aspern Seestadt has a female face

Biographies

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Janis Joplin, Hannah Arendt and Ag-nes Primocic – the streets at Seestadt are all named after great women. The actual effect on the gender balance in the naming of Vienna‘s thoroughfares may well be a small one, yet with this policy Seestadt is setting an important example.

A city‘s street names shape its identity and are the repository of its collective memory. Vienna has some 3750 male street names versus just 200 female ones – an imbalance that fails to do justice to the achievements of Vien-nese women. The decision to name the streets at aspern after famous women will raise the share of female street names from a mere 5 per cent to 7 per cent.

A person‘s identity is decisively influenced by their address. Indeed, alongside their name and date of birth a person‘s address is their principal identifying characteristic. Addresses are not only important in connec-tion with formal legal requirements such as registration documents, or with public service remits such as the provision of ambulance services; place names are also an expression of individual relationships.

Wien 3420 AG, the development agency for Seestadt, tasked the Vienna Institute for Social Science Documen-tation and Methodology (WISDOM) with elaborating strategies for naming of the streets in the new urban centre. Names from six different spheres of life were chosen in a participative procedure supported by 30 experts from different academic fields, always under the premise that all names used had to be those of women.

Preface

Once the Donaustadt District Council had

approved the decision to name the streets at

Seestadt after women, 28 February 2012 saw

the definition of a total of 22 street names for the

first phase of development. Further names will be

defined successively as the urban development

project progresses. This booklet provides outline

biographies of the women after whom the streets

are named.

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Con t en t s Page

Ada-Lovelace-Straße........................... 4Agnes-Primocic-Gasse ....................... 5Anna-Müller-Straße ............................. 6Christine-Touaillon-Straße .................... 7Édith-Piaf-Straße ................................. 8Ella-Lingens-Straße ............................. 9Frenkel-Brunswik-Gasse .................... 10Georgine-Steininger-Weg .................. 11Gisela-Legath-Gasse ........................ 12Hannah-Arendt-Platz & Park ............... 13Hermine-Dasovsky-Platz ................... 14Ilse-Arlt-Straße .................................. 15Janis-Joplin-Promenade .................... 16Josefine-Hawelka-Weg ..................... 17Kuttelwascherweg ............................ 18Madame-d´Ora-Park ......................... 19Maria-Potesil-Gasse .......................... 20Maria-Trapp-Platz .............................. 21Maria-Tusch-Straße ........................... 22Mela-Spira-Gasse ............................. 23Mimi-Grossberg-Gasse ..................... 24Schenk-Danzinger-Gasse.................. 25Susanne-Schmida-Gasse ................. 26Yella-Hertzka-Park ............................. 27

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Ada Augusta Byron was born

in London in 1815, the daughter of the poet George Gor-don Noel Byron. Her parents subse-quently separated, however, and she never knew her father. Her mother, Anne Isabella Noel Byron, awakened her daughter‘s interest in mathemat-ics, geometry and astronomy and laid the foundations for her scien-tific training.

At the age of 18 Ada developed an interest in technical machines.

The respected mathematician Mary Somerville helped Ada on her way and introduced her to the academic circles of London. It was here that

Ada LovelaceMathematician (1815 – 1852)

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she first heard of Charles Babbage‘s idea for a new mechanical comput-ing machine, the “difference en-gine”. Ada‘s husband William King, the later Earl of Lovelace, shared her passion for mathematics.

In 1843, Ada translated an Italian mathematician‘s description of Babbage‘s “analytical engine” into English, adding her own annotations and reflections on the construc-tion of the machine. Ada Lovelace showed how the machine could be used to calculate Bernoulli numbers, an algorithm that earned her fame as the writer of the first ever computer program. The program-ming language “Ada” was later named in her honour.

Ada-Lovelace-Straße

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Agnes Reinthaler was born in Hallein in 1905, the third of six children of a work-ing-class family. At the age of 16 she start-ed work at the Hallein cigar and tobacco factory. Shortly afterwards, her first child was born illegitimately: her parents re-fused her any support, so she was forced to give the child up. The young Agnes soon became a trade unionist and member of the works council and started to campaign for fairer working conditions at the factory.

