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Godfrey Edward Arnold

1914-1989

Godfrey Arnold studied with Hermann Gutzmann Junior at the University of Liepzig in Berlin. He also worked at the Voice and Speech Clinic, a branch of the Vienna Ear Clinic at the Vienna General Hospital. This hospital was affiliated with the University of Vienna. In 1939 when Froeschels and his associates were forced to leave Vienna because of the holocaust, Godfrey Arnold took his place as chief of the Froeschel’s phoniatric clinic.

Once the allies won, Arnold, himself, was forced to leave Vienna. He emigrated to the United States in 1949. Once here, he worked on the faculty of the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai Hospital and at J. S. Greene’s National Hospital of Speech Disorders, where he served as the hospital director and editor of Logo, a journal on various aspects of speech pathology published by the hospital.

Esti Freud, who knew Arnold in Austria and followed his career during the holocaust, describes him as a Nazi. When she was went to say goodbye to Froeschels at his clinic:

Dr. Arnold, a prominent Nazi at the Neumann Clinic threw me out by hand. Dr. Arnold is now a highly esteemed Ear, Nose and Throat specialist in Jackson, Mississippi (Freud, p. 56).

Esti played a strong role in Arnold’s life in the USA, blocking his effort to find work. In her memoir, she described her reporting of Arnold’s Nazi affiliation to the US authorities as follows:

Incident about Gottfried Arnold (p. 84)

I learned that Dr. Arnold, the Nazi of the Neumann Clinic who had succeeded Dr. Froeschels and had thrown me out of the outpatient department, had arrived in New York and was appointed at Bellevue Hospital. In Austria, after the breakdown of the thousand-year-old Reich, the Christian Social Party took over the government. All the prominent Nazis were fired from their jobs. Many came to the United States where they could get work. Froeschels wanted me to be quiet about Dr. Arnold, nevertheless, I went ahead and thus forced Dr Froeschels’ hand. We reported Dr. Arnold’s former activity to the authorities. I was investigated from all sides to determine if I were telling the truth. Anyway, to make a long story short, Dr. Arnold could not stay at Bellevue Hospital or even in New York City. At present he is professor at the university in Jackson, Mississippi. I am sure that by this action I made myself a great number of enemies. Tant pis.

An archive from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency describes the rejection of Arnold’s application for membership due to his Nazi affiliated past: https://www.jta.org/1955/01/26/archive/medical-society-refuses-membership-to-nazi-linked-applicant.

In 1949, together with Professor Dr. Richard Luchsinger of the University of Zurich, Arnold coauthored a textbook on voice and speech that was published in German and English. Between 1951 and 1963, he carried out studies in neurolaryngology. He established a method of successfully injecting of diced cartilage and later Teflon to improve vocal functioning in unilateral recurrent laryngeal nerve paralysis.

Between 1963 and 1979 Arnold served as chief of the Department of Otolaryngology at the University of Mississippi.

References

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