Background
Otto Ernst Guttentag was born in Stettin, Pomerania, Germany, into a family with three
generations of physicians before him. He studied for the degree "Candidate in Medicine"
at Marburg, Jena and Heidelberg and for the title "Physician" at Munich, Berlin and
Halle. In 1924 he received the M.D. degree with highest honors after a year of
independent work supervised by the distinguished nephrologist Franz Volhard. He remained
with Volhard at Halle, then at Frankfurt, until the Nazis took power in 1933, at which
time he accepted a previously extended invitation from the Homeopathic Foundation of
California to become director of that institution's research laboratory in San Francisco.