Martha Wygodzinski (1869-1943), the first female doctor in the hospital "Am Urban

Martha Hedwig Wygodzinski, born in Berlin on July 2, 1869, was a German politician (SPD) and the first female member of the „Berlin Medical Society“. Together with her three sisters, she grew up as the daughter of Nanny and Max Wÿgodzinski in a large, middle-class Jewish family in Berlin-Tiergarten. The father was founder of the "Israelitischen Lehrerinnenheims".

Her medical studies at the University of Zürich completed Martha Wygodzinski 1898 with state examination and doctorate. Her dissertation dealt with a topic in gynecology. In 1901 she passed her German state examination in Halle/Saale. After her license to practice medicine, she worked from January 1902 as the first volunteer physician at the Urban Hospital in the internal medicine department under Albert Fraenkel. In the same year, she became the first woman member of the Berlin Medical Society and the Berlin Association of Freely Elected Physicians.

Wygodzinski began her work as a practicing physician in the poor district of Prenzlauer Berg. In Mitte, she opened the „New Polyclinic for Women“ (Alexanderstraße 8) in 1911 and a home for single mothers in Pankow (Neue Schönholzer Straße 13). In 1912 she moved her practice to Monbijouplatz 10. She was active in the women's movement and in the SPD. From 1919 to 1925 she was a Berlin city councillor for the SPD and was committed to the abolition of the § 218 StGB.

As a representative of the Working Group of Social Democratic Ärzte she was elected to the Berlin Ärztekammer in 1927, but lost her office in 1933 and was expelled from the Bund deutscher Ärztinnen. She was able to continue her practice for Jewish patients until 1935. In 1938 her license to practice medicine was revoked. On July 9, 1942, she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp (18th transport of old people), where she died on February 27, 1943.

At Alexanderstraße 25 (opposite the former polyclinic), a stumbling block commemorates Martha Wygodzinski, and at Neue Schönholzer Straße 13 a memorial plaque.