Richard Detlev Loewenberg was born as the son of Jenny and Jakob Loewenberg in Hamburg in 1898. He studied medicine at the Universities of Goettingen, Freiburg and Hamburg, where he received his M.D. degree in 1923. Following an internship and residencies in internal medicine and neurology, he was assistant in neuropsychiatry at the University Hospital in Hamburg from 1929 to 1933. In 1931 he married Sophie Borowicz. Their son Peter was born two years later. After the Nazis came to power, the family immigrated to Shanghai, where Richard D. Loewenberg continued to work as instructor and part-time consultant at the Shanghai Mercy Hospital for Nervous Diseases from 1933 to 1937. Afterwards he immigrated to California, and started to work at St Joseph's Hospital where he passed his State Board examination in 1939. After three more years of staff work in the same hospital, he became Assistant Division Surgeon at the Western Pacific Railroad Hospital in Portola, CA. Later he went to Bakersfield, CA where he worked as the Director of Mental Hygiene Division at the Kern Country Health Department and as Chief of Neuropsychiatric Service at the Kern General Hospital. In 1946 he was certified as psychiatrist by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. In 1948 he had to give up his position but continued publishing articles about medical and general subjects. Later he started to lecture at the University of Southern California where he died of an apoplexy during one of his lectures on April 29, 1954.
From the guide to the Richard D. Loewenberg Collection, 1911-1956, (Leo Baeck Institute)
