Grete de Francesco

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Grete de Francesco (born Margarethe Weissenstein on November 5, 1893 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died February / March 1945, presumably in the Ravensbrück concentration camp ) was a German-speaking writer . Her book The Power of the Charlatan from 1937 is internationally recognized as a scientific standard and reference work on the subject of “ charlatanism ”. An English translation followed in 1939. In the 1930s, de Francesco wrote a large number of cultural studies articles on border areas of medicine for the in-house magazine of the Basel- based Ciba Group .

Life

The Power of the Charlatan (1937)
Stumbling stone in Salzburg

Margarethe Weissenstein was the eldest of three daughters of the Jewish couple Else and Emanuel Weissenstein, her father was general director of the United Jute factories in Vienna and Budapest. She was married to the Italian Giulio de Francesco and worked as a writer under the name Grete de Francesco in the art and music business. In Berlin, Marcel Breuer furnished her apartment at Rudolstädter Strasse 9 around 1929 with partly specially made furniture. She lived alternately in Vienna, Berlin and Salzburg, during her exile in Paris and most recently in Milan, which had been under German occupation since September 1943. She was spied on and sought refuge in mountain villages in northern Italy in 1943, and she also hid in an insane asylum for women for several months. However, she returned to her Milan apartment, where she was arrested by the SS on October 24, 1944 . She was finally deported via the transit camp in Gries near Bolzano on December 14, 1944 to the Ravensbrück concentration camp , where Margarethe (Margherita) de Francesco was probably killed in February 1945.

Fonts (selection)

  • The power of the charlatan . 69 fig., 258 pp., Bibliography, index. Basel: Benno Schwabe and Co. 1937. With a translation into English: The Power of the Charlatan . Translated from the German by Miriam Beard. VII + 288 p. New Haven, Yale University Press, 1939.

Contributions for in-house magazines of Ciba, Basel, especially for the Ciba magazine . The publisher was the scientific department of the Society for Chemical Industry in Basel. The magazine, illustrated with historical pictures, appeared in 132 issues from 1933 to 1952 and had set itself the program "to treat border areas in small excerpts in which medicine touches ethnology, history, cultural and art history or other disciplines."

  • "How the doctor got into the carnival game". In: The Feldscherer. Issue 3, November 1933.
  • "Il Dottore". In: Il Dottore / The doctor in the impromptu comedy and in the puppet show. With a preliminary remark by Grete de Francesco. Issue 7, March 1934.
  • "The doctor's dress in three centuries." In: The doctor's dress. Issue 11, July 1934. PDF
  • "The winged bull as a symbol of the medical faculty" and "The dove as a hospital emblem". In: Symbols of Medicine. Issue 16, December 1934.
  • "Portraits of doctors from the early days of photography" and "Nadar - 'un roi des photographes'". In: portraits of doctors from the early days of photography. Issue 21, May 1935. PDF
  • "Saints as helpers of illness" and "A patron saint of medicine" and "Disease votives from four centuries". In: Saints as Disease Helpers. Issue 26, October 1935.
  • "The doctor in a fairy tale". In: The doctor in a fairy tale. Issue 28, 1935/36.
  • "Medical in Heraldry". In: Medicine in Numismatics, Heraldry and Philately. Issue 30, February 1936.
  • "Paul de Sorbait speaks as rector to the doctoral doctors" and "Five rectorate sheets from the main register of the University of Vienna". In: The doctorate to Doctor medicinae. Issue 34, June 1936.
  • “The charlatan. - Charlatanry "and" Charlatans from three centuries "and" Printed material from charlatan practice ". In: Der Scharlatan, Issue 37, September 1936. Text
  • "The doctor's portrait" [several articles]. In: The doctor portrait, No. 55, March 1938.
  • “The Medical Faculty of Bologna” [Several contributions]. In: The Medical Faculty of Bologna, No. 81, July 1941.

Contributions and English, French and Dutch translations of her articles in Ciba-Rundschau, CIBA Review and Ciba symposia, plus further individual publications.

literature

  • Walter Benjamin : "Grete de Francesco, The Power of the Charlatan." (Review). In: Gesammelte Schriften III, Critiques and Reviews 1932–1940. [1938]. Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Verlag 1991. Link
  • Iris Ritzmann: medicus and charlatan - scenes of an intimate enmity (part 1) , Schweizerische Ärztezeitung, 90 (3): 84–88, in: Zora, University of Zurich, 2009 PDF
  • Bernhard Guttmann : "In memoriam (Grete de Francesco)." In: The present. A bi-monthly publication. Freiburg im Breisgau, number 42/43, 2nd year (No. 17/18), September 30, 1947, p. 22.
  • According to a possibly dubious genealogical source, Margarethe Weissenstein was baptized with the name Margarete Emilie at the age of six on October 23, 1899, in the parish Donaustadt of the confessional church AB in Vienna.
  • Publications by Grete de Francesco (among others) in the Ciba magazine (file number: CIBA PW 2.02.3). link

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Floor plan Rudolstätterstr. 9 (no. 395) - Marcel Breuer Digital Archive. Retrieved July 19, 2019 .
  2. ↑ Official telephone book for Berlin . tape 1932 , 1932 ( zlb.de [accessed July 19, 2019]).
personal data
SURNAME Francesco, Grete de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Margarethe Weissenstein (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian writer
DATE OF BIRTH November 5, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH February 1945 or March 1945
Place of death Ravensbrück concentration camp