In 1934 Agnes joined the Communist Party and was involved in early resistance efforts against the nascent Austro-Fascist regime. She was repeatedly taken into custody on account of her political activ-ism. Despite having two further children to care for, she continued to support

resistance groups throughout the Second World War. She helped three concentra-tion camp prisoners to escape, and, together with Mali Ziegenleder, risked her life in persuading the commandant of a local outpost of Dachau concentration camp to spare 17 prisoners who had been sentenced to death.

Agnes Primocic remained politically active after 1945, her roles including provincial secretary of the Austrian Com-munist Party in Salzburg. Until the end of her long life she worked tirelessly to keep the remembrance of the Nazi era alive. She was recognised for her dedication with the Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Province of Salzburg, among other accolades.

Agnes PrimocicPolitician, resistance fighter (1905 – 2007)

Agnes-Primocic-Gasse

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Anna Müller was the proprietor of a florist and plant nursery in Vienna. Together with her son, post office em-ployee Konstantin Müller, she helped a large number of Jews during the period of the Nazi regime by providing them with money, food, clothing and false papers. In 1942, when many Jews faced deportation to Poland, she enabled Greti Stern to escape from Austria. Julia Lissiansky also turned to Anna and Konstantin for help. They found her a hiding place in a shed at the plant nursery, but she was discovered by the Gestapo.

Thanks to his personal contacts Kon-stantin was able to prevent Julia‘s de-portation to Poland and she was instead

Anna Müller Plant nursery proprietor, resistance fighter

taken to a camp in Vienna. Together with another Jewish woman Julia man-aged to escape. Anna and Konstantin risked their own lives by taking the two women in.

Konstantin was conscripted and posted to an army work unit in France. After a stay in hospital in 1944 he was declared unfit for military service. Despite being beset by health problems herself Anna continued to care for the two Jewish women in hiding, and they both sur-vived to witness the liberation in 1945.

In 1974, the Israeli holocaust remem-brance authority Yad Vashem awarded mother and son the honorary title “Righteous among the Nations”.

Anna-Müller-Straße

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Christine TouaillonLiterary historian, writer, feminist (1878 – 1928)

to succeed in overcoming the obstacles then facing females wishing to pursue an academic career.

In 1919 she published her first compre-hensive analysis of German women‘s novels of the 18th century and in the same year submitted it for the first time to the Faculty of Philosophy in Graz in support of her candidature for a profes-sorship there. When, in 1920, the Uni-versity of Graz set significantly higher requirements for female professorial candidates than those for male appli-cants, she withdrew her application. In 1921 she finally obtained a professor-ship at the University of Vienna, becom-ing one of the first female academics to teach there.

Christine Auspitz was born in Moravia in 1878. She was the daughter of Leopold Auspitz, later a major general in the Austro-Hungarian imperial army, and his wife Henriette, who died when her daughter was 17 years old. Christine developed her father‘s passion for literature. In 1897 she qualified as a primary school teacher.

While working as a teacher she com-pleted her higher education entrance qualification and subsequently enrolled at the University of Vienna to study literary history. In 1904 she married the lawyer Dr. Heinrich Touaillon and moved with him to Styria. A year later Christine Touaillon obtained her doctor-ate in Vienna, one of the first women

Christine-Touaillon-Straße

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Édith Piaf Singer (1915 – 1963)

Édith Piaf was born in Paris in 1915, the daughter of an acrobat and a street singer. Édith was brought up by her grandmother, who ran a brothel in Normandy. At the age of seven she was performing as a street singer with her father, accompanying him from fair to fair. At 15 she settled near Place Pigalle, the heart of Parisian nightlife.

Édith Piaf was discovered by nightclub owner Louis Leplée, who immediately christened the tiny singer “la môme piaf” (“the little sparrow”). The raw intensity of her voice, the authenticity of her background and the melancholy of her songs made the new discov-ery a hit with press and public alike. Leplée was later murdered and Piaf

was among the suspects. Her reputa-tion was battered until her new mentor Raymond Asso brought her back to the stage. Édith Piaf also continued to per-form during the German Occupation, and some accused her of collaboration.

Piaf had many affairs, but her great love, the boxer Marcel Cerdan, was killed in a plane crash. The singer numbed her pain with morphine. Piaf subsequently had two more husbands and a plethora of international hits, but also breakdowns, periods in rehabilita-tion and stays in hospital. “Non, je ne regrette rien” – “No Regrets” – was a global success and the soundtrack to Piaf‘s own life. Édith Piaf died on the Côte d’Azur in 1963.

