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born on November 28, 1898 in Preussisch-Holland, now Paslek/ Poland
died on January 21, 1993 in Kalmar/ Sweden
German-Swedish painter
125th birthday on November 28, 2023
Lotte Laserstein had already won several awards when in 1929 the Berliner Abendblatt wrote: “We will have to remember the name of this artist; one of the very best of the younger generation, she is surely headed for a brilliant future." She had also just reached the final round of a national competition, which gave her even greater recognition throughout the Weimar Republic.
Lotte Laserstein was proud to belong to the first generation of women who, after the introduction of women's suffrage in 1919, had been granted the right to attend universities and thus also gained access to art academies. She began her studies in 1921 with the painter and graphic artist Erich Wolfsfeld, whom she regarded as her personal "Meister," and he remained a crucial presence and artistic mentor throughout her life. She later admitted that she would have liked to have taken up a love relationship with him, but that he had harbored "only" fatherly feelings for her. She graduated in 1927 and…read more
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Monica Seles
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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born on November 30, 1873 in Nový Jičín, Moravia, Austria-Hungary
died on April 8, 1936 in Prague, Czechoslovakia
Czech writer
150th birthday on November 30, 2023
Božena Benešová was already 37 years old when her first collection of stories was published in 1910. Born the second of eleven children, she had sought out the seclusion of the pantry in the family home for her initial attempts at writing as a child. Here she could create her own world. Her parents neither understood nor supported her and viewed her numerous talents and thirst for knowledge as unfortunate obstacles in their daughter’s preordained path towards marriage and motherhood.
She had hoped to escape the stifling atmosphere of her small home town and to realize her dreams when she married in 1893. But instead of entering the art and cultural scene in Prague, she found herself trapped in dreary domestic duties at home as the wife of a railway clerk who demanded devotion to the family. She once again sought refuge in writing; first attempts to publish, however, remained without success.
A turning point came when she met Ružená Svobodovà, an active feminist and central…read more
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Luise Straus-Ernst
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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Luise Großherzogin von Baden
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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Toni Sender
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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born 15 January 1914 in Middelburg
murdered 30 November 1943 in Auschwitz
Dutch author and mystic; Nazi victim
On March 9, 1941 Etty Hillesum, the 26-year-old daughter of a respectable Jewish family, an intellectual with a completed law degree as well as a student of Slavic studies and psychology in Amsterdam, began the diary which would deeply move readers in Holland when it was published 40 years later. Within five years of its release the diary had been translated into 12 languages and reached a world-wide audience.
In May 1940 Holland had capitulated; the Nazis immediately began their terror against the Jewish population. Early in 1941 Etty met a Jewish emigrant from Berlin who was twice her age: Julius Spier, the founder of “Psychochirology”, a psychotherapeutic type of palmistry. She became his assistant and lover. The relationship provided support to both of them in this ever darker time: “… the only important thing now is to be good to one another with all the kindness we can muster. And every moment of being together is also a farewell.”
The diary, which spans nearly one and…read more
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born on December 2, 1923 in New York
died on September 16, 1977 in Paris
US-American singer
100th birthday on December 2, 2023
One can experience Maria Callas in a fascinating role even today: a 1968 BBC production entitled Callas Conversations shows her with interview partner Lord Harewood, an English connoisseur of the opera. The backdrop: the luxuriously furnished salon of her apartment in Paris, where she spent her last years. The interviewer knew only too well: His interview partner, a Mediterranean beauty with large dark eyes and gorgeous, jet-black hair, dressed in embroidered silk, was the most renowned singer in the world. And she had the wonderful gift of explaining the complex in simple terms, the art of her singing.
She was born in New York on December 2, 1923 as the second daughter of Greek immigrants. She was not a happy child. There was a lot of arguing at home and she had few playmates.
But she was highly musical, loved to sing, and was already belting out the arias of Carmen as a little girl. She took part in singing competitions and received piano lessons. The driving force behind…read more
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Rosa Mayreder
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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Therese Wiesert
This biography is not yet available in English.
You can find the German version here.
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née Erhardt,
born 29 November 1913 in Magdeburg, Germany
died 23 July 2000 in Wolfsburg
German homemaker, mother, photo-laboratory worker, laborer, shop steward, member of the shop committee at Volkswagen
10th anniversary of death 23 July 2010
Gerda Erhardt and her younger sister grew up in Magdeburg. Their parents had a restaurant at the garden colony near the airport, which they ran themselves without the help of additional employees.
Her father would have liked Gerda to become a shoe salesperson, but that did not appeal to her. Instead, at fifteen she found herself an apprenticeship in the field of optics, radio, and photography. Her instructor had decided he would let her give it a try. He was quite surprised that a female would be interested in such things. By the end of the 1920's, her training completed, the skilled photographer and laboratory worker had no trouble finding work, in spite of record-high unemployment in Germany. Photographers learned through health resort offices [Kurämter] about job openings in seaside or mountain resort towns. In this way Gerda Mendl found work as a photographer and laboratory worker in Swinemünde, the international spa on the Baltic coast. Her future husband had a photo…read more
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Mother, teacher, first female pediatrician to open a practice in Wolfsburg.
born on December 3, 1903 in Erfurt
died on September 22, 1989 in Wolfsburg
(Based on an account by her son, Dr. Jürgen Just, a pediatrician in Wolfsburg.)
The life path of Anneliese Just, which she would shape with characteristic strength and vigor, began promisingly after the turn of the century. Anneliese was born in Erfurt in 1903, the third of five children in a well-to-do middle-class family; her mother was a homemaker, her father a leather producer. Her school years in Erfurt were overshadowed by the First World War. After successfully completing college preparatory school, or Gymnasium, she attended university and graduated, qualified to teach high school.
In 1924 Anneliese Oehmchen obtained a position as a private tutor in the family of the director of the Jungborn Sanatorium on the northern edge of the Harz region. Six years later she married Dr. Walter Just, the oldest brother of her pupil, and the chief physician of the alternative-leaning treatment center. Their three children were born in Jungborn. On October 11, 1936, her husband lost…read more
