Julie Meyer

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Julie Meyer (born January 15, 1897 in Nuremberg ; died August 18, 1970 in New York City ) was a German sociologist and politician .

Life and work

Julie Meyer was born into a Jewish family. Her parents were the banker Max Meyer and his wife Sabine, née Feuchtwanger . She attended the municipal high school for girls in Nuremberg and began studying sociology, law, economics, philosophy and history in Munich in the winter semester of 1917/18 . Shortly before Max Weber's death, she had agreed on the subject of her doctoral thesis with Max Weber , but then moved to the University of Erlangen in 1921 , where she received her doctorate with her dissertation on the origin of the patriciate in Nuremberg. From 1922 she worked as a lecturer at the Nuremberg Adult Education Center, where she gave courses in law, economics and sociology, among other things. After founding the Social Women's School in Nuremberg, she taught sociology there from 1927. After the National Socialists came to power in 1933, she was dismissed from the public service and took over the management of the Nuremberg advice center of the Reich Representation of German Jews . Since she had previously headed the Nuremberg office of the CV , she was well networked within the Jewish corporations. In 1937 she left Germany and emigrated to the United States . In 1939 she was expatriated from the German Reich . She was granted American citizenship in 1943.

After an economically precarious transition, she managed to get a job as a scientist at the New School for Social Research in New York City. She began in 1939 as an assistant to the economist Frieda Wunderlich , became a lecturer in 1943 , assistant professor in 1946 and associate professor in 1948 . She held this position until her retirement in June 1967. In 1947 Julie Meyer married Julius Frank, who was born in Nuremberg and who had also emigrated from Germany. The marriage remained childless. Julie Meyer-Frank died on August 18, 1970 in New York at the age of 73.

Political activity

Julie Meyer joined the German Democratic Party (DDP) soon after it was founded . She was a member of the Nuremberg DDP executive committee and an important representative of the party's left wing for most of the 1920s. She also belonged to the Reich Federation of German Democratic Youth Associations, which in 1928 became the Reich Federation of German Young Democrats . Together with Otto Stündt from Nuremberg, she was the editor of the monthly Echo of the German Democratic Youth Associations , which quickly developed from a northern Bavarian to a nationwide organ and renamed Echo der Junge Demokratie in 1922. When the DDP formed the electoral alliance of the German State Party with the Jungdeutscher Orden (JungDo) in the run-up to the Reichstag election in 1930 , the left wing of the Young Democrats, the pacifists in the DDP and numerous members who were offended by anti-Semitic and alliance tendencies in JungDo took this route not with and organized in the beginning of August 1930 in Nuremberg founded Association of Independent Democrats (VUD) under the chairmanship of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ludwig Quidde . Stündt and Meyer opened the “echo” to the dissidents and also took part in the founding of the Radical Democratic Party (RDP), which soon followed . Julie Meyer went to the executive committee of the new party and the "Echo" was subsequently called the Echo of Radical Democracy . In view of the increasing threat to the republic from the strengthening NSDAP and the low chances of success of the RDP, Meyer and Stündt opted more from the spring of 1932 to collect the remaining democratic forces and finally renamed their paper Democratic Echo . After February 1933, however, it had to cease publication for good. After 1945, Julie Meyer, who decided against remigration , no longer followed up on her political activities from the Weimar Republic, but remained in contact with some of her former party friends. By marrying Julius Frank, who was also a member of the Nuremberg DDP, she became sister-in-law of Thomas Dehler , which also stimulated her contact with Theodor Heuss , who once called her "the overly clever Julie Meyer from Nuremberg". She only broke off contact with her long-time colleague Otto Stündt in 1947 after she learned that he had not only become a member of the NSDAP, giving in to external pressure, but had also written “Poems to Hitler”.

Fonts (selection)

  • The social foundations of liberalism and democracy . In: Echo der Junge Demokratie 8 (1926), No. 10, pp. 177–181
  • The emergence of the patriciate in Nuremberg . In: Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 27 (1928), pp. 3-96 (= Dissertation Erlangen 1922) digitized version of the BSB Munich
  • Trade union plans for post-war reconstruction of the United States . In: Social Research 11 (1944), H. 1, pp. 491-505
  • Hierarchy and stratification of the shop . In: Social Research 14 (1947), H. 1, pp. 168-190
  • The stranger and the city . In: American Journal of Sociology 56 (1950/51), H. 5, pp. 476-483
  • Memories of my student days . In: Hans Lamm (Ed.): From Jews in Munich. Ein Gedenkbuch , Munich 1958, pp. 158–162; again in the expanded and revised edition under the title Past Days. Jewish Culture in Munich , Munich 1982, pp. 212–216

literature

  • Roland Appel / Michael Kleff [Eds.]: Realizing Basic Rights - Fighting for Freedom: 100 Years of Young Democrats; a reader on left-liberal and radical democratic politics from Weimar to the 21st century, 1919 - 2019 , Academia, Baden-Baden 2019 (texts by Julie Meyer there on pages 39ff., 53ff. and 535ff.)
  • Gaby Franger: "The good and the bad times live with us, and both have shaped us." Julie Meyer. In: History of women in Middle Franconia. Everyday people and places. Edited by Nadja Bennewitz. Ars Vivendi, Cadolzburg 2003, pp. 330-340.
  • Gaby Franger-Huthe: Julie Meyer (1897–1970) . In: Soziale Arbeit 62 (2013), no. 5, pp. 208–209.
  • Petrus Müller: The Jewish-Liberal Democratic Community from the German Vormärz (1830) to the end of the Weimar Republic in Nuremberg . In: Journal for Bavarian State History 58 (1995), no. 3. pp. 1027-1052 digitized version of the BSB Munich
  • Klemens Wittebur: The German Sociology in Exile 1933-1945, a biographical cartography. LIT-Verlag, Münster 1991, p. 113.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ See her memories of my student days . In: Hans Lamm (Ed.): From Jews in Munich. Ein Gedenkbuch , Munich 1958, pp. 158–162.
  2. ↑ The work was published in 1928 in the Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg .
  3. ^ Arnd Müller: History of the Jews in Nuremberg, 1146–1945. Self-published by the Nuremberg City Library 1958, p. 226.
  4. ↑ See also Petrus Müller: The political liberalism in Nuremberg 1918-1945. Structure, strength, program, personalities and political behavior. In: Mitteilungen des Verein für Geschichte der Stadt Nürnberg 78 (1991), pp. 231–263. Digitized version of the BSB Munich .
  5. ↑ Theodor Heuss: Dear Dehler! Correspondence with Thomas Dehler. Edited by Friedrich Henning, Munich 1983, p. 58.
  6. ^ In the letter to Elly Heuss-Knapp dated May 24, 1926, quoted from the Stuttgart edition, Briefe 1918–1933 , Munich 2008, p. 269.
  7. ^ Letter of October 13, 1947, quoted from Gaby Franger: "The good and the bad times live with us, and both have shaped us" - Dr. Julie Meyer . In: History of Women in Middle Franconia , Cadolzburg 2003, p. 338.
personal data
SURNAME Meyer, Julie
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Meyer-Frank, Julie
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sociologist, university professor and politician ( DDP , Radical Democratic Party )
DATE OF BIRTH January 15, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Nuremberg
DATE OF DEATH 18th August 1970
Place of death New York City