Édith-Piaf-Straße

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Born in 1909 into a family of wealthy Viennese middle-class intellectu-als, Ella Rainer first studied law and then medicine and very soon became involved in socialist activism.

In 1938 she married her fellow student Kurt Lingens. The Lingens and psycho-analyst Karl Motesiczky came to form the nucleus of an anti-fascist resistance group. They hid a young Jewish girl and helped Polish Jews flee to Switzer-land. Betrayed by a Gestapo informer, all three were arrested in 1942.

Ella Lingens and Karl Motesiczky were subsequently deported to Auschwitz, where Motesiczky died shortly after. Ella‘s position as a doctor in the camp

Ella LingensLawyer, doctor, resistance fighter (1909 – 2002)

sick bay allowed her to save a number of Jews from death in the gas chamber.After the war Ella and Kurt Lingens were divorced. In the following dec-ades Ella Lingens was employed at the Ministry of Social Affairs, where she helped build the Austrian health and social welfare system. She also worked tirelessly to keep the memory of the Nazi crimes alive: her account of her concentration camp experiences was published in 1948 under the title “Prisoners of Fear” and she gave evidence in a total of 22 cases in the 1964-5 Auschwitz Trial.

In 1980, Ella and Kurt Lingens were awarded the title “Righteous among the Nations” by Yad Vashem.

Ella-Lingens-Straße

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Else was born in Lviv in 1908, the daughter of the Jewish department-store owners Abraham and Helen Frenkel. In 1914 the family moved to Vienna, where Else Frenkel studied mathematics, physics and psychology and trained as a psychoanalyst. After obtaining her doc-torate she started work in the Institute of Psychology at the University of Vienna.

It was during this period that she start-ed her relationship with the psycholo-gist Egon Brunswik. Hitler‘s annexation of Austria caused her to emigrate to the USA, where she married Brunswik in 1938. From 1939 onwards she held various positions at the Faculty of Psy-chology at the University of California in Berkeley: first as a research assistant

at the Institute of Child Welfare, later also as a lecturer and from 1944 to 1947 as senior staff member on the Berkeley Opinion Study. From 1947 she carried out research at the university‘s Cow-ell Memorial Hospital. She moved to the Institute of Industrial Relations in 1953, and subsequently also worked at Stanford.

Frenkel-Brunswik was involved in the project “The Authoritarian Personal-ity”, as well as in other social science research in the USA and Norway. Fol-lowing her husband‘s suicide she was increasingly beset by health problems, though in her final years she again worked at the universities of Oslo and Berkeley. She took her own life in 1958.

Else Frenkel-BrunswikPsychoanalyst & psychologist (1908 – 1958)

Frenkel-Brunswik-Gasse

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Georgine Steininger was born ille-gitimately in 1928 in the household of an old Viennese countess in the Italian city of Padua who had taken in Georgine‘s mother and her child. Georgine never knew her father, who was said to have been an Italian army officer. The countess brought the girl up and was like a “Nonna” (grand-mother) to her.

When Georgine was 11 she moved with her mother to Carinthia – a pain-ful time for her because she missed Italy and felt misunderstood in her new home. At 16, towards the end of the Second World War, she was called up as an auxiliary nurse and posted to Italy.

Georgine SteiningerMarriage and family counsellor, life coach, systemic family therapist (1928 – 2009)

After the war Georgine Steininger started studying psychology, train-ing as a therapist under Mara Selvini, Helm Stierlin, Salvatore Minuchin, Paul Watzlawick and Milton Erikson. From 1982 to 2001 she established and built up the Training Institute for Systemic Therapy in Graz, of which she was also the head.

Georgine Steininger translated numerous works from the Italian, the best-known being “Paradox and Antiparadox”. She also worked as a systemic family therapist in the dicoese of Graz-Seckau and was an active member of the ÖAS (Austrian Association for Systemic Therapy).

Georgine-Steininger-Weg

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Gisela LegathFarmer (1908 – 1973)

Gisela Gerecsèr was born in 1908 in Lipòcz in what was then Hungary, today Steinfurt in the Austrian province of Burgenland. In 1927 she married Franz Legath and subsequently lived with him and their children Martin and Frieda in the Burgenland village of Deutsch-Ehrendorf. During the Second World War, all men fit for work – in-cluding Gisela Legath‘s husband – were conscripted into the armed forces and Hungarian Jews were deployed as forced labourers in Burgenland to replace them. The Wehrmacht installed a field kitchen on the Legath family farm.

