Leonie Adele Spitzer

Leonie Adele Spitzer (born May 17, 1891 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † June 5, 1940 in Oxford , United Kingdom ) was an Austrian writer and teacher .

Life

Leonie Adele Spitzer was the daughter of Franz Spitzer (1858–1929), a senior medical officer from Vienna, and his wife, Charlotte Spitzer (née Pokorny), born on May 17, 1891 into a Jewish family in Vienna. She had a twin brother named Fritz, a doctor who committed suicide in Vienna in November 1938. Her grandfather was the mathematician Simon Spitzer (1826–1887), who in turn was the father-in-law of the opera singer Eduard Nawiasky (1854–1925) and the grandfather -in-law of the constitutional lawyer Hans Nawiasky . Her father was a doctor of the Concordia writers and journalists' association. She and her brother were tutored by private tutors , but also attended the Hanausek Lyceum . In 1912 she was qualified to teach French and English. After they have been the first time a year in England lingered, they eventually lived 1912-1913 in Oxford , before returning back to Vienna, where in 1916 the reform secondary school in the third district of Vienna, today's high school Sacre Coeur Vienna , their Matura took off.

Subsequently, she studied philosophy at the University of Vienna until 1920 and completed her studies with a dissertation on Rilke's verse art on July 21, 1920 with the title Dr. phil. from. After working briefly from 1921 to 1922 as a lecturer at the Viennese publishing house Rikola , she passed a teaching examination for grammar school in 1923 and subsequently worked as a teacher at various Viennese secondary schools. After the death of the scientist and teacher Hede V., with whom she had a love affair, in 1929 as a result of tuberculosis , Spitzer's creative period came to an end. Most recently she was a member of the teaching staff at Floridsdorfer Gymnasium from 1929 . After the annexation of Austria in 1938, the Jewish woman, just 47 years old, was retired and then went into exile in Italy . From there she moved to Oxford in 1939 , where she first worked as a teacher at Cheltenham Ladies' College before she came to Crofton-Grange School. On June 5, 1940, Spitzer died in Oxford at the age of 49 after a serious illness. Her funeral took place at Wolvercote Cemetery in Wolvercote , one of the northern suburbs of Oxford.

As a writer, she initially tried her hand at drama , but also wrote poems and prose , some of which were published by her cousin Helen (e) Adolf , who also looked after her estate. More than three years after her death, she was stripped of her doctorate for racist reasons, as she was considered unworthy of an academic degree at a German university under National Socialism as a Jew . On May 15, 1955, she was awarded her doctorate again or the withdrawal was declared null and void from the start .

Works (selection)

• Storm surge. Verse drama (destroyed by herself)
• Leonore. Novella (lost)
• Changes of love. (edited by Helen Adolf; 1978)
• The Höchst family. A novel from the time before Austria's upheaval. (1986)
• A novel “Uphill” or “Excelsior” begun in exile remained a fragment.
• Her diaries, which range from 1916 to 1939, have not yet been published.

literature

• Ilse Korotin (Ed.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 3: P-Z. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , pp. 3124-3125.

Web links

• Literature by and about Leonie Adele Spitzer in the catalog of the German National Library
• Spitzer, Leonie Adele. 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. 41.
• Leonie Adele Spitzer in the German biography
• Leonie Adele Spitzer in the memorial book for the victims of National Socialism at the University of Vienna in 1938
• Holdings in the catalogs of the Austrian National Library Vienna