Helene Adolf

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Helene Adolf , also Helen Adolf , (born December 31, 1895 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; died December 13, 1998 in Brookline Village , Pennsylvania ) was an Austrian-American literary scholar and linguist.

Life

Helene Adolf was the daughter of the lawyer Jakob Adolf (1850-1926) and the visual artist Hedwig Spitzer (1864-1936), her grandfather was the mathematician Simon Spitzer . Her older sister Anna Spiegel (1893–1983) became a chemist. After graduating from high school in 1913, Helene Adolf began training in painting. During the First World War she worked as an auxiliary nurse . After the end of the war she studied German and Romance languages ​​and, among other things, Gothic with Max Hermann Jellinek at the University of Vienna . She received her doctorate in 1923 with her dissertation on drama technology in Strindberg's historical dramas .

Adolf had to interrupt further training to take care of his sick father. From 1926 she was able to devote herself to research again and published studies on the old French Alexius song with Elise Richter . In 1930 and 1932 she edited two literary anthologies on modern literature in the series German Literature in Development Series for Reclam Verlag , but she found the focus of her academic work in medieval Arthurian / Grail poetry .

After the annexation of Austria , Adolf emigrated to the USA in April 1939, where relatives were already staying. Adolf taught Latin, German and French at various schools in Colorado . From 1943 she taught at the Pennsylvania State University , where she was appointed full professor of German in 1953. She became a member of the Linguistic Society of America . Adolf retired in 1963, but continued to teach. She was a member of the PEN .

In 1972 Adolf received the Austrian Cross of Honor for Science and Art, 1st class .

Fonts (selection)

Book title 1932
Book title 1937
  • Jeanne Galzy : Therese von Avila  : the life novel of a saint . Translation and introduction Helene Adolf. Kösel & Pustet, Munich 1929.
  • as arrangement: Towards the New Reich: 1850–1871. Anthology. Reclam, Leipzig 1930.
  • as arrangement: In the New Reich: 1871–1914. Anthology. Reclam, Leipzig 1932.
  • Word history studies on the body / soul problem: Mittelhochdt. lîp "body" ud designation f. corpus. Boarding school Religious Psychol. Ges., Vienna 1937 (Journal of Religious Psychology; Special Issue 5)
  • Oriental sources for grail romances. Modern Language Association of America, New York 1947. (From: Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Vol. 62, No. 2, June 1947)
  • Visio pacis. Holy city and grail . University Park, Penn 1960.
  • Becoming and being: poems from five decades. F. Berger, Horn 1964.
  • Leonie Spitzer : Changes in love . Editor Helene Adolf with the support of Ruth Davidovits and Erna Hollitscher. Bläschke, Darmstadt 1978.
  • Leonie Spitzer: The Höchst family: a fragment of a novel from the time of Austria's upheaval. Woywod, Bad Soden 1986.
  • Collected Writings . Edited by Renate Heuer and Michael Dallapiazza. Ed. Parnaso, Trieste 2004, ISBN 88-86474-77-6 .

literature

  • Sheema Zeben Buehne, James L Hodge, Lucille B Pinto: Helen Adolf Festschrift. F. Ungar, New York 1968.
  • Adolf, Helen. In: Werner Röder, Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.): International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933–1945. Volume 2,1, Saur, Munich 1983, ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 13.
  • Adolf, Helen [e]. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 1, 1992, pp. 80-82.
  • Ernst Schürer: Helen Adolf. In: John M. Spalek , Konrad Feilchenfeldt , Sandra H. Hawrylchak (Eds.): Bibliographien. Writer, publicist and literary scholar in the USA. Part 1: A - G. de Gruyter, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-11-097553-X , pp. 1–4 [as a supplement to the bibliography in the Festschrift]
  • Renate Heuer : Helene Adolf: Viennese - Emigrant - Professor of German. Campus, Frankfurt am Main 2000, ISBN 3-593-36457-3 .
  • Utz Maas : Adolf, Helen (e). In: Persecution and emigration of German-speaking linguists 1933–1945. 1. Documentation: Biobibliographical data A - Z. Stauffenburg, Tübingen 2010, ISBN 978-3-86057-016-6 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ M. Pesditschek:  Spitzer, Simon. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 13, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2007–2010, ISBN 978-3-7001-6963-5 , p. 43.
  2. ^ Anna Simona Spiegel-Adolf , at the Medical University of Vienna
personal data
SURNAME Adolf, Helene
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Adolf, Helen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American literary scholar and linguist
DATE OF BIRTH December 31, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH December 13, 1998
Place of death Brookline Village , Pennsylvania