Dora Benjamin

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Dora Benjamin (born April 30, 1901 in Berlin ; died June 1, 1946 in Zurich ) was a German economist , social scientist and psychologist . She was the younger sister of Georg and Walter Benjamin .

life and work

Dora Benjamin came from a German-Jewish assimilated household in Berlin. Like her two older brothers Georg and Walter, she grew up in a sheltered and upper-class environment in Berlin-Grunewald . Her father Emil Benjamin (1856–1926) was an antiques and art dealer, her mother Pauline (1869–1930) a nee Schoenflies .

After studying economics at the University of Greifswald , she did her doctorate there on the social situation of the Berlin clothing workers . Afterwards she turned more and more to the educational-psychological issues of the misery of women and children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. She had come to this in particular through her activities and research in her brother Georg's medical practice in Berlin-Wedding . Presumably through her very early studies, which she was able to continue in her exile in Switzerland from 1942/43, she also laid the foundation for research on traumatized children from concentration camps .

After directly related to power of the Nazis , her brother George in 1933 by the Nazis in protective custody was taken, fled Dora and her older brother Walter on separate paths to France. This started a long story of suffering of flight, illness, fear and poverty. In 1940 Dora, like other unmarried and childless women, had to go to the Vélodrome d'Hiver in Paris . A few days later she was interned in the Gurs camp on the first transport . After the Germans invaded France in June 1940, like many others, she was able to leave the camp and flee to Lourdes . She even received an entry visa to the USA, but was apparently so weakened by illness and in such fear by the invasion of the Germans in the rest of France that she decided to flee to Switzerland.

A protocol from the Swiss authorities provides information on this: “In August (1942) I was supposed to be arrested and deported by the French police, but I was released thanks to a medical certificate. Since the Germans marched into the free zone, I have been forced to hide constantly. Despite my months of trying to get the entry visa for Switzerland, I did not get it. Since I had to fear at any moment that I would be picked up by the Germans, I left Aix-en-Provence on December 17th (December 1942) and on the same day crossed the Swiss border at Landecy, where (we voluntarily) I myself Soldiers posed. These were then handed over to us by the military authorities. ”After her flight from France to Switzerland, Dora was not sent back to France and thus died in 1942 only because of her illness, which was already well advanced at the time.

In 1946 Dora died completely impoverished of cancer in Switzerland.

Honors

literature

  • Eva Schöck-Quinteros : Dora Benjamin: "... because I hope to be able to work in America after the war." Stations of an expelled scientist (1901-1946). In: Barriers and Careers. The beginnings of women's studies in Germany. Berlin 2000, pp. 71-102.
  • Uwe-Karsten Heye : The Benjamin: A German family. Structure, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-351-03562-4 .
  • Eva Weissweiler : Echo of your question. Dora and Walter Benjamin. Biography of a relationship . Hoffmann and Campe, Hamburg 2020, ISBN 978-3-455-00643-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ quoted from Dora Benjamin in: Heye 2014, p. 67
  2. ^ Dora-Benjamin-Park on Kauperts.de
personal data
SURNAME Benjamin, Dora
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German economist, social scientist and psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 30, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 1946
Place of death Zurich