Minna salmon

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Minna Lachs (born July 10, 1907 in Trembowla in Galicia , Austria-Hungary as Minna Schiffmann ; died June 22, 1993 in Vienna ) was an Austrian teacher and writer. She survived the Holocaust while emigrating and, after her return to Austria, campaigned for the modernization of the school system.

biography

Minna Lachs was born as Minna Schiffmann in a middle-class, secular Jewish family in the easternmost part of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Her father, Benno Schiffmann, was a representative of a large Austrian coal company in Eastern Galicia . She had two siblings.

At the beginning of the First World War, she and her family fled to Vienna. Here she attended the secondary school for girls. She grew up speaking Polish , Ruthenian and German, and now she was learning English and French. With the help of her father, she learned the Hebrew alphabet . She joined the socialist-Zionist youth organization Haschomer Hazair , later a socialist student group, where she met her future husband, the lawyer Ernst Lachs .

At the University of Vienna , she studied German, Romance studies, psychology and pedagogy. While she had experienced humiliation from Eastern Jews in Austria as a student, she experienced anti-Semitism as a student . During her studies she met the psychologist Charlotte Bühler , who she accepted into her circle. Her dissertation from 1931 is entitled Die deutsche Ghettogeschichte . In it she contrasted the East and West Jewish mentality, and how this was reflected in German prose. The focus of their research are Karl Emil Franzos and Leopold Kompert . In 1933 she passed the teaching examinations for German and French. Since Lachs had married in 1932, she was not allowed to teach in public schools due to the Double Income Act of December 15, 1933 passed under Dollfuss . She therefore practiced her profession at private schools and gave Matura preparation courses in her apartment. The rise of Austrofascism brought them even closer to the socialist movement. In 1934 she took over the Matura class at the Black Forest School for the arrested Aline Furtmüller and also taught at the Universum private school in Garnisongasse in Vienna. The couple had contacts with the Austrian resistance .

Their son Thomas was born in July 1938 , and two months later the family fled to Switzerland , where they stayed in Zurich for a long time . Here Lachs wrote for newspapers and wrote book reviews, while her husband initially worked in a metal factory and later in the library of the local Jewish religious community, from which the family also received financial support. In 1942, she traveled with the emigrants ship Navemar from Lisbon to New York from. Because of her language skills, Salmon found employment as a teacher and psychologist at various private schools and organizations.

In 1947, Lachs returned to Vienna “out of faith in the other Austria”. She wrote textbooks for teaching English and taught at the grammar school in Rahlgasse . It was very important to her to displace the teaching material from the National Socialist era . She developed a new teaching method to teach foreign languages ​​with the help of songs and verse. In addition to her “official” publications, she published her private memories and a children's book illustrated by Angelika Kaufmann . Between 1954 and 1972, Lachs was the director of the girls' high school in Haizingergasse . Shaped by cosmopolitanism and the ideas of the Enlightenment, she has been campaigning for a modernization of the school system since the 1960s, encouraged student participation , organized poetry readings and demanded that English lessons should start in elementary school.

From 1964 she worked on a voluntary basis in the specialist committee for education of the Austrian Commission for UNESCO , of which she was vice-president from 1970 to 1983. She particularly promoted peace education and international youth exchanges.

A section of her memories of the anti-Semitic attacks by right-wing students in Vienna in the 1930s became part of the critical revision of the Siegfriedskopf , a controversial war memorial in the main building of the University of Vienna .

Her grave is in the urn grove of the Simmering fire hall . It is one of the grave sites of the city of Vienna that are dedicated or taken into custody on account of honor.

Works

  • Open Doors to English. Book of songs, poems and stories. Selected and compiled by Minna Lachs. 4 parts, Verlag Jugend & Volk, Vienna 1948–1956.
  • Why are you looking back Memoirs 1907–1941. Europaverlag, Vienna 1986.
  • What Andy gave his mother for her birthday. Verlag Jugend & Volk, Vienna 1970.
  • What is rustling there in the farm? Children's book with illustrations by Angelika Kaufmann. Verlag Jugend & Volk, Vienna 1987.
  • Between two worlds. Memories 1941. Löcker, Vienna 1992, ISBN 3-85409-209-1 .

Honors and commemorations

The Minna Salmon Park in Mariahilf

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Salmon, Minna, geb. Shipman; Pedagogue, German studies specialist and writer. In: Ilse Korotin (Ed.): BiografiA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 2: IO. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna et al. 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , p. 1882.
  2. ^ Eleonore Lappin: Jewish memoirs. In: Frank Stern, Barbara Eichinger (ed.): Vienna and the Jewish experience 1900–1938. Böhlau Verlag, Vienna et al. 2009, ISBN 978-3-205-78317-6 , p. 33.
  3. ↑ a b Edith Leisch-Prost: Salmon, Minna. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (ed.): Scientists in and from Austria. Life - work - work. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1 , p. 47f.
  4. ↑ Quoted by Edith Leisch-Prost
  5. ↑ www.friedhoefewien.at - Graves dedicated to honor in the fire hall Simmering cemetery (PDF 2016), accessed on March 7, 2018
  6. ^ Minna Salmon Park
  7. ↑ www.friedhoefewien.at - Graves dedicated to honor in the fire hall Simmering cemetery (PDF 2016), accessed on March 7, 2018
  8. ↑ List of winners of the Medal of Honor for Services to the Republic of Austria . Retrieved December 9, 2015.
personal data
SURNAME Salmon, Minna
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian Germanist, educator and writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Terebowlja
DATE OF DEATH June 22, 1993
Place of death Vienna