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Leonie Adele Spitzer

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Leonie Adele Spitzer
Born(1891-05-17)17 May 1891
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
Died5 June 1940(1940-06-05) (aged 49)
Oxford, United Kingdom
LanguageGerman
Relatives

Leonie Adele Spitzer (17 May 1891 – 5 June 1940) was an Austrian writer, poet, and educator.

Biography

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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 Concordia [de] 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 Hanausek Lyceum [de], 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. Erna Hollitscher [Wikidata], 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

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  • 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

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  1. ^ 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.
  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.
  3. ^ 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.
  4. ^ 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.
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