Читать книгу Memoirs of Milwaukee County, Volume 3 - Josiah Seymour Currey - Страница 65

Dr. Frederick A. Kraft, physician and surgeon, specializing on nervous and mental diseases, was born in Austria, January 20, 1871, and remained a resident of that country to the age of sixteen years, spending his youthful days in the home of his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Kraft. The mother died when he was a lad of but nine years and the father, who was an accountant, came to the new world about 1887, settling in Milwaukee, where his remaining days were passed, his death occurring in 1920. In the family were two sons and a daughter, namely: Frederick A., of this review; Eugene, a lithographer; and Victoria, a governess.

Dr. Frederick A. Kraft attended school in Vienna ere accompanying his father to the new world and he completed his academic education in Boston and in Springfield, Massachusetts. He afterward became a medical student in the Barnes Medical College of St. Louis, Missouri, and was there graduated with the M. D. degree as a member of the class of 1894. For a year he was an interne in the St. Louis City Hospital and gained thereby the broad, varied and valuable experience which hospital practice brings.

In 1895 Dr. Kraft came to Milwaukee, where he has since made his home and has throughout the intervening period continued in the active practice of medicine save for two trips which he made to remote parts of the globe, going to Alaska in 1900 and to Berlin in 1914. He was in the German capital when the World war broke out and immediately returned to this country. He had served as health commissioner of Milwaukee from 1910 until 1914 but for the past fifteen years has largely confined his private practice to mental and nervous diseases. He has developed his power along these lines to a high degree of efficiency and he is the possessor of a fine private library containing over two thousand volumes, including many which cover the range of science and of general literature outside the path of his profession.

Dr. Kraft has been married twice. His first wife died in 1909, leaving two children, Janet and Louis, the former now married. In 1913 Dr. Kraft wedded Elizabeth Tegge of Milwaukee and in the social circles of the city they occupy an enviable position. Dr. Kraft is a Royal Arch and Council Mason and is a loyal follower of the teachings and purposes of the craft. He is fond of taking long motor trips and is a devotee of the highest forms of the dramatic art, greatly enjoying the performances of the legitimate stage. One of his interests is in the collection of postage stamps and he has one of the best collections to be found in this country, consisting of over thirty thousand stamps, which represent the work of twenty-two years. He is now president of the Milwaukee Philatelic Society. His interests are broad and varied and his extensive library indicates how closely he is in touch with the world's history along the lines of scientific and literary development.