Sonja Schlesin

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Gandhi and Schlesin in Johannesburg (1905)
Schlesin in a photo of Kallenbach (1913)

Sonja Schlesin (born June 6, 1888 in Moscow , Russian Empire ; died January 6, 1956 in Johannesburg ) was a South African civil rights activist who worked for Mohandas Gandhi .

Life

Schlesin's Jewish parents emigrated to South Africa in 1902. At the age of seventeen, through the mediation of Hermann Kallenbach , she was hired as Gandhi's legal secretary in his 1903 law firm in Johannesburg. Gandhi represented the interests of the Indian workers and small traders who immigrated to South Africa . He organized the resistance of the Indians against racial discrimination as well as the strike of the Indian gold miners and developed a new form of resistance during this time with the Satyagraha . During his repeated incarcerations in the 1906, 1909, and 1913 campaigns, Schlesin organized Gandhi's legal office and the organizations it led. In 1908 she wrote the speech that Gandhi gave against the registration of Indians under the "Black Act".

After the Black Act was withdrawn in 1914, Gandhi went to Great Britain and they parted ways. Schlesin trained as a teacher at the University College of Johannesburg and received a Master of Arts degree at the University of Witwatersrand in 1926 . For the next few years she worked as a Latin teacher in a high school in Krugersdorp .

In 1953 she began to study law at the University of Natal , which she was unable to complete.

Others

The leading roles in the opera Satyagraha by Philip Glass , premiered in 1980, include Miss Schlesen [sic!], MK Gandhi, Mr. Kallenbach and Parsi Rustomji.

literature

Web links

Commons : Sonja Schlesin  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ George Paxton: Sonja Schlesin: Gandhi's South African secretary . Glasgow 2006, p. 10 (JISC: bibliographic evidence )
  2. ↑ Satyagraha in Philip Glass
personal data
SURNAME Schlesin, Sonja
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African civil rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Moscow
DATE OF DEATH January 6, 1956
Place of death Johannesburg