Gerit von Leitner

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gerit von Leitner , temporarily Gerit Kokula, (born February 3, 1941 in Berlin ) is a German archaeologist with a doctorate and author of film and radio productions . She became known as the author of the first comprehensive biography of the chemist Clara Immerwahr .

Life

Gerit von Leitner, daughter of the doctor Rolf von Leitner and his wife Edith, b. Treichel, graduated from the French grammar school in Berlin in 1959 . She then studied Classical Archeology, History and Byzantine Studies at the University of Munich from 1959 to 1965 , interrupted in 1961/62 by working on the Kerameikos excavation in Athens. In 1965 she was at the University of Munich with Ernst Homann-Wedeking with a dissertation on Marmorlutrophoren doctorate . For her dissertation, she was awarded the travel grant from the German Archaeological Institute for the period 1966/67, which enabled her to travel to the Mediterranean . She then worked as an archaeologist and photographer in Greece and Germany. In Cologne she completed a second degree in education . She then worked for ten years as a teacher at a secondary school and, at the same time, had a teaching assignment for film at the educational science faculty of the University of Cologne . From 1979 Kokula worked as a freelance writer for film and radio productions. Since 1987 she has lived in Berlin again.

In 1990 Kokula wrote the script for a WDR radio documentary about the chemist Clara Immerwahr , which was followed by an article in Tagesspiegel in 1991 . Two years later she published, again under her maiden name Gerit von Leitner, the biography Der Fall Clara Immerwahr , which was very popular. In the following years she published several articles in which she discussed the male character of the natural sciences using the life stories of the chemists Clara Immerwahr and Gertrud Woker as an example . In 1998 she published the biography Woker as a book.

Biography The Clara Immerwahr case

Clara Immerwahr was a German chemist who became the first German to do a doctorate in chemistry at the University of Breslau in 1900 . She married Fritz Haber , who later won the Nobel Prize . In her biography, The Clara Immerwahr case, Leitner traced the chemist's path through youth, studies and doctorate in Breslau, through marriage to Immerwahr's eventual suicide . Leitner portrayed her as a combative pacifist who killed herself in protest against her husband's contribution to the gas war . In the biography Leitner constructed a strong contrast between Clara Immerwahr and Fritz Haber, whereby the wife was assigned all positive and the husband all negative traits.

There are few sources on Clara Immerwahr's life. Only a few personal documents and letters to friends have survived. Leitner covered this over in her biography by quoting contemporary women like Bertha von Suttner , Anita Augspurg and Gertude Woker in order to bring the story to life . This gave the impression that Immerwahr, like these women, was a champion of women's emancipation and pacifism. In one scene Leitner described an alleged discussion between Clara Immerwahrs and her husband about women's rights , in which Immerwahr expressed Suttner's views, although there is no evidence for this.

Leitner's book met with a broad public response. It has been featured in numerous national and regional newspapers, magazines, and radio broadcasts, as well as the New York Review of Books . The historian and publicist Volker Ullrich praised the biography of the time as "one of the most successful examples of a new, feminine-inspired form of historiography". The current events and topics in the early 1990s - such as the misuse of scientific research by the military and the Gulf War 1990–1991 - led to Leitner's interpretation of Immerwahr's life story aroused great interest. In the reviews , a bridge was often built between gas warfare, ever-truth suicide and these topics. Clara Immerwahrs Leben also met the zeitgeist with regard to the issue of the compatibility of family and work for academics and equality within academic marriages, which came into focus at the time . The historians of science Bretislav Friedrich and Dieter Hoffmann described Leitner's book as a “medium” with which the opinions, ideals and ideal images of the peace movement , feminism and anti-militarism were promoted.

