Bertha Badt-Strauss

Bertha Badt-Strauss (around 1910)

Bertha Badt-Strauss (née Bertha Badt ; born December 7, 1885 in Breslau ; died May 20, 1970 in Chapel Hill ) was a German-Jewish publicist , journalist and author .

Life

Bertha Badt was born into a traditionally religious Jewish family of scholars (father: Benno Badt, 1844–1909; mother Martha Guttmann; her brother was the politician Hermann Badt ) and studied literary history , English, Latin and in Berlin at the University of Breslau and in Berlin Philosophy. During her studies she joined the Wroclaw Poetry School . In Berlin, she was the first woman to receive her doctorate in 1908 on Annette von Droste-Hülshoff .

In 1913 she moved to Berlin and there married Bruno Strauss , who was a high school teacher and did research on Moses Mendelssohn . In 1921 their son Albrecht was born.

She was Zionist and was particularly enthusiastic about the idea of ​​a Jewish renaissance formulated by Martin Buber . She and her husband lived strictly according to the rules of the Jewish religion ( kosher household , etc.) throughout their lives .

After the First World War , she began writing on Jewish subjects and over the years has become one of the most productive, well-known and widely read publicists in Berlin during the interwar period. She has written numerous articles, scientific essays, encyclopedias, short stories, biographies and book reviews and was the editor of literary works (including Droste-Hülshoff, Rahel Varnhagen ), translations and text reviews .

In 1939 the couple fled via London to the USA ( Shreveport , Louisiana ), where Bruno Strauss had received a teaching position; the son had been sent to Great Britain for training in 1933. In her new home, Bertha Badt-Strauss continued to publish, albeit to a much lesser extent, not least because she had suffered from MS for years and her state of health in America had deteriorated significantly.

Her husband died in 1969, and she herself died a year later, on May 20, 1970, in her son's house.

Works (selection)

also under the pseudonym: Bath-Hillel

• Annette von Droste-Hülshoff , 1909
• Rachel and her time , 1912
• Süsskind von Trimberg , 1920
• People among each other by Rahel Varnhagen , 1928
• Moses Mendelssohn , 1929
• Jewish women , 1937
• Editor of Hermann Cohen's letters , 1939
• Jessie Sampter , 1956

literature

• Jana Mikota: Jewish women writers - rediscovered: Bertha Badt-Strauss on the trail of forgotten Jewish women in the 1920s and 1930s . In: Medaon 3 (2009), 4 ( online ).
• Martina Steer: Bertha Badt-Strauss (1885–1970). A Jewish publicist . Frankfurt am Main 2005
• Martina Steer: Badt-Strauss, Bertha. In: Andreas B. Kilcher (Ed.): Metzler Lexicon of German-Jewish Literature. Jewish authors in the German language from the Enlightenment to the present. 2nd, updated and expanded edition. Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2012, ISBN 978-3-476-02457-2 , pp. 21-23.
• Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss , (Ed.), Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945 , Vol II, 2. Munich: Saur 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , pp. 45f .
• Badt-Strauss, Berta , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 17