Selma Freud

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Selma Freud (* 21st August 1877 in Vienna , † 24. September 1962 in New York City ) is regarded - wrongly - as the first Austrian woman, ahead of her, the fellow student Lise Meitner at the University of Vienna in Physics to Dr. phil. PhD . In 1926 she received permission to set up the first official corps of the Salvation Army in Vienna, which at the same time corresponds to the beginning of the activity of this free church in Austria.

Life

Childhood and school

The Protestant baptized Selma Freud, was born as the daughter of the Viennese manufacturer Simon Siegmund Freud in Amerlingstrasse. 19 born in Vienna's 6th district of Mariahilf , where her father later owned the house at Hugo-Wolf-Gasse 1 on the corner of Loquaiplatz. After attending a Viennese elementary school and then the Lyceum of the First Vienna Women's Employment Association, she passed the Matura in Prague , as this was not yet possible for women in Austria at that time.

Physics degree

In 1901 Selma began studying physics as a major and mathematics as a minor at the University of Vienna , after women had been admitted there since 1897. Her professors included in particular Franz Exner and Ludwig Boltzmann ; Before this, Freud submitted her dissertation (see writings) for approbation in 1905 and took her oral examination from November 20 to 24, 1905 . On the following February 1st, she became Dr. phil is doing his doctorate. She was followed on the same day by Lise Meitner, with whom she had studied physics in the same room during her studies. Selma Freud was actually the second Austrian to do a doctorate in physics at the University of Vienna, as Olga Steindler (1879–1933) succeeded in doing so in 1903 , who had also passed her school-leaving examination in Prague. So far nothing is known about Freud's research in the field of physics after her doctorate. The résumé originally attached to her handwritten dissertation was lost.

Salvation Army

It was not until the 1920s that news about Selma Freud's life became available again. In the London headquarters of the Salvatian Army, where there was full equality between men and women, she trained as an officer (captain) and initially set up an outpost for the Salvation Army in Vienna against resistance from the population and local parishes. In 1926, after prior advice from the headquarters, she received permission to found a community (corps) in Vienna; Bruno Friedrich was appointed as state commander . In 1927, in a lecture at a meeting of the Vienna Evangelical Alliance, she presented her thoughts on "the united front of the evangelical Christian congregations to the outside world". In it she also spoke about the "behavior towards Pentecostals, Adventists and Bible Students, whether they can be brought in later" , on. With this she considered an enormous expansion of the group of participants in the Evangelical Alliance; only half a century later did this expansion come about, but only in relation to the Pentecostals.

Selma Freud, who subsequently held praise and thanksgiving meetings, also called the official organ of the Salvation Army in Austria into being, “The War Call” in 1928. From the first edition in July 1928 to April 1929 she acted as editor , before Adolf Kossuth took over this task until May 1938 . She herself published several "religious-romantic" articles in it. At the end of her “travel report” she wrote on September 27, 1933: “Next time, my friends and comrades, I may, God willing, report about the salvation work in the Holy Land.” Whether Selma Freud in Palestine or hers Destination Jerusalem helped found another corps is not documented.

In 1942 she managed to emigrate to the USA via Bern and Lisbon , where she met Lise Meitner again on her trip to the USA in 1946.

Fonts

  • About the influence of temperature on the photoelectric sensitivity of a negatively charged conductor. Dissertation, University of Vienna 1905.

literature

  • Daniela Angetter, Michael Martischnig: Biographies of Austrian [physicists]. A selection. Edited by the Austrian State Archives, Vienna 2005, p. 36 f. PDF, 2.1 MB

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date and place of death from New York, New York, Death Index, 1949-1965 , retrieved from ancestry.com on June 13, 2019
  2. ^ A b c d e Daniela Angetter, Michael Martischnig: Biographies of Austrian [physicists]. A selection.
  3. ↑ a b c Selma Freud. Retrieved October 8, 2013; Lise is part of the Austrian national initiative FFORTE - Women in Research and Technology - within the IMST3 project .
  4. ↑ Freud's presentation was on January 31. Held in 1927 and is reproduced in Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer (ed.): Evangelical Alliance in Vienna from the First Republic to the Nazi era (1920-45). Edition of the meeting minutes and programs (studies on the history of Christian movements of the Reformation tradition in Austria; 2), VKW: Bonn 2010, p. 49.
  5. ↑ The war cry. No. 64, November 1933.
  6. ^ Ruth Lewin Sime: Lise Meitner: A Life in Physics. Berkeley: University of California Press 1997, p. 332
personal data
SURNAME Freud, Selma
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian physicist and founder of the Vienna parish of the Salvation Army
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH September 24, 1962
Place of death New York City