Historians have criticized the biography. The science historian Ernst Peter Fischer described the biography as unsuccessful in terms of style and content. The historian Angelika Ebbinghaus complained about the missing references, the selective interpretation of the sources and the lack of distance between the biographer and the person portrayed, onto whom she projected her own themes, feelings and views. The breaks in Immerwahrs personality would be blurred by the collages that Leitner constantly used. The science historians Bretislav Friedrich and Dieter Hoffmann listed many statements and quotes in the biography for which there was no evidence. Examples from the list are:

“For Clara it is [World War I] a fall into the dark, in which all foundations of life are shaken. [...] Clara feels the lamentation of every single woman, suffocated under the laws. "

- Gerit von Leitner : The Forever True Case

"They [Fritz Haber's employee visiting the shooting range in madness] consider Clara to be a decorative accessory, treat her with gallantry and hardly take notice when she expresses her rejection of the chemical weapon."

- Gerit von Leitner : The Forever True Case

"It hits her like a slap in the face when he [Fritz] accuses her [Clara] that evening of stabbing him and Germany in the back in the greatest need and helplessness."

- Gerit von Leitner : The Forever True Case

The historian Margit Szöllösi-Janze has characterized Leitner's biography as a combination of academic and literary biography, as a “modeled”, “in places almost followed” life picture and criticized the fact that the scanty evidence made it difficult to separate facts and fiction in Leitner's presentation.

Awards

Publications

  • Gerit Kokula born von Leitner: Marble Lutrophores . Dissertation University of Munich 1965. Munich 1974.
  • Gerit Kokula: Marble lutrophores (=  communications from the German Archaeological Institute, Athenian Department. Supplement . Volume 10 ). Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1984, ISBN 3-7861-1391-2 .
  • Gerit von Leitner: The Clara Immerwahr case. Living for a humane science . CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37114-0 . Second, revised and improved edition 1994, ISBN 3-406-38256-8 .
  • Gerit von Leitner: Women's Area Natural Sciences? Clara Immerwahr and Gertrud Woker . In: Dieter Kinkelbur, Friedhelm Zubke (ed.): Peace drafts . Positions of lateral thinkers of the 20th century . Agenda-Verlag, Münster 1995, ISBN 3-929440-69-5 , p. 47-69 .
  • Gerit von Leitner: Femininity and Science - Split-Off Parts of History . In: Johanna Bleker (Ed.): The entry of women into the learned republic. On the gender issue in academic self-image and in scientific practice at the beginning of the 20th century (=  Treatises on the history of medicine and the natural sciences . Volume 84 ). Matthiesen, Husum 1998, ISBN 3-7868-4084-9 , p. 95-100 .
  • Gerit von Leitner: Do we want to wash our hands in innocence? Gertrud Woker (1878-1968) chemist & International Women's League, 1915-1968 . Weidler, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-89693-125-3 .
  • Gerit von Leitner: "Until the Arabs give in". Europe's forgotten war in the Maghreb. Literary report . KLAK, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-948156-08-4 .

Film and radio (selection)

  • Unemployed - homeless . WDR 1979 (Director, Production)
  • Dreams are foams . SFB Bildungsfernsehen 1990/1 (author, director)
  • Half of Life - Femina doctissima Clara Immerwahr . Radio documentation WDR 3 / SFB 1990/1
  • Dear Charlotte - don't go under and stay a whole guy . Radio essay Rias 1992
  • The arbitrary in the world . Radio documentation BR 1993
  • Gertrud Woker . Radio essay DRS Basel 1994
  • End of the line mental hospital - the chemist Gertrud Woker . Radio documentation WDR 3 / DLF 1998
  • The militant professor . Audio picture BR 1999
  • The woman as an experimental station - desire for children in vivo and in vitro . Thoughts at the time of WDR June 3, 2002
  • Pedro Soler from Andalusia . Audio picture BR 2002
  • Does the fear of infection spread worldwide? - About plagues in the wake of SARS . Thoughts at the time. WDR July 3, 2003

