Susanne B. Hirt
physical therapist | professor | department chair
Susanne Berthe Hirt (August 1, 1913 – September 17, 2006) was a physical therapist and professor at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV). She helped develop the School of Physical Therapy at MCV and became chair of the department and later a Professor Emeritus. She received the Mary McMillan Lecture Award from the American Physical Therapy Association in 1981.
Biography
Hirt was born Berta Susanne Hirsch on August 1, 1913, in Berlin to Joseph and Dorothea Hirsch. She was the youngest of four children, including two half-siblings from the previous marriage of her father. Her father died when she was eight. She graduated high school in Germany in 1929.
Hirt attended the University of Berlin to study medicine until she was expelled in 1934 because she was Jewish. She then attended the University of Vienna for two semesters until having to again leave school, and then began attending a course in physical education and kinesiology as well as working with children with cerebral palsy.
After German troops arrived in Vienna in 1938, she became an au pair and then immigrated with the family to the United States.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 29, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q111570142. The first chronological checks are 1913, 2006, 1981 and 1929.
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This entry incorporates text from “Susanne B. Hirt” 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.