Two Hungarian Jews, Gyögry Krausz and his friend Cundra, had managed

to flee during a death march to Maut-hausen concentration camp. They hid themselves in the woods for several days before asking the Legath family for help.

Gisela Legath knew that the two men were escaped Jews. Although she was aware of the danger, she hid them in a grain silo until the end of the war. Together with her two children she sup-plied the two men with food, water and items of clothing belonging to her absent husband. Gisela Legath died in 1974.

In 1994, Yad Vashem honoured Gisela Legath and her two children Martin and Frieda with the title “Righteous among the Nations”.

Gisela-Legath-Gasse

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Hannah Arendt was born near Hanover in 1906, the daughter of the engineer Paul Arendt and his wife Martha. She studied philosophy, theology and classical philol-ogy at the University of Marburg, her professors including Martin Heidegger. In 1928 she completed her doctorate under Karl Jaspers. The following year Arendt moved to Berlin, where she began her research on German romanticism. Her ex-ploration of her own Jewishness brought Arendt into contact with Zionist organi-sations. In 1933 she spent eight days un-der Gestapo arrest and subsequently fled to Paris, where she conducted academic research on anti-Semitism. In 1940 she married the former communist Heinrich Blücher and emigrated to the USA. Dur-ing this period she developed a more nu-anced stance on Zionism. Arendt worked for a number of Jewish organisations in

the USA. In 1951 she published “Origins of Totalitarianism”, a study of National Socialism and Stalin-ism. She was subsequently awarded guest professorships at several institu-tions, including Princeton and Harvard, as well as an ordinary professorship at Brooklyn College in New York. “The Human Condition” was written during this period. In 1961 Arendt reported on the Adolf Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, provoking fierce controversy with her phrase “the banality of evil” and her criticism of the role of Jewish com-munity leaders in the machinery of the Holocaust. From 1963 to 1967 Hannah Arendt was a professor at the University of Chicago and from 1967 to 1975 at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York.

Hannah ArendtPhilosopher & commentator (1906 – 1975)

Hannah-Arendt-Park /-Platz

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she was putting her own life at risk by doing so.

Following the end of the Second World War, several former camp inmates testified to the humanity and courage shown by “Mother Dasovsky”. Her-mine Dasovsky died on 8 June 1964. Her grave can be found at Kagran Cemetery.

Hermine Dasovsky‘s humanitarian – and under the Nazi regime extremely risky – actions first became known to a wider public when she was featured in the travelling exhibition “Donaustädter Frauenzimmer” (“Donaustadt Lasses”) in spring 2011.

Born in 1903, Hermine Dasovsky was the landlady of an inn – the “Schönes Platzerl” – in the Lobau, a Vienna beauty spot. In 1939 the Nazi regime established a labour camp nearby. Her-mine Dasovsky frequently came into contact with the inmates, the majority of whom were Belgian, French and Yugoslav prisoners of war.

Hermine managed to supply the pris-oners with extra food and drink, thus alleviating their plight somewhat. She also had contact with the Hungarian Jews who were imprisoned at the camp from June 1944 onwards. Hermine Das-ovsky organised food supplies for the Jewish forced labourers, even though

Hermine Dasovsky Inn landlady (1903 – 1964)

Hermine-Dasovsky-Platz

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Ilse ArltSocial work pioneer (1876 – 1960)

Born in Vienna in 1876, Ilse Arlt was the daughter of an ophthalmologist and a painter of Jewish origin. After mov-ing to Graz she qualified as an English teacher at the age of 20. Arlt attended lectures by leading Austro-Hungarian social policy makers and played an active role in the Welfare Education Association in Vienna.

Until 1905 she continued her studies in Vienna, attending workers‘ meetings and visiting companies, living quarters and slums. She came to the realisation that – in contrast to the great technical advances made in other spheres during the period – there was still a lack of elementary knowledge in the socioeco-nomic field.

