Ruth Michaelis-Jena

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ruth Michaelis-Jena (born October 19, 1905 in Detmold ; † August 14, 1989 in East Lothian , Scotland ) was a German-British writer and translator.

Life

Ruth Michaelis-Jena was born on October 19, 1905 as the only child of a wealthy Jewish merchant in Detmold. On April 12, 1912, she started school at the Detmold Lyceum . During her school days she discovered her love for books, especially legends and historical topics. Her schooling ended in 1922. Her father had lost a large part of his fortune due to inflation and the family could not afford to send their daughter to university. Ruth Michaelis-Jena therefore decided to train as a bookseller at the Meyerschen Hofbuchhandlung . It was here that she was confronted with open anti-Semitism for the first time in early 1923 when a colleague refused to work with a Jewish woman.

Her father died in January 1925.

In autumn 1931 Michaelis-Jena quit her job at the Hofbuchhandlung and in spring 1932 decided to open her own shop in her father's house with her friend Hertha Auerbach. After the seizure of power by the Nazis during the were Jews boycott their windows smeared on 1 April 1933, anti-Semitic slogans. So she closed her shop and made plans to emigrate. In 1934 she received an exit permit and began her journey to Edinburgh in May of that year . Michaelis-Jena returned to Germany several times to meet her abandoned mother. But when she died of a heart attack after illness , Ruth Michaelis-Jena made the decision not to see her former home again.

In Scotland she worked in the bookstores of James Thin and William Y. Darling . After the outbreak of war , Germans living in Great Britain were viewed as possible hostile foreigners and Ruth Michaelis-Jena had to testify twice before a committee of inquiry. After the second interview, she was interned in Saughton Prison in 1940 . Their release took place in July 1941. In 1947 Michaelis-Jena obtained British citizenship. With her new passport, she went on trips abroad again, which, contrary to her original intentions, finally took her to Germany, for the first time in 1950 to the Frankfurt Book Fair . This included a visit to the graves of her parents who - unlike her parents' house - had not been destroyed in the war.

She met and fell in love with her husband, the writer and lecturer Arthur Ratcliff , towards the end of the war, and they married in 1952. Michaelis-Jena gave up her job as a bookseller and devoted herself to translating German folklore, especially the works of the Brothers Grimm , into English. After Arthur Ratcliff's death in 1960, she was also active as a writer and published the knowledge gained through her study of the works of the Brothers Grimm in the book The Brothers Grimm . Her interest was not only in German, but increasingly also in Scottish folklore. She donated the Michaelis-Jena Ratcliff Prize , which has been awarded since 1991 to people who have made outstanding contributions to Scottish folklore and folklore.

Works

Author

  • The Brothers Grimm . Routledge & Paul, London 1970, ISBN 0-7100-6449-7 .
    • The Brothers Grimm . Aschendorff, Münster 1980 (abridged).
  • European Choice. Good and Simple Recipes . Canongate, Edinburgh 1977, ISBN 0-903937-50-6 .
  • German Tales and Legends . Muller, London 1982, ISBN 0-584-62059-4 .
  • Heritage of the Kaiser's Children. To Autobiography . Edinburgh 1983, ISBN 0-86241-046-0 .
    • We too were the Emperor's children. Life memories . FL Wagener, Lemgo 1985, ISBN 3-921428-53-X .

Editor

  • Recipes Continental . Albyn Press, Edinburgh 1949.
  • Ruth Michaelis-Jena, Hannah Aitken (Ed.): Scottish Folk Tales . Muller, London 1976, ISBN 0-584-62393-3 .
    • Ruth Michaelis-Jena, Hannah Aitken (ed.): Scottish folk tales . Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1965.
  • Ruth Michaelis-Jena, Katharine Mary Briggs (Ed.): English folk tales . Diederichs, Düsseldorf 1970.

literature

  • Detlev Hellfaier, Ernst Fleischhack: Lippisches Autorenlexikon, Volume I . FL Wagener, Lemgo 1986, ISBN 3-921428-52-1 , p. 161–162 ( online [accessed November 29, 2013]).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Venetia Newall: Obituary: Ruth Michaelis-Jena (Ratcliffe), 1905-1989 . In: Folklore . Volume 102, No. 1 , 1991, p. 101 , doi : 10.1080 / 0015587X.1991.9715810 .
  2. ↑ Gudrun Mitschke-Buchholz: On Jewish tracks. Two city tours through Detmold (=  Panu Derech - Prepare the way . Volume 21 ). 2nd Edition. Lippe Verlag, location 2008, ISBN 978-3-89918-018-3 , p. 53 .
  3. ^ Scottish Charity Register. Retrieved January 12, 2014 .
  4. ^ Anthropology Today: News . Vol. 6, No. August 4, 1990 ( online at: jstor.org ).
personal data
SURNAME Michaelis-Jena, Ruth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Michaelis-Jena-Ratcliff, Ruth; Ratcliff, Ruth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-British writer and translator
DATE OF BIRTH October 19, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Detmold
DATE OF DEATH August 14, 1989
Place of death East Lothian