Wilma Iggers

Wilma Iggers b. Abeles (born March 23, 1921 in Mířkov , Czechoslovakia ) is a German-Czech / US-American German studies scholar and cultural historian .

Childhood and youth

Wilma Abeles was born as the eldest daughter of the Jewish landowner Karl Abeles and his wife Elsa, b. Ornstein, born in the Bohemian village of Mířkov (German Mirikau, formerly Mirschigkau) near the Bavarian border in what was then Czechoslovakia. She spent her childhood on her parents' farm in Bischofteinitz, today's Horšovský Týn .

From 1932 she attended the Czech citizens' school in Bischofteinitz and a year later the Czech grammar school in Domažlice . After the NSDAP - seized power in Germany in 1933 there were over the years in the inhabited mainly by Germans area around Bischofteinitz increasingly to anti-Semitic actions. In September 1938, shortly after the Munich Agreement , the 'Abeles-Popper Company' fled to the interior of the country and from there to Canada .

Living in Canada and the USA

At the age of 17 she came to Hamilton in the province of Ontario in Canada. She quickly learned the English language and graduated from high school after a year. From 1940 she studied French and German at a small college . A few years later she went to Chicago to do a doctorate in German . It was there that she met her future husband, Georg Iggers . They both married in Hamilton, Ontario in 1948. The couple had three sons between 1951 and 1956.

Since the summer of 1945, Wilma Iggers worked on her dissertation on Karl Kraus , which she completed in 1951. In the 1950s, the Iggers taught at various colleges in the United States , including a. at Philander Smith College for Black Students in Little Rock, Arkansas . It was there that she began her commitment to the American civil rights movement , which continues to this day. They supported z. B. with research on the school system in Little Rock the black civil rights movement NAACP , so that in 1957 black pupils could attend a white high school for the first time ( Little Rock Nine ). Later both were also active in the peace movement. During the Vietnam War they advised many conscientious objectors .

After stops in Arkansas, New Orleans and Chicago, the Iggers settled in Buffalo in 1964 , where Wilma was soon working as a German studies specialist at Canisius College and her husband was a professor at Buffalo State University as a historian.

At the same time, both of them traveled increasingly to Europe since the 1960s , where they made international scientific contacts. It all started with a long research stay in France. In 1960 the family lived near Paris and from autumn of the same year in Göttingen . They made many friends there, not only at the university, and from the 1990s lived there for half of the year, the other half in Buffalo, NY. After the death of her husband Georg at the end of 2017, Wilma lived alone in Amherst, NY

Since the mid-1960s, the couple has also cultivated contacts across the “Iron Curtain” with research trips, initially to the former GDR and Czechoslovakia , where they also met with dissidents . In 1984 Wilma and Georg Iggers spent several weeks as visiting lecturers at a Beijing university .

Scientific work and life's work

Wilma Iggers collected evidence of the social and cultural history of the Jews in Bohemia and Moravia at an early age and thus found her area of ​​interest. The German studies specialist has published numerous articles on Bohemian topics in German and Czech literature and is now considered a recognized expert on Bohemian history and culture. Of course, the Bohemian topic is not accidental: "My scientific work, especially on the Jews in the Bohemian countries, comes from my interest in the world I come from and - to put it jokingly - is an expanded 'mixed poochology'." This has already been shown in connection with her dissertation on the writer and language critic Karl Kraus, who was also born in Bohemia . In addition to an introduction to life, work and thought, Wilma Iggers addressed the absolute and central value of language at Kraus in her dissertation.

In the 1980s Iggers was given the opportunity to publish a selection of texts in an anthology . The reader, The Jews in Bohemia and Moravia , published in 1986, fills a research gap in terms of social and cultural history by providing insights into the diversity of the thousand-year history and the world of Jews in Bohemia and Moravia.

Even after her retirement in 1991, Wilma Iggers continued her research and publication. A new edition of Kohn's Jewish Gil Blas followed directly from the reader . In the picaresque novel first published in 1834 , a poor thief's son tells of his youth and his rise to an educated private tutor and ennobled businessman. The precise descriptions of the Jewish milieus - especially that of (retail) trade -, Jewish customs and rites characterize the documentary value of the book.

Another book, which was published when Iggers was 79 years old, was initiated by publisher Marion Berghahn: Women's Life in Prague . These are portraits of twelve Prague women from all ethnic groups, with whom she “could at least partially identify, despite all the differences.” For this purpose, printed sources were used as well as literary legacies from international archives and family estates.

Iggers was also an expert on the Myths of Nations exhibition . 1945 - Participation in the Arena of Memories , which was shown in the German Historical Museum Berlin in 2004/05 . Under the title The Lost Paradise, her contribution in the exhibition catalog tied in with her own flight history as well as the loss of the multi-ethnic, peaceful, equal and pluralistic coexistence in the First Czech Republic.

In 1966 Wilma Iggers returned to Horšovský Týn for the first time - it was not to be the only time. During the regular visits in the following years, she not only met old school friends, but also got to know many new residents of her old home, with whom she made friends. In 2002 she received honorary citizenship of Horšovský Týn (Bischofteinitz) for her services and in 2004 the Gratias Agit Prize in Prague Castle , which the Czech Ministry of Foreign Affairs awards to individuals for services to "spreading the good reputation of the Czech Republic".

Also in 2002 the double autobiography Two Sides of History , written with her husband Georg, was published by the Göttingen publishing house Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht , in which both report in detail about their eventful lives. At the same time, Wilma and Georg Iggers acted as contemporary witnesses and discussed their life experiences and scientific positions at many events in German schools and universities.

bibliography

• The Jews in Bohemia and Moravia. A historical reader. , Munich 1986.
• (English edition) The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia: A Historical Reader , Detroit 1992.
• Jews between Czechs and Germans , In: Zeitschrift für Ostforschung 37/3 (1988), pp. 428–442.
• Joseph Seligmann Kohn: The Jewish Gil Blas . Newly edited and provided with an afterword by W. Iggers, Munich 1993.
• Women's life in Prague. Ethnic diversity and cultural change since the 18th century . Vienna u. a. 2000.
• Refugee Women from Czechoslovakia in Canada: An Eyewitness Report , In: Quack, Sybille (Ed.): Between Sorrow and Strength. Women Refugees of the Nazi Period. Cambridge 1995, pp. 121-128.
• (with Georg G. Iggers): Autobiography in Dialog . (IMIS articles, volume 2), Osnabrück 1996.
• (with Georg G. Iggers): Two sides of the story. Life report from troubled times. Göttingen 2002.

Web links

• Wilma Abeles. In: zweiseitendergeschichte.de. Retrieved March 3, 2018 . 
• Andrea Gabler: Wilma Iggers. In: fembio.org. Retrieved March 3, 2018 . 

Individual evidence

1. ^ Wilma Abeles | Two sides of the story. In: Two Sides of History - Remembering for a Common Future. Building bridges e. V. - Association for the Promotion of Intercultural Understanding, accessed on March 3, 2018 . 
2. ↑ Wilma and Georg Iggers: Two sides of the story. Life report from troubled times . Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2002, ISBN 978-3-525-36265-5 , p. 307 .