Marianne Schmidl

Marianne Schmidl (born August 3, 1890 in Berchtesgaden ; died April 1942 in the Izbica ghetto ) was an Austrian ethnologist and librarian .

Life

Marianne Schmidl's father Joseph Bernhard Wilhelm Schmidl (1852–1916) was a lawyer in Vienna. She put 1910 in Graz the Matura and then studied at the Vienna University of mathematics and theoretical physics , but moved to the winter semester 1913/1914 the subjects ethnography , ethnology and anthropology . Michael Haberlandt and Rudolf Pöch were among her teachers . In 1916 she was the first woman to receive her doctorate . She then worked first at the Berlin Museum of Ethnology , and from autumn 1917 as the assistant to Theodor Koch-Grünberg at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart. From March 1921 she worked at the Austrian National Library and was appointed civil servant in 1924. She worked at the library as a consultant for anthropology, science, mathematics and medicine. In addition, she continued her scientific research in the field of African cultural history, specializing in particular in basket weaving . From 1926 she worked on a research project during which she conducted research in ethnographic museums in Switzerland, France, England, Belgium, Germany and Italy. After Austria's “annexation” to the National Socialist German Reich, she was given “permanent retirement” in the course of repression against Jewish officials, with her salaries halved. She was unable to complete her research project due to illness, whereupon the project manager Otto Reche asked her to repay funding. In March 1939, she had to hand over all of her working documents, the results were not published. In order to be able to pay the so-called Jewish property tax, she was forced to sell works of art owned by the family. Friends suggested that she emigrate , but she lacked the financial means. In April 1942 she was deported to the Izbica ghetto in Poland. Her last sign of life was in May 1942. The circumstances and the exact date of her death are unknown.

Works

Her first published article Flachs-Bau und Flachs-Preparation in Umhausen appeared in the magazine for Austrian folklore . Volume 19, 1913, pp. 122-125. Her dissertation Number and Counting in Africa was published in the Mitteilungen der Anthropologische Gesellschaft in Vienna . Volume 45, 1915, pp. 166-209. In 1928, her essay, Ancient Egyptian Techniques on African Spiral Bead Baskets, appeared in the Festschrift for Wilhelm Schmidt , (SVD), pp. 645–654. The last article she published, The Basics of the Nilotenkultur , appeared in the communications of the Anthropological Society in Vienna . Volume 65, 1935, pp. 86-125.

literature

• F. Hillbrand grill:  Schmidl (Theresie) Marianne. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 10, Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-7001-2186-5 , p. 325.
• Susanne Blumesberger: Lost Knowledge. A violently broken résumé using the example of Marianne Schmidl . In: Helmut W. Lang (Ed.): Mirabilia artium librorum recreant te tuosque ebriant . Phoibos, Vienna 2001, ISBN 3-901232-27-3 , pp. 9-19.
• Doris Byer: Marianne Schmidl . In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , pp. 655–658.
• Katja Geisenhainer: Marianne Schmidl (1890–1942) . In: Journal of Ethnology . Volume 127, 2002, pp. 269-300.
• Katja Geisenhainer: Marianne Schmidl (1890–1942). The unfinished life and work of an ethnologist . Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-86583-087-0 (also contains Schmidl's unfinished work on African spiral baskets).
• Ilse Korotin: "[...] approved subject to revocation that is permissible at any time". Exclusion and persecution of Jewish scientists and librarians . In: Austrian librarians on the run. Persecuted, suppressed, forgotten? Praesens, Vienna 2007, ISBN 978-3-7069-0408-7 , pp. 103-126.

Web links

• Literature by and about Marianne Schmidl in the catalog of the German National Library