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User:SongbirdDM/Helene Richter (Anglicist)

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Picture by Atelier Fayer & Pietzner (around 1931)

Helene Richter (4 August 1861 in Vienna – 8 November 1942 in the concentration camp Theresienstadt[1]) was an austrian anglicist, scholar of theatre studies and a theatre critic.

Life

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Helen Richter was born into an assimilated Jewish civic society. She was the daughter of the head physician of the Austrian Southern Railway Company, Maximilian Richter (1824–1890) and his wife Emilie (Emmy) Lackenbacher (1832–1890). Like her younger sister Elise Richter, she was taught by a Prussian, northern German private teacher. The girls were raised "religiously, yet nondenominational". The family celebrated Christmas and attended "all kinds of church service, except the Jewish ones."[2] Because women were denied academic education at the time, she was self-taught and started studying Percy Bysshe Shelley in 1886.

After the death of her parents, she lived together with her also unmarried sister Elise, who would later become teacher of Romance studies, the first woman to achieve Habilitation qualification and the first (extraordinary) professor at the University of Vienna. They both received the substantial inheritance of their father, which enabled them to build a house in the cottage district of Währing as well as to go on many trips throughout Europe and northern Africa.[3][4] Starting in 1891, the sisters attended the University of Vienna as guest auditors. They attended lectures by professors such as the philologist Theodor Gomperz[2] and the lector of Romance studies Adolf Mussafia.[4]

In 1892, Helene Richter published an article about Shelley's 100th birthday in the Vossische Zeitung. In 1897, she wrote an essay about "Mary Wollstonecraft, die Verfacherin der Rechte der Frau" (Mary Wollstonecraft, the defender of women's rights) in the social democrat Arbeiter-Zeitung. Sie devoted herself to extensive biographical and literary-critical works about Shelley (1898), Thomas Chatterton (1900), William Blake (1906), George Eliot (1907), Oscar Wilde (1912), George Bernhard Shaw (1913) and Lord Byron (1929).

Starting in 1906, the Richter sisters hosted a weekly salon for well-known scholars and artists to meet. Such scholars and artists include popular women's right activists Marianne Hainisch and Rosa Mayreder, the music critic Max Kalbeck, the writer Richard Kralik, the director of the Burgtheater Hugo Thimig and the philologist Hans von Arnim[2]. In January 1911, Helene and Elise Richter were baptised in the Lutheran City Church of Vienna[2].

Working for the Shakespeare Yearbook lead her to be a theatre critic. In books like "Schauspielercharakteristiken" (1914), "Unser Burgtheater" (1918) and "Joseph Lewinsky, 50 Jahre Wiener Kunst und Kultur" (1925) she wrote about the Burgtheater of Vienna. In 1926, she was appointed as the "biographer of the Burgtheater".[4]

By virtue of her achievements and on the occasion of her 70th birthday, the Heidelberg University and the University of Erlangen awarded her an honorary doctor's degree. In the same year, she was appointed as an honorary citizen of Vienna.[5]

After the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, in march 1938, her teaching license was revoked and she received a ban from going to libraries. In the times following the annexation, she had to sell her private English library. In March 1942, she, along with her sister, was forced to move to a Jewish retirement home. Both were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. She died on November 8th of the same year.[4]

Awards

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In 1998, the gateway of the University of Vienna, which leads from the Garnisonstrasse 13 to the "neue Höfe" (new courts) of the campus in the Alservorstadt, has been called "Richter-Tor" (Richter gate) in memory of the Richter sisters. In 2008, the Helene-Richter-Gasse in Floridsdorf was named after her. Before the renaming, the alley was named after Margret Dietrich.

Das Tor der Universität Wien, das von der Garnisongasse 13 in die „neuen Höfe“ des Campus in der Alservorstadt führt, trägt seit 1998 den Namen „Richter-Tor“, zur Erinnerung an Helene und Elise Richter. Im Jahr 2008 wurde die Helene-Richter-Gasse in Wien-Floridsdorf nach ihr (statt zuvor nach Margret Dietrich) benannt.

The German association for English studies awards the Helene-Richter-Award for dissertations, doctorate theses or comparably sophisticated scientific works, which distinguish themselves by intense research, clarity in structure and argumentation, meaningfulness of results, great textual proximity, and fluent language.[6]

Richter-Library

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In 1942, due to pressure by Nazi Germany, the library of the two sisters, which consisted of around 3.000 books, was sold to the University of Cologne. After the correspondence with the library was found within archives, it is being reconstructed, republished and – if at all possible – redistributed to inheritors as part of the Nazi provenance research efforts.

Further reading

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  • Christiane Hoffrath: Bücherspuren – Das Schicksal von Elise und Helene Richter und ihrer Bibliothek im Dritten Reich. Böhlau, Wien 2009.
  • Richter, Helene. In: Lexikon deutsch-jüdischer Autoren. Band 18: Phil–Samu. Hrsg. vom Archiv Bibliographia Judaica. De Gruyter, Berlin u. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-598-22698-4, S. 236–241.
  • Elisabeth Lebensaft: Richter, Helene. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (Hrsg.): Wissenschafterinnen in und aus Österreich. Leben – Werk – Wirken. Böhlau, Wien/Köln/Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1, S. 619–621.
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References

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  1. ^ Hoffrath, Christiane (2010-07-06). Bücherspuren. Köln: Böhlau Verlag. ISBN 978-3-412-20651-2.
  2. ^ a b c d Schweighofer, Astrid (2015-12-31). "Religiöse Sucher in der Moderne". doi:10.1515/9783110366013. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  3. ^ Hoffrath, Christiane (2010-07-06). Bücherspuren. Köln: Böhlau Verlag. ISBN 978-3-412-20651-2.
  4. ^ a b c d Archiv Bibliographia Judaica e.V., ed. (2011-12-13). "Lexikon deutsch-jüdischer Autoren. Band 18: Phil - Samu". doi:10.1515/9783110233780. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  5. ^ Zapke, Susana (2020-10-12), "Musik zur Volkserhebung und seelischen Kräftigung:", Die Musikschule der Stadt Wien im Nationalsozialismus, Hollitzer, pp. 55–82, retrieved 2022-10-11
  6. ^ "Schiller-Rede", 2014, De Gruyter, pp. 624–640, 2014-11-14, retrieved 2022-10-11


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