CACrown ArchivesThe cinema collection
Menu
Research dossier · People & Ideas

Ilza Veith

American historian (1912 – 2013)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
People and ideasInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJun 23, 2026
Entity authorityQ59528076
Source-derived summary

Ilza Fanny Veith (born Ilza Hirschmann, May 13, 1912, Ludwigshafen – June 8, 2013, Tiburon, California) was a German-born, American historian of medicine, specializing in the history of psychiatric medicine and East Asian medicine. She taught at the University of Chicago 1949–1963 and the University of California, San Francisco 1964–1979. She was particularly known for her translation and analysis of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic (Huangdi Neijing) (1949) and her book Hysteria: The History of a Disease (1965).

Early life and education

Veith was born Ilza Hirschmann in Ludwigshafen on May 13, 1912, the daughter of Jewish parents, the schnapps manufacturer Gustav Hirschmann (1882–1945) and Minna Hertz Hirschmann. From 1934 to 1936 she studied medicine in Geneva and Vienna. In 1935, she married the lawyer Hans von Valentini Veith, whose father Dr. Julius Veith was a Jewish convert to Lutheranism. Hans and Ilza Veith fled in 1935 to Italy and in 1937 emigrated to the US, where they settled in Baltimore. Both of them became naturalized American citizens in 1945.

At the Institute for the History of Medicine of Johns Hopkins University, Ilza Veith graduated in 1944 with an M.A. and in 1947 with a Ph.D. in the history of medicine.

Editorial summary

“Ilza Veith” enters the record as american historian (1912 – 2013). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ilza, Veith and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1912, 2013, 1949, 1963—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1915-05-13. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Ilza, Veith and American.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Ilza Veith” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Ilza, Veith and American provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q59528076. VIAF identifies the subject as 2534288. The Library of Congress control number is n50014218. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1912, 2013, 1949 and 1963.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Ilza Veith”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Ilza Veith primary sources, Ilza Veith archive and Ilza research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Ilza Veith”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
Subject index

Search terms from this dossier

Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Ilza Veith” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.