Assessment of students' attitudes towards physicians' empathy is essential in medical education and in practice because empathy is vital in physician-patient communication. To cross-culturally adapt the Jefferson Scale of Physician Empathy (S-version, JSPE-S) into a German version, examine its psychometric properties in comparison to the original US version (psychometric equivalence), and to compare the level of attitude towards empathy to the original US version and to other cultural adaptations. The German version was administered to the 2010 2nd year medical students cohort at the Medical University of Vienna, Austria (n = 516). Item-total score correlations were all positive. Reliability was high (Cronbach's alpha = 0.82); a 6-7 weeks test-retest correlation for a subsample was 0.45. In an explanatory factor analysis, a four-factor solution emerged and is akin to published results of the original JSPE-S. This study provides an example of successful cross-cultural adaptation of an assessment instrument. The German adaptation of the JSPE at hand will pave the way for future international research regarding the concept of empathy and its outcomes.