any weapons the Armenians had, even to the point of taking their umbrellas; they then took their money, gold, and food. They took the most precious possession of the women to satisfy their bestial passions. Young girls, among whom were the defendants fifteen and sixteen year-old sisters, were dragged into the bushes. Their parents and the defendant who were in a ditch heard their shrieks and realized what was happening to them. They never saw the girls again. The defendant was able to see the corpse of one of his sisters when he regained consciousness. What about his brother? His twenty-two year old brothers head — and this was the most shocking sight — was split in two by a gleaming axe. Even to this date, the defendant sees this horrifying image when he loses emotional control. Before his eyes he saw his mother fall, probably hit by a bullet. The others disappeared without trace, even though the defendant constantly tried to determine their whereabouts by means of missing persons advertisements.”