Ilse Arlt therefore established social work as a separate field of study, open-ing the first training college for social workers – known as the “Federation for Professional Training in Social Work” – in Vienna in 1912. Arlt put together all the teaching materials and authored the first Austrian textbooks on the subject.

In 1938, on account of her Jewish roots, Arlt was prohibited from teaching and publishing by the Nazi regime. The school reopened in 1946, but was forced to close its doors for good in 1950 owing to persistent financial difficulties. In 1955 Ilse Arlt was awarded the Dr. Karl Renner Prize for her achievements in the field of social work.

Ilse-Arlt-Straße

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Janis Joplin was born in 1943 in Port Arthur, Texas, the daughter of an oil company employee and an office clerk. Discovering blues and folk mu-sic at an early age, she was shunned by her high school classmates on ac-count of her unconventional personal style.

In 1963 Janis dropped out of college and made her way to San Francisco to try her luck as a singer. Fleeing the ex-cesses of the San Francisco scene, she returned to Texas shortly afterwards to study at Lamar University. In 1966 she went back to California and got her big break with her band “Big Brother and the Holding Company”. This was

followed by her legendary perfor-mance at the Monterey Pop Festival and a recording contract with Colum-bia Records. With the single “Piece of my Heart” from the “Cheap Thrills” album she landed her first major hit. From 1969 onwards Joplin performed as a solo artist, including an appear-ance at the Woodstock Festival.

Her album “Pearl”, recorded with the “Full Tilt Boogie Band”, was to be her most successful but also her last. Janis Joplin died of an overdose in 1970. The famous ballad “Me and Bobby McGee” and the a cappella track “Mercedes Benz” were not released until after her death.

Janis JoplinSinger (1943 – 1970)

Janis-Joplin-Promenade

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Josefine HawelkaCafé proprietor (1913 – 2005)

Josefine Danzberger was born in Upper Austria in 1913, the daughter of a butch-er. At the age of 16 she moved to Vienna, where she worked as a bar cashier. She also met the waiter Leopold Hawelka, and the couple married in 1936.

Three years later they opened Café Hawelka on Dorotheergasse, but had to close again shortly afterwards because Leopold was called up for military service. When they reopened in 1945 the café soon became THE Viennese literary café, with well-known regulars like Friedrich Torberg, Hilde Spiel and Hans Weigel. From the mid-1960s it was also increasingly frequented by visual artists such as Friedensre-ich Hundertwasser and Ernst Fuchs.

Among the regulars were – and in some cases still are – younger poets like H.C. Artmann and Gerhard Rühm, actors Helmut Qualtinger and Oskar Werner, conductor Nikolaus Harnon-court, photographer Franz Hubmann and singer Georg Danzer, who immor-talized Café Hawelka in his Austropop song “Jö, schau”. Josefine Hawelka continued working in the café until her death in 2005 and was famous for her home-made “Buchteln”, jam-filled yeasted buns.

Josefine Hawelka received a series of honours for her services to café cul-ture, including the Decoration of Hon-our in Gold presented by the Republic of Austria in 2000.

Josefine Hawelka-Weg

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thus spared the fate of her mother and sister, who were both deported and murdered.

Minna and Otto Kuttelwascher had to live with the constant risk of being discovered and arrested. Neverthe-less, they succeeded in keeping Erna Kohn hidden and looked after until the end of the war, thus saving her life. On 18 September 1980 Yad Vashem awarded the Kuttelwaschers the title “Righteous among the Na-tions” in honour of their actions. No further details about Minna Kuttel-wascher‘s life could be found, either in the documents kept at the Vienna City Library or on the Internet.

Hermine (Minna) Kuttel-wascher lived in Vienna with her hus-band Otto Kuttelwascher, a plumber, and their three children.

The family were friends with the Jewish Kohn family, who lived in the same neighbourhood. Mr. Kohn died following Austria‘s annexation by Nazi Germany, and his two daughters Käthe and Erna lost their jobs.

In 1940 Erna Kohn was conscripted into forced labour in a labour camp near Magdeburg, before being ordered back to Vienna in early 1942. On her return she went into hiding with the Kuttelwascher family. Erna Kohn was

Hermine “Minna” Kuttelwascher Righteous among the Nations

Kuttelwascherweg

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Madame d’Ora was born Dora Phil-ippine Kallmus in 1881 to a Jewish family in Vienna. In 1900 she decided to become a photographer, obtaining a special permit to attend courses at the Vienna Training and Research Institute for the Graphic Arts and taking lessons from Nicola Perscheid in Berlin.

