Ruth Weiss (journalist, 1908)

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Ruth Felicitas Weiss (Chinese name: 魏璐诗 , Wei Lushi , * 11. December 1908 in Vienna , † 6. March 2006 in Beijing ) was one of Austria dating, Chinese teacher, journalist and editor. Ruth Weiss was the last European eyewitness to the Chinese civil war and the years of construction of the People's Republic of China .

Life

The Vienna-born Jew Ruth Weiss studied and obtained her doctorate in German and English at the University of Vienna in 1932 . In 1933 she came to Shanghai by ship . In the 1930s and 1940s, Shanghai had an enormous influx of western foreigners, especially revolutionaries from the Spanish civil war and Jewish emigrants and refugees from the Nazis. As early as the 1930s she met Song Qingling , the widow of the founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat-sen , and a group of foreigners who were communists or sympathized with communist ideas, including Comintern agents Heinz Schippe , Trudy Rosenberg, Irene Wedemeyer, Agnes Smedley , Taletha Gerlach, Maud Russel , Rewi Alley and George Hatem .

Ruth Weiss initially worked as a freelance journalist in Shanghai. Later she was a teacher at a Jewish school in Shanghai, at the school of the Chinese Committee of Intellectual Cooperation and at the West China Union University (华西 联合 大学). In 1944 she became Secretary of the Embassy Council at the Canadian Embassy. She later moved to the United Nations Picture News Office as a correspondent and in 1945 to the China Welfare Fund (中国 福利 基金会). A year later she worked for the Radio Division of the UN Secretariat in New York , where she met a Chinese man and married. They had two sons, but the marriage was soon divorced and Ruth Weiss returned to China with the two children. From 1951 to 1965 she was an editor at the publishing house for foreign language literature in China. In 1965 she switched to the magazine "China im Bild" (人民 画报) as a journalist. She was a board member of the Chinese Translators Association.

In 1955 Ruth Weiss was one of around one hundred foreigners, such as the doctors Hans Müller from Düsseldorf, Richard Frey from Vienna or the American George Hatem (Ma Haide) , teachers like Käthe Zhao from Berlin and the Swiss Olga Lee, journalists and authors like Israel Epstein and the New Zealander Rewi Alley or the German photographer Eva Siao , who received Chinese citizenship . She lived in the Friendship Hotel in Beijing until shortly before her death .

In 1983 she was one of the eleven famous "foreign experts" appointed by the CP in Beijing to join the 6th and 7th Political Consultative Conferences of the Chinese People (CPPCC).

Works

  • The Peking Opera by Eva Siao, German by Ruth Weiss, Verlag Neue Welt Peking, 1958
  • Das kleine China-Handbuch , publishing house for foreign language literature, Beijing, 1958
  • The postage stamps of the People's Republic of China , Beijing Foreign Language Literature Publishing House, 1958
  • Lu Xun . A Chinese Writer for All Times , Beijing, New World Press 1985, ISBN 0835116751 .
  • Rewi Alley Remembered . In: Rewi Alley. A Collection in Memory , Beijing, New World Press, ISBN 7-80005-321-0 .
  • On the Edge of History - My Life in China , Zeller-Verlag Osnabrück 1999; New edition 2005 wagener-edition, ISBN 3-937283-06-4

literature

  • Edgar A. Porter: The People's Doctor . George Hatem and China's Revolution (University of Hawaii Press 1997), ISBN 0824819055 .
  • Karen Garner: Precious Fire . Maud Russell and the Chinese Revolution (University of Massachusetts Press 2003), ISBN 1558494049 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Ruth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weiss, Ruth F .; Wèi Lùshī 魏璐 诗
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chinese journalist
DATE OF BIRTH December 11, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 2006
Place of death Beijing