Anitta Müller-Cohen

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Anitta Müller-Cohen

Anitta Müller-Cohen (born June 6, 1890 in Vienna ; died June 29, 1962 in Tel Aviv ) was a social worker , politician and journalist. In Austria she became known for her commitment to building philanthropic organizations during the First World War .

Live and act

Anitta Müller-Cohen grew up as Anitta Rosenzweig in a wealthy, assimilated Jewish family in Vienna. Even in her youth she was interested in social work and the women's movement . In 1909 she married the businessman Arnold Müller (born 1881). The couple had a daughter.

During the First World War she founded the social aid community Anitta Müller . She was instrumental in the expansion of social welfare in Vienna. So she organized the maternity leave, children, middle class and vulnerable, later founded the Jewish relief organization in Bukovina and Galicia and in Vienna the central office for the care of Jewish children abroad , which cared for malnourished children in Europe and brokered adoptions of Russian pogrom victims and recreational trips for 12,000 children.

At that time she was a board member of the General Austrian Women's Association (AÖFV) and was one of the few Jewish philanthropists to belong to the radical wing of the bourgeois women's movement around Auguste Fickert . Confronted with the fate of Eastern Jewish refugees, she began to get involved in the Zionist movement and was soon a leading member of the Jewish National Party . In 1919 she was elected to the Viennese municipal council as a candidate for the liberal, bourgeois electoral roll, and in this function she created a Jewish center with legal advice and youth clubs in 1926.

In addition to her social and political work, she worked as a journalist for Jewish and non-Jewish daily newspapers such as Neues Wiener Journal , Wiener Morgenzeitung and Jüdische Rundschau . She used her experience in politics and social work as a journalist. She wrote numerous articles on topics that were previously reserved for men and promoted a new image of women.

In 1921 she divorced Arnold Müller and shortly thereafter married the businessman and Zionist Samuel Cohen (1892–1969). As a working woman, she raised three children from Cohen's first marriage in addition to her own daughter.

She was the organizer and AÖFV delegate of the first World Congress of Jewish Women in Vienna in 1923. In 1929 she was elected one of the vice-presidents of the World Federation of Jewish Women , which was newly founded in Hamburg .

In 1935 she emigrated to Palestine with her family. During and after World War II , it focused its activities on new immigrants, particularly refugees from Austria. Among other things, she worked as chairwoman of the Hitachdut Olej Austria (HOA, Association of Austrian Immigrants) and as chairwoman of the religious-Zionist Misrachi women's movement. In 1950 she left the Mizrahi movement and joined the Cherut Party, where she was involved in social policy.

Honors

A parents' home for Austrian Jews in Tel Aviv (Ramat Chen) opened in 1965 is named after her. In 2018 in Vienna-was Leopoldstadt (2nd district) at Walcherstraße and Lassallestraße near the Praterstern of Müller-Cohen Square named after her. In 2019 this name was changed to Anitta-Müller-Cohen-Platz.

literature

  • Meir Marcell Faerber : Anitta Müller-Cohen (1890-1962) . In: ders., Österreichische Juden , Aspecto-Verlag, Klagenfurt 1996 (= Edition Mnemosyne, 3), pp. 95–96
  • Dieter Hecht: Between Feminism and Zionism: The Biography of a Viennese Jew. Anitta Müller-Cohen (1890-1962). Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2008 (= L'homme: Schriften, 15), book and CD with audio recording of a speech about Keren Kajemet le-Israel in 1925.
  • Dieter J. Hecht: Biographies of Jewish Women: Anitta Müller-Cohen (1890–1962). Social work and Zionism between Vienna and Tel Aviv . In: Medaon 14/2014 ( online ).
  • Elisabeth Malleier : Jewish feminists in the Viennese bourgeois women's movement before 1938 . In: Margarete Grandner, Edith Saurer (Hrsg.): Gender, Religion and Engagement. The Jewish women's movements in German-speaking countries. 19th and early 20th centuries (= L'Homme-Schriften. Series on feminist history. Vol. 9). Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2005, ISBN 3-205-77259-8 , pp. 79-101
  • One year refugee welfare for Ms. Anitta Müller 1914-1915 . With a foreword by Marco Brociner . Vienna: Löwit, 1915

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dieter Hecht: The voice and truth of the Jewish world. Jewish press in Vienna 1918–1938 . In: Frank Stern, Barbara Eichinger (ed.): Vienna and the Jewish experience, 1900–1938. Acculturation, anti-Semitism, Zionism . Böhlau, Vienna et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78317-6 , p. 105
personal data
SURNAME Müller-Cohen, Anitta
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rosenzweig, Anitta (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian social worker, politician and feminist
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH June 29, 1962
Place of death Tel Aviv