Leonore Brecher

Leonore Rachelle Brecher (born October 14, 1886 in Botoşani , Kingdom of Romania ; † September 18, 1942 in the Maly Trostinez extermination camp ) was an Austrian experimental zoologist who primarily researched the causes of the development of color varieties on butterfly pupae. In 1922, together with Hans Leo Przibram , she succeeded in partially confirming Paul Kammerer's experiments on the inheritance of acquired traits .

education

Leonore Brecher attended the girls' high school in Jassy and graduated from high school in 1906 . She began studying natural sciences at the University of Jassy , continued it after a year at the University of Chernivtsi , but had to drop out after the third semester because both parents died and she was taken in by relatives in Bukovina . It was not until 1913 that she was able to resume her studies with financial support from her family. In 1914 she moved to the University of Vienna , where she worked from August 1915 at the biological research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences with the zoologist Hans Leo Przibram.

Scientific career until 1933

In 1916, Brecher received his doctorate with a thesis supervised by Przibram on the pupal colors of the cabbage white butterfly . In 1917 she passed the teaching examination for secondary schools and then completed the prescribed educational trial year at the girls' secondary school in Albertgasse . But then she returned to the Biological Research Institute, where she continued her research and worked as an unpaid assistant to Przibrams. She received three scholarships from the Academy of Sciences for one year each; But when her relatives stopped their financial support in 1920 and Brecher applied to the academy for a regular assistant position, she was unsuccessful. She kept herself afloat with funding from private foundations and by giving adult education courses. In 1922, together with Przibram, at the conference of the German Society for Heredity, she presented the results of her experiments with butterfly pupae and rats, which seemed to confirm Paul Kammerer's theses on the inheritance of acquired traits. However, Kammerer's findings on amphibians and reptiles were later refuted by British and US scientists.

In October 1923, Brecher tried to become the first female scientist in Austria to do her habilitation . At this point in time, she could already refer to more than twenty scientific publications. Your application for the venia legendi for zoology was initially delayed by the philosophy faculty of the University of Vienna and finally rejected in 1926. In 1923, the habilitation regulations of the University of Vienna included the provision that the habilitation committee and the faculty had to vote not only on the scientific but also on the personal suitability of the applicants. Against the background of the massive völkisch anti-Semitism prevailing at the University of Vienna in the 1920s , this provision explicitly served to exclude undesirable Jewish applicants. Even Brecher, who as a woman, Jewish and Eastern European was exposed to three prejudices, was rejected because she was unsuitable because she was "unsuitable for maintaining the authority required for a lecturer towards students".

Without a permanent job, Brecher continued to rely on scholarships to finance her living and research. In 1923, an International Fellowship from the American Association of University Women enabled her to work with Hans Winterstein for a year at the Physiological Institute of Rostock University . At the end of 1924 she was back in Vienna, and the following year she received a scholarship from the Notgemeinschaft der deutschen Wissenschaft for a stay at the Pathological Institute of Berlin University, where she worked for Rhoda Erdmann and Peter Rona from 1926 to 1928 , and one from 1928 to October 1931 Yarrow Research Fellowship from Girton College in Cambridge , thanks to which she was able to do further research in Cambridge, then in Rostock and finally at the University of Kiel with Wolfgang Freiherr von Buddenbrock-Hettersdorff and Rudolf Höber . She then stayed in Kiel, but was again dependent on financial support from her family. She could not accept an invitation from Columbia University to do a research stay in the USA because she could not get a visa for the USA without a permanent position in Germany.

time of the nationalsocialism

After the Nazis came to power , Brecher was excluded from further funding by the emergency community of German science because of her “non-Aryan” descent. As a result, she asked Juda H. Quastel in Cardiff in July 1933 to get her a scholarship, but he did not succeed. Your supporter and employer Rudolf Höber was expelled from his chair in September 1933 as a " half-Jew " and a democrat due to the law to restore the civil service . Brecher then turned to the Academic Assistance Council with a request for a job opportunity in England, which was refused, among other things because of a negative assessment of her personality by Girton College.

