Sonja Petra Karsen

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Sonja Petra Karsen (born April 11, 1919 in Berlin ; † January 12, 2013 in Rockleigh , New Jersey ) was a professor of Spanish language and literature who spent her childhood in Germany and went into exile with her parents in February 1933 . After stops in Switzerland, France and Colombia, the family reached the USA in 1938, their fourth and last stop in exile. Sonja Petra Karsen completed her training here and started her professional career as a linguist and literary scholar with a focus on Romance languages.

Childhood and years in Berlin

Sonja Petra Karsen is the daughter of Erna and Fritz Karsen , one of the most renowned reform educators of the Weimar Republic .

Sonja Petra Karsen attended primary school in Berlin-Tempelhof and changed in 1929 as Sextanerin in the light guided by her father Kaiser-Friedrich-secondary school in the Berlin district of Neukölln , which was later renamed the Karl Marx School. Here she spent her further school days until her family emigrated to Switzerland on February 28, 1933. She describes in great detail the very democratic conditions at that time at her new school, the only coeducational high school in Berlin, where joint handicrafts classes are also part of everyday life belonged like physical education based on fairness instead of drill. Because school and family life were closely linked, the father sometimes "used his daughter as a guinea pig when preparing test assignments to test intelligence, experience and maturity."

In 1927 Fritz Karsen received an invitation from Columbia University to study in the USA for six months. The family traveled with them, and Sonja Petra attended “the 'Demonstration School' of 'George Peabody College' in Nashville to learn English and to give my father an insight into the workings of the American elementary school. I particularly liked this school because it was much freer than the one I had attended in Berlin-Tempelhof. "

Despite some offers, Fritz Karsen did not stay in the USA, but returned with his family to Berlin to tackle the Dammwegschule project , which unfortunately could never be realized for financial reasons. Then came January 30, 1933, when Hitler came to power . A few days later, on February 21, 1933, over dinner, the family learned from the radio that the Karl Marx School was being "reorganized". The immediate result was Fritz Karsen's immediate leave of absence from his offices, whereupon he no longer allowed his daughter “to go to school: he feared that the SA might take me hostage to prevent him from leaving. He was on leave because of 'political unreliability'. "

In exile in Switzerland and France

With the help of friends and colleagues of the father's, the family prepared their escape. They traveled to Lake Constance without luggage, disguised themselves as tourists and crossed the Swiss border several times. On February 28, 1933, they moved to Zurich, where they lived for a year in Zurich-Neubühl with the support of Swiss friends . She does not mention whether Sonja Petra Karsen also went to school here, but she does mention her father's new project: an international school in Paris.

On June 14, 1934, the French Ministry of Education issued a teaching permit, which was both a stroke of luck and the dilemma that ultimately led to the failure of the school: the obligation associated with the permit to ensure that the school adheres to the rigid and elitist norms of the French to align higher education. Sonja Petra Karsen, who here again became a student in a school run by her father, describes it like this:

“Accustomed to the lessons at the Karl Marx School, I was initially very difficult to accept the strict lessons that were based on prescribed textbooks. Much has been learned by heart, especially French literature and history. Every week 'compositions' had to be written about a sentence such as 'Je pense donc je suis' by Descartes. Everything had to be developed logically, and in the end the quotation had to be proven. I was fifteen years old at the time and it seemed too difficult to write an essay like this every week. Once my father felt sorry for me and wanted to help me. I was sure I would get a particularly good grade, but the opposite happened, whereupon my father remarked: 'The teacher is not smart enough to properly appreciate the work.' From then on I wrote my own compositions with good results. Later on I really appreciated these 'compositions' because they taught us to think logically. "

Since the school had no financial resources and was practically run as a family business, mother and daughter were confronted with completely foreign tasks:

“My mother did the kitchen with the help of a Belgian cook, and I was the housemaid when I didn't have to be in class. I found this kind of work to be education for democracy. I had to do work that I would otherwise never have known in my life; Even my mother never suspected in earlier years that she would have to cook for around forty people a day. "

In 1935 the Karsen family would have had the opportunity to move to the USA. Max Horkheimer , an acquaintance of the father's, had vouched for an affidavit , but the USA still refused entry. There was also another problem. The German Reich had imposed a passport ban on the Karsen family, which meant that they still had passports, but they were invalid, which meant that it was no longer legally possible to leave their current country of residence. One could only hope for permission to stay. The situation improved when the family received French travel documents, so-called "Titres de Voyage", in early January 1936.

Exile in Colombia

Also in early 1936, Fritz Karsen received an invitation from the Colombian government to work as an educational advisor in Colombia. Sonja Petra Karsen suspects that this was done through the mediation of Fritz Demuth from the Emergency Association of German Scientists Abroad , with whom her father deposited his documents. Fritz Karsen accepted this invitation, and thanks to the French “Titres de Voyage”, the entire family was able to travel to Colombia via the USA in March 1936. From then on they lived in Bogotá .

Sonja Petra Karsen graduated from high school in her new home in 1937 and then studied French and Spanish at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá from 1937–1938 . On February 26, 1937, Fritz Karsen was granted Colombian citizenship by decree of the Colombian President. This decree extended to his daughter, but not to Karsen's wife. In this way Sonja Petra Karsen also became a Colombian citizen.

