Anne Sullivan Macy

Anne Sullivan Macy

Anne Sullivan (right) with Helen Keller (1888)

Anne Sullivan , also Annie Sullivan , née Johanna Mansfield Sullivan (born April 14, 1866 in Feeding Hills , Massachusetts , † October 20, 1936 in New York City , New York ) was a teacher of blind children. Her most famous student was Helen Keller .

Life

Anne Sullivan was born in Feeding Hills, Massachusetts. Her parents, Thomas Sullivan and Alice Cloesy, were poor farmers who emigrated from Ireland because of the Great Famine in 1847 . Her father was an alcoholic and hit her. Her mother suffered from tuberculosis and died when Anne was eight. Two years later, her father left the children, then to the orphanage in Tewksbury were brought. Sullivan mainly looked after her younger brother, who was disabled and also had tuberculosis. He died later in hospital.

When Anne was three years old, her eyesight deteriorated. When she was five years old, her cornea was scarring from a bacterial infection . After unsuccessfully visiting a number of doctors, a Catholic pastor suggested an operation that would involve numbing her eyes with cocaine . The procedure further worsened her eyesight. Another operation in Boston brought no improvement.

From 1880 Sullivan attended the "Perkins Institute". There she got to know the finger alphabet for the deaf, in which each letter is expressed by finger movements (not to be confused with sign language ). All teachers and students at the Perkins Institute knew this alphabet in order to be able to communicate with Laura Bridgman . Bridgman lived at the Perkins Institute and worked there as a handicraft teacher. She had been deafblind since early childhood and learned this language by having her teacher Howe feel her objects and at the same time spelling the corresponding word on the palm of her hand until she realized that the felt finger movements are the name of the object. Anne Sullivan acquired particular dexterity in the use of the finger alphabet and was one of Bridgman's favorite students.

In 1887, Sullivan began teaching the deafblind Helen Keller using the finger alphabet. The success put even Laura Bridgman's achievements in the shade and brought Anne Sullivan not only admiration, but also envy and resentment.

Sullivan and Keller later moved to Radcliffe College , where Keller graduated in 1904. After that, they moved to a benefactor's farm together. On May 2, 1905, Sullivan married Harvard Professor John Albert Macy (1877-1932), who had helped Keller work on her biography . However, the marriage was very unhappy. Sullivan stayed in touch with Keller and accompanied her as she went about her work. Sullivan went completely blind in 1935 and died in New York the following year . She was buried in the Washington National Cathedral , like Helen Keller later on.

Web links

Commons : Anne Sullivan  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files

• Literature by and about Anne Sullivan Macy in the catalog of the German National Library