In 1907, using the pseudonym “Madame d’Ora”, she opened a studio in Vienna together with Arthur Benda. She made a name for herself interna-tionally, chiefly for her portraits of Vi-ennese artists and intellectuals such as Alma Mahler-Werfel, Arthur Schnitzler, Gustav Klimt, Max Reinhardt and Karl Kraus. In 1916 she photographed the coronation of Karl I as King of Hungary.

In 1925 she opened her own studio in Paris, becoming principal photographer to the actor and singer Maurice Chevalier and working as a fashion photographer for big Paris couture houses like Lanvin and Chanel. In 1940 she fled from the German troops to southern France. In 1946 she returned to Vienna for a short time, photographing refugee camps and the ruined city. The inconceivable hor-rors of the war transformed her photo-graphic style for good.

In 1959 Madame d‘Ora became an invalid as the result of a road accident, finally dying in 1963. Her estate was bequeathed to several institutions. Between 1907 and 1927 she took a total of some 90,000 photographs.

Madame d’OraPhotographer (1881 – 1963)

Madame-d’Ora-Park

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Maria PotesilFoster mother, Righteous among the Nations

Maria Potesil petitioned to have Kurt recognized as being “first-degree mixed race” rather than a “full-blooded Jew”, a status that would have saved him from deportation. However, all her applica-tions were rejected without explanation. In 1944 Kurt was taken into Gestapo cus-tody. His subsequent release was thanks to the persistence and tenacity of Maria Potesil, who had constantly pestered all the relevant authorities for a full six weeks. Immediately after his release she put him into hiding with friends and thus saved his life. After the war Maria Potesil sued the City of Vienna for retro-spective payment of Kurt‘s care allow-ance, but without success. In 1978 Yad Vashem awarded Maria Potesil the title “Righteous among the Nations”.

Maria Potesil was born in Vienna in 1894. In 1927, the two-year-old Kurt Martinetz, whose Christian mother had died following his birth, was placed with Maria Potesil for fostering. Kurt‘s father was Jewish.

Following Austria‘s annexation by Nazi Germany, the City of Vienna stopped all care allowance payments for Kurt. In the face of hostility and arbitrary behaviour on the part of the authorities Maria Pote-sil nevertheless persevered in her efforts to be made Kurt‘s legal guardian, finally succeeding in 1939. She was forced to give up her flat and move with Kurt to Vienna‘s second district – the only area in Vienna where Jews were still allowed to reside.

Maria-Potesil-Gasse

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Maria Augusta von Trapp

Singer, writer (1905 – 1987)

Maria Augusta von Trapp, née Kutschera, was born into a humble background in Vienna in 1905. From 1925 onwards she was employed in Salzburg as live-in governess to the seven children of the widowed naval commander Baron Georg Ludwig von Trapp, whom she married in 1927.

Maria started making music with the children, from simple folk songs to demanding choral pieces. She subse-quently had two further children of her own. When the family lost its entire fortune in the Great Depression, Maria formed a family choir and they imme-diately won a folk-singing competition at the Salzburg Festival in 1936. This was followed by live radio broad-

casts and a European tour. Following Austria‘s annexation by Nazi Germany, Baron von Trapp and his family emigrated to the USA.

In 1939 Maria gave birth to another son. The ensemble – now known as the “Trapp Family Singers” – soon became famous all over America. In 1950 the family performed at the Salzburg Festival for the first time since the war. Up until 1956 they completed many more concert tours in all corners of the globe.

In 1959 Maria Trapp‘s autobiography was made into a stage musical, which was later adapted into the world-famous film “The Sound of Music”.

Maria-Trapp-Platz

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Maria (also known as Marie) Pirtsch was born in Klagenfurt in 1868, the daughter of farm labourers. At the age of just 12 she started work at the tobacco factory in Klagenfurt, where she campaigned for better working conditions and improvement of the sit-uation for women workers. She earned the trust of her co-workers and became a member of the works council, her activism repeatedly bringing her into conflict with the factory management.

Maria married the railwayman and Social Democrat Anton Tusch.After the First World War Maria Tusch became chairwoman of the Carinthian Region Women‘s Committee of the Austrian