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Gerit Kokula geb. von Leitner: Marble Lutrophores . Dissertation University of Munich 1965. Munich 1974, curriculum vitae.
  2. ↑ a b Short biography of Gerit von Leitner on the occasion of the award of the Carl von Ossietzky Medal 2003. In: International League for Human Rights. December 13, 2003, accessed January 19, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Gerit Kokula: Against perversion. About the lost battle of the chemist Clara Immerwahr . In: Tagesspiegel . December 29, 1991, p. 4 .
  4. ↑ a b Gerit von Leitner: The Clara Immerwahr case. Living for a humane science . CH Beck, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-406-37114-0 .
  5. ↑ a b Angelika Ebbinghaus : Gerit von Leitner, The Clara Immerwahr case. Life for a humane science, Beck, Munich, 1993 (review) . In: 1999. Journal for Social History of the 20th and 21st Century . tape 8 , no. 4 , 1993, p. 125-131 .
  6. ^ Bretislav Friedrich, Dieter Hoffmann: Clara Immerwahr: A Life in the Shadow of Fritz Haber . In: Bretislav Friedrich, Dieter Hoffmann, Jürgen Renn, Florian Schmaltz, Martin Wolf (Eds.): One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences . Springer International Publishing, Cham 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-51663-9 , pp. 45-67 , 45-46, 60-63 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-319-51664-6_4 .
  7. ↑ Bretislav Friedrich and Dieter Hoffmann (2017, p. 61) cite reviews in the following newspapers and magazines: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , Frankfurter Rundschau , Die Welt , Süddeutsche Zeitung , Die Tageszeitung , Sächsische Zeitung , Tagesspiegel , Westfalen-Blatt , Main- Echo , Emsdettener Tageblatt , Emma .
  8. ↑ Volker Ullrich: The destruction of a woman . In: The time . June 4, 1993 ( zeit.de ).
  9. ^ Bretislav Friedrich, Dieter Hoffmann: Clara Immerwahr: A Life in the Shadow of Fritz Haber . In: Bretislav Friedrich, Dieter Hoffmann, Jürgen Renn, Florian Schmaltz, Martin Wolf (Eds.): One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences . Springer International Publishing, Cham 2017, ISBN 978-3-319-51663-9 , pp. 45-67 , 45-46, 60-63 , doi : 10.1007 / 978-3-319-51664-6_4 .
  10. ↑ Ernst Peter Fischer: Frau Professor Dr. Fritz . In: Taz . June 21, 1993, p. 15 ( taz.de ).
  11. ^ Bretislav Friedrich, Dieter Hoffmann: Clara Haber, nee Immerwahr (1870–1915): Life, Work and Legacy . In: Journal of Inorganic and General Chemistry . tape 642 , no. 6 , 2016, ISSN  1521-3749 , p. 437–448 , doi : 10.1002 / zaac.201600035 , PMID 27099403 , PMC 4825402 (free full text).
  12. ↑ Friedrich, Hoffmann 2017.
  13. ^ Bretislav Friedrich, Dieter Hoffmann: Clara Haber, nee Immerwahr (1870–1915): Life, Work and Legacy . In: Journal of Inorganic and General Chemistry . tape 642 , no. 6 , 2016, ISSN  1521-3749 , p. 437–448 , 447 , doi : 10.1002 / zaac.201600035 , PMID 27099403 , PMC 4825402 (free full text).
  14. ↑ Leitner 1993, p. 186
  15. ↑ Leitner 1993, p. 201.
  16. ↑ Leitner 1993, p. 215.
  17. ^ Margit Szöllösi-Janze: Fritz Haber 1868–1934. A biography . CH Beck, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-406-43548-3 , p. 18 . (Excerpts from Google Books )
  18. ^ Carl von Ossietzky Medal for 2003. In: International League for Human Rights. Retrieved on March 2, 2020 (German).
  19. ↑ Diane Wilson - an unreasonable woman. In: WDR. November 10, 2011, accessed March 2, 2020 .
  20. ↑ Critical review by Bernhard Schmaltz in Gnomon . Bernhard Schmaltz: Review of Marble Lutrophores . In: Gnomon . tape 58 , no. 4 , 1986, ISSN  0017-1417 , pp. 342-347 , JSTOR : 27689290 .
  21. ↑ Half of Life - Femina Doctissima Clara Immerwahr . In: HörDat . ( hördat.de [PDF; accessed December 26, 2019]).
personal data
SURNAME Leitner, Gerit von
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kokula, Gerit
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German archaeologist, film and radio writer
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin