Sami Günzberg was born in 1874 in Istanbul to parents of Hungarian origin who had immigrated to Turkey in 1848. Günzberg was a military doctor in the Ottoman army. Through his mother, who had connections at court, he became the court dentist, with Sultan Abdülhamid and Sultan Vahdettin and their families as his patients. Günzberg retained this prestigious post even after the caliphate was abolished and the Republic of Turkey was proclaimed on October 29, 1923, for he became the private dentist of Mustafa Kemal (later named Atatürk), the founder of the republic and its first p…