After Brecher had lost both her research opportunities in Kiel and the maintenance payments from her relatives, who she could no longer support from November 1933, she returned to Vienna in November 1933, where Przibram gave her a badly paid job at the biological research institute. Brecher's further requests for help to the Academic Assistance Council were also rejected. After the annexation of Austria in 1938, she and all other Jewish scientists from the BVA were dismissed.

Deprived of any academic work opportunities, Brecher worked from October 1938 as a teacher at the Jewish elementary and secondary school in Kleine Sperlgasse 2a, where she taught a class of physically handicapped students, and tried desperately to find work or support abroad. Quastel invited her to Cardiff in November 1938, but was only able to offer her unpaid work. Neither the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced Foreign Scholars nor the American Council for Émigrés nor the successor organization of the Academic Assistance Council , the Society for Protection of Science and Learning , saw themselves in a position to help her. Your last letter to the latter organization is dated May 14, 1939.

At the end of February 1941, the school in Kleine Sperlgasse was closed and the building was used as a collection camp for Jews to be deported . Brecher was deported on September 14, 1942 and murdered four days later after arriving at the Maly Trostinez extermination camp .

In 2018, the Leonore-Brecher-Weg in Vienna- Meidling (12th district) was named after her.

Fonts (selection)

The pupal colors of the cabbage white butterfly, Pieris brassicae L.
- First part: description of the polymorphism. Second part: testing the influence of light. Third part: chemistry of color types. Phil. Diss. University of Vienna, 1916. In: Archive for development mechanics of organisms. 43 (1917), No. 1-2, pp. 88-221. doi: 10.1007 / BF02189260 ( digital copy at HathiTrust (only with US proxy))

with Hans Przibram: Causes of animal colored clothing I. Preliminary tests on extracts. In: Archive for Development Mechanics of Organisms. 45 (1919), H. 1-2, pp. 83-198. doi: 10.1007 / BF02554400

with Hans Przibram: The color modifications of the stick insect Dixippus morosus Br. et Redt. (Causes of animal colored clothing VI) In: Archives for development mechanics of organisms. 50 (1922), H. 1-2, pp. 147-185. doi: 10.1007 / BF02093765

The pupal colors of the Vanessidae (Vanessa Io, V. urticae, Pyrameis cardui, P. atalanta). In: Archive for Development Mechanics of Organisms. 50 (1922), No. 1-2, pp. 209-308. doi: 10.1007 / BF02093770

The pupal colors of the Vanessidae (Vanessa Io, V. utricae). In: Archives for microscopic anatomy and development mechanics. 102 (1924), H. 4, pp. 517-548. doi: 10.1007 / BF02292959

Physico-chemical and chemical investigations on caterpillar and pupa blood (Pieris brassicae, Vanessa urticae). In: Journal of Comparative Physiology . 2 (1925), H. 6, pp. 691-713.

Inorganic components of the blood of the butterfly pupa (Sphynx pinastri, Pieris brassicae). Changes in the content of organic components during pupation (Pieris brassicae). In: Biochemical Journal . 211 (1929), pp. 40-64.

Pigment formation in invertebrates and vertebrates. In: Tabulae Biologicae. 16, 1938, pp. 140-161.

Web links

Wikisource: Leonore Brecher - Sources and full texts

Entry in the Central Database of the Names of Holocaust Victims at the Yad Vashem Memorial

In memory of Leonore Rachelle Brecher at Memory Gaps ::: Memory Gaps , Konstanze Sailer's digital memory project

literature

Markus Brosch: Jewish children and teachers between hope, exclusion and deportation. VS / HS Kleine Sperlgasse 2a, 1938–1941. Diploma thesis for Mag. Phil. in History, University of Vienna 2012. ( online at University of Vienna; PDF, 2.2 MB)
Wolfgang L. Reiter: Destroyed and forgotten: The biological research institute and its scientists. In: Austrian Journal of History. Volume 10, Issue 4, 1999, pp. 585–614. ( online at wirtges.univie.ac.at/ ; PDF; 1.8 MB)

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d brochure: Jewish children and teachers between hope, exclusion and deportation. Vienna 2012, pp. 75–77.
↑ ^a ^b Brigitte Bischof: Scientists at the University of Vienna. Biographical sketches and general trends. In: Ilse Korotin (Ed.): 10 years of “making women visible”. biografiA - database and lexicon of austrian women . Announcements of the Institute for Science and Art 63 (2008), pp. 5–12 ( digitized version at IWK; PDF, 3 MB)
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Klaus Taschwer: In memory of a completely forgotten researcher. derStandard.at , September 23, 2012, accessed on August 29, 2013 .
↑ Reiter: Destroyed and Forgotten: The Biological Research Institute and its scientists. 1999, p. 608.
^ Johannes Feichtinger: 1918 and the beginning of the scientific brain drain from Austria. In: Contributions to the legal history of Austria. 2 (2014), pp. 286-298. doi: 10.1553 / BRGOE2014-2s286
↑ Klaus Taschwer: The lost key of Otto Halpern . In: derstandard.at, October 31, 2012, accessed September 18, 2017.
↑ Lukas Wieselberg: Reason was expelled earlier . science.orf.at, June 13, 2012, accessed on September 18, 2017.
↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e Uta Cornelia Schmatzler, Matthias Wieben: Expelled scientists from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) after 1933 . On the history of the CAU under National Socialism. A documentation. Ed .: Ralph Uhlig (= Erich Hoffmann [Hrsg.]: Kieler Werkstücke. Series A: Contributions to Schleswig-Holstein and Scandinavian history . Volume 2 ). Peter Lang, 1991, ISBN 3-631-44232-7 , ISSN 0936-4005 , p. 126-128 .
↑ ^a ^b Dr. Leonore Brecher. uni-kiel.de , accessed on August 29, 2013 .

personal data
SURNAME	Breaker, Leonore
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Brecher, Leonore Rachelle (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Austrian zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH	October 14, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH	Botoșani , Romania
DATE OF DEATH	September 18, 1942
Place of death	Maly Trostinez extermination camp

[Brosch-1] rochure: Jewish children and teachers between hope, exclusion and deportation. Vienna 2012, pp. 75–77.

[Bischof-2] Brigitte Bischof: Scientists at the University of Vienna. Biographical sketches and general trends. In: Ilse Korotin (Ed.): 10 years of “making women visible”. biografiA - database and lexicon of austrian women . Announcements of the Institute for Science and Art 63 (2008), pp. 5–12 ( digitized version at IWK; PDF, 3 MB)

[Taschwer_Standard-3] Klaus Taschwer: In memory of a completely forgotten researcher. derStandard.at , September 23, 2012, accessed on August 29, 2013 .

[4] Reiter: Destroyed and Forgotten: The Biological Research Institute and its scientists. 1999, p. 608.

[5] Johannes Feichtinger: 1918 and the beginning of the scientific brain drain from Austria. In: Contributions to the legal history of Austria. 2 (2014), pp. 286-298. doi: 10.1553 / BRGOE2014-2s286

[6] Klaus Taschwer: The lost key of Otto Halpern . In: derstandard.at, October 31, 2012, accessed September 18, 2017.

[7] Lukas Wieselberg: Reason was expelled earlier . science.orf.at, June 13, 2012, accessed on September 18, 2017.

[Uhlig-8] Uta Cornelia Schmatzler, Matthias Wieben: Expelled scientists from the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (CAU) after 1933 . On the history of the CAU under National Socialism. A documentation. Ed .: Ralph Uhlig (= Erich Hoffmann [Hrsg.]: Kieler Werkstücke. Series A: Contributions to Schleswig-Holstein and Scandinavian history . Volume 2 ). Peter Lang, 1991, ISBN 3-631-44232-7 , ISSN 0936-4005 , p. 126-128 .

[uni-kiel.de-9] Dr. Leonore Brecher. uni-kiel.de , accessed on August 29, 2013 .