Since Fritz Karsen's state of health, he suffered from high blood pressure , was badly affected by the high altitude in Colombia, he applied for a vacation in 1938, which he wanted to spend in the USA. The American consul in Bogotá, however, offered him a quota visa instead of a visitor's visa , which enabled him and his family to enter the USA permanently. Fritz Karsen then let his contract with the Colombian government expire, and on May 12, 1938, he and his family arrived in New York.

Career in the USA

The Karsen family had entered their fourth country of exile within five years. While father Fritz was able to continue to provide for the family's livelihood through teaching activities and support from the “Refugee Scholars Program” of the Rockefeller Foundation , Sonja Petra continued her studies that she had started in Bogotá. In 1939 she received her bachelor's degree from Carleton College , followed by a Master of Arts in French and Spanish in 1941 from Bryn Mawr College . Your Ph.D. received it from Columbia University in 1950 . She had previously taught at several colleges and universities, such as B. Ohio and Puerto Rico. From 1951 to 1954 she worked for UNESCO in Paris and in a "Technical Assistance Mission" in Costa Rica .

From 1955 to 1957 Sonja Petra Karsen's first appointment to a professorship took place, initially as Assistant Professor of Modern Language at Sweet Briar College in Virginia , from 1957 to 1958 as Associate Professor of Spanish and as Chair of the Department of Romance Languages Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York . From 1961 she worked here as a full professor until her retirement in 1987. In between, in 1968, she was lecturer at the Free University of Berlin as part of the Fulbright program .

Services

Sonja Petra Karsen's dissertation dealt with the Colombian poet and translator Guillermo Valencia , who lived from 1873 to 1943 . Another subject of her academic work was the Mexican poet, writer and diplomat Jaime Torres Bodet , about whom she has published several times.

Your report on the father , published for the first time in 1993, is an important source on the life and work of Fritz Karsen.

Works

  • Guillermo Valencia, Columbian Poet 1873–1943. Hispanic Institute of the United States, New York 1951.
  • Educational Development in Costa Rica with UNESCO's Technical Assistance, 1951-1954 , Ministerio de Educación Pública, Departamento de Publicaciones, San José, 1954
  • Jaime Torres Bodet: A Poet in a Changing World , Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, 1963
  • Jaime Torres Bodet. Versos y prosas. Introducción, selecciones y bibliografía de Sonja Karsen. Biblioteca de autores hispanoamericanos, Vol. 5, Madrid, 1966
  • Report on the father. In: Gerd Radde : Fritz Karsen: a Berlin school reformer from the Weimar period. Berlin 1973. Extended new edition. With a report about Sonja Petra Karsen's father (= studies on educational reform, 37). Frankfurt a. M. [u. a.] 1999, ISBN 3-631-34896-7 , pp. 391-415. The essay first appeared under the title Report on the Father. Fritz Karsen (1885 - 1951), democratic school reformer in Berlin, emigrant and education expert. Overall-Verlag, Berlin, 1993, ISBN 3-925961-08-9 .
  • Ensayos de literatura e historia Iberoamericana / Essays on Iberoamerican literature and history , Peter Lang Verlag, New York / Bern / Frankfurt am Main / Paris, 1988, ISBN 0-8204-0630-9

Web links

  • Biographical data on Sonja Petra Karsen . The data on Sonja Petra Karsen published on this page are based on the book by Hans Helmut Christmann and Frank-Rutger Hausmann (eds.): German and Austrian Romanists as Persecuted by National Socialism. Stauffenburg, Tübingen, 1989, ISBN 9783923721603 , pp. 290-291
  • Sonja Karsen Papers

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Sonja P. Karsen: Obituary. In: skidmore.edu. Skidmore College, March 8, 2018, accessed April 22, 2018.
  2. ↑ The two most important sources for the biographical data are the website Biographical Data on Sonja Petra Karsen and Sonja Petra Karsen's report on the father , who also contains many details about her own life up to 1951, the year Fritz Karsen died.
  3. ↑ Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 392
  4. ↑ Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 395
  5. ↑ The George Peabody College emerged from a merger of the "University of Nashville" and "Peabody College" at the beginning of the 20th century.
  6. ^ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 397
  7. ↑ Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 401
  8. ^ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 404
  9. ↑ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 405
  10. ↑ http://www.bundesarchiv.de/aktenreichskanzlei/1919-1933/0pa/adr/adrag/kap1_4/para2_56.html Fritz Demuth's biographical data in the Federal Archives
  11. ↑ Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 406
  12. ↑ Report about the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 408
  13. ↑ On the rigid entry regulations of the USA, on the distinction between quota visas and non-quota visas, see the section United States of America written by Claus-Dieter Krohn in: Claus-Dieter Krohn, Patrik von zur Mühlen, Gerhard Paul and Lutz Winkler (Ed.): Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration 1933–1945 , special edition, 2nd, unchanged edition, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 2008, ISBN 978-3-534-21999-5 , pp. 446–466.
  14. ^ Report on the father , in: Gerd Radde: Fritz Karsen , p. 409
  15. ↑ Emigration 1933–1945 / 1950
  16. ↑ What is Technical Assistance?
  17. ↑ See the report she wrote: Educational development in Costa Rica with UNESCO's technical assistance, 1951-1954
personal data
SURNAME Karsen, Sonja Petra
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American Hispanist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH April 11, 1919
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 12, 2013
Place of death Rockleigh , New Jersey