Leonie Adele Spitzer
Leonie Adele Spitzer | |
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Born | Vienna, Austria-Hungary | 17 May 1891
Died | 5 June 1940 Oxford, United Kingdom | (aged 49)
Language | German |
Relatives |
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Leonie Adele Spitzer (17 May 1891 – 5 June 1940) was an Austrian writer, poet, and educator.
Biography[]
Leonie Adele Spitzer was born into a distinguished assimilated Jewish family in Vienna. Her father was Obermedizinalrat Dr. Franz Spitzer, who worked as a physician for the writers' and journalists' association, while her paternal grandfather was mathematician Simon Spitzer.[1] Her mother Charlotte, née Pokorny, was the daughter of Dr. Wilhelm Pokorny, homeopath and physician to the Austrian aristocracy. She was educated at the , and passed the teaching qualification examination for French and English in 1912.[1]
Spitzer graduated with a doctorate from the University of Vienna on 21 July 1920, with a dissertation entitled "Über Rilkes Verskunst".[2] She was editor of the Rikola publishing house until 1922, whereupon she pursued teaching as a profession. She passed the teacher's examination for gymnasia in 1923, and then worked at various secondary schools in Vienna, including the Floridsdorf Gymnasium.[3]
She fled to Italy after the annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938 (her twin brother Dr. Fritz Spitzer, meanwhile, committed suicide).[1] She emigrated to Oxford the following year with the help of Dr. , secretary of the Emergency Sub-Committee for Refugees.[4] She received positions at Cheltenham Ladies' College and then Crofton Grange School, but soon succumbed to a serious illness and died in June 1940.[3]
Because she was Jewish, Spitzer's doctorate was posthumously revoked on 22 July 1943, only to be symbolically re-granted on 15 May 1955.[2]
Bibliography[]
- Sturmflut. Versdrama.
- Leonore. Novelle.
- Die Familie Höchst. Ein Roman aus der Zeit vor Österreichs Umbruch. Bad Soden am Taunus: Woywod. 1986.
- Adolf, Helen, ed. (1978). Wandlungen der Liebe. Darmstadt: J. G. Bläschke.
References[]
- ^ a b c Korotin, Ilse, ed. (2016). biografıA. Lexikon österreichischer Frauen (in German). Vol. 3. Vienna: Böhlau. pp. 3124–3125. doi:10.26530/oapen_611232. ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2.
- ^ a b "Gedenkbuch für die Opfer des Nationalsozialismus an der Universität Wien 1938" [Memorial Book for the Victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938]. 29 June 2009. Retrieved 24 September 2021.
- ^ a b Lebensaft, E. (2007). "Spitzer, Leonie Adele (1891–1940), Schriftstellerin und Lehrerin". Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 (in German). Vol. 13. Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. p. 41. doi:10.1553/0X00284CEA.
- ^ Von Oertzen, Christine (2016). Science, Gender, and Internationalism: Women's Academic Networks, 1917–1955. Translated by Sturge, Kate. Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 138, 256n66. ISBN 978-1-137-43890-4.
External links[]
- Poems by Spitzer at deutscher-liebeslyrik.de.
- 1891 births
- 1940 deaths
- 20th-century Austrian educators
- 20th-century Austrian poets
- 20th-century Austrian women writers
- Austrian emigrants to England
- Austrian women poets
- Jewish Austrian writers
- Jewish educators
- Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United Kingdom after the Anschluss
- Jewish women writers
- Jews and Judaism in Vienna
- Refugees in the United Kingdom
- University of Vienna alumni