Susanne B. Hirt

Susanne Berthe Hirt (August 1, 1913 – September 17, 2006) was a physical therapist and professor at the Medical College of Virginia (MCV). She helped develop the School of Physical Therapy at MCV and became chair of the department and later a Professor Emeritus. She received the Mary McMillan Lecture Award from the American Physical Therapy Association in 1981.

Biography Hirt was born Berta Susanne Hirsch on August 1, 1913, in Berlin to Joseph and Dorothea Hirsch. She then attended the University of Vienna for two semesters until having to again leave school, and then began attending a course in physical education and kinesiology as well as working with children with cerebral palsy. Her siblings immigrated to the United Kingdom, but her mother was deported from Germany to Riga and died in a concentration camp in 1942. whom she had met during her work with polio patients when Hellebrandt was the director of the UW physical therapy school.

Hirt began studying the Feldenkrais Method of exercise therapy in 1979 and taught the method at senior centers and her home after her retirement from MCV. 1983 Woman of the Year for health and fitness, Greater Richmond YWCA In 2018 the Virginia Capitol Foundation announced that Hirt's name would be on the Virginia Women's Monument's glass Wall of Honor.