The War Years and Bárány’s Decision to Leave Vienna
As the conflict in Adam Politzer’s clinic heated up and with the approach of World War I, Robert Bárány volunteered for service in the army medical corps, in keeping with his pacifist ideas. Although he could have been excused from military service because of his ankylosed knee, Bárány was swept up in the wave of patriotism prevalent in Vienna. He was immediately assigned as an army surgeon to a hospital in the fortress of Przemysl near the Russian border. Przemysl was eventually overrun by Russian troops, and Bárány was transported along with more than 100,000 other prisoners in cattle cars across the Russian steppe to Turkistan. It was during his stay in Russia that Bárány received the exciting news from the Swedish minister in St. Petersburg that he had been awarded the 1914 Nobel Prize in Medicine for his work on the caloric reaction.