Elsa Mahler

Elsa-Eugenie Mahler (born November 15, 1882 in Moscow , Russian Empire , † June 30, 1970 in Riehen ) was a Swiss Slavist and folklorist and the first female professor at the University of Basel .

Life

Elsa-Eugenie Mahler was born in Moscow on November 15, 1882, the daughter of an emigrated Swiss businessman and a German-Baltic mother. She spent her school days in Moscow and received her higher education at the philological and historical department of the only teaching institution open to women in Russia at the time: the Bestushev University for Women in Saint Petersburg . Elsa Mahler then studied classical philology and art history in Berlin and Munich , but returned to Petersburg without a degree in 1913. During the First World War , the October Revolution and the Civil War , she taught at various Petrograd schools - until they were closed.

In 1919 Mahler became assistant at the Russian Academy of Sciences , responsible for the antiquities collection. When she wanted to return to her place of work after a further training leave in Switzerland in 1920 , she was refused by the Soviet authorities; presumably they wanted to deport her. So she stayed in Basel .

As a result, Elsa Mahler continued to work scientifically, but not in her original field, classical studies, but in the field of Russian studies , for which she was predestined by her origin, training and teaching practice. Although she completed her studies in Classical Archeology in 1924 with a dissertation on the Megarian beakers , at the same time she tried to get the position of a lecturer in Russian at the University of Basel, which she was awarded in April 1923. 1928 habilitation they are in Basel with a dissertation on the Russian dirge and then worked for ten years as a lecturer . In 1938 she was the first woman to be appointed Associate Professor at the University of Basel.

Teaching and Research

For over four decades, Elsa Mahler taught Russian literature and culture and gave language courses at all levels. During the Second World War , when Russian was particularly popular, she published the Textbook of the Russian Language (1944) and a Russian Reader (1946). Her lectures dealt with topics from the entire field of Russian studies, but were for the most part devoted to Russian literature of the 19th and 20th centuries . The corresponding book project - a Russian literary history with portraits of the great figures - has remained unfinished.

The path from the opening of the Russian Lektorat to the recognition of the subject as an independent discipline in the institute's rank can be read in the course catalogs of the University of Basel: Until the summer semester of 1949 Elsa Mahler was head of the "Russian Library", then of the "Russian Seminar", and it was not until the winter semester of 1958/59, when she had already been retired for five years but was still doing exercises, that the “Russian” became the “Slavic seminary”.

In her research, Elsa Mahler devoted herself particularly to the Russian folk song . While she was still compiling the material for her 1936 book “Die Russisch Totenklage” (a greatly expanded version of the habilitation thesis) from written sources, her two other major works were the fruit of her folk song excursions in the late 1930s to the area around Pechory , which after the Treaty of Tartu in the interwar period represented an exclave of Russian culture on Estonian territory. The first book, “Old Russian Songs from Pečoryland” (1951), is “more than a collection, namely an actual study of the life and use of songs, with portraits of female singers, texts and melodies”. The second book, "The Russian village wedding customs" (1960), is also "an explosive early folklore monograph on the gender issue".

literature

• Roland Aegerter: Swiss science and Eastern Europe. Lang, Bern 1998, ISBN 3-906759-80-6 , pp. 34-40.
• Aleksandr G. Kalmykov / Heinrich Riggenbach: Elsa Mahler - the founder of the Slavic Seminar at the University of Basel. In: Swiss in Saint-Petersburg. Petersburg Institute for Typography, Sankt-Petersburg 2003, ISBN 5-93422-013-6 , pp. 587-596.
• Heinrich Riggenbach: From a banana box: News about Elsa Mahler. In: Sabine Dönninghaus, Ilja Karenovics, Tatjana Simeunović (eds.): "Because irony opens magic ...". Eastern European studies for Andreas Guski. Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2007, pp. 137–143.
• Thomas Grob (Ed.): Elsa Mahler, 1882–1970: The first female professor at the University of Basel and her Slavic folklore collections - exhibition in the University Library of Basel from September 17–24, 2011 . Exhibition texts and photographs. University Library, Basel 2011.

Web links

• Heinrich Riggenbach: Mahler, Elsa. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
• Elsa Mahler's estate in the Basel University Library
• Exhibition on Elsa Mahler in the University Library of Basel (September 17 to November 24, 2011)
• A detour to the goal: Elsa Mahler - the first female professor at the University of Basel (website on university history, University of Basel)
• Information on Elsa Mahler's estate in the Basel University Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Christine Burckhardt-Seebass: From civil customs and costumes. Daughters of Helvetia on ethnological paths. In: Elsbeth Wallhöfer (Ed.): Take measure, keep measure. Böhlau, Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-205-77562-1 , pp. 164-181, here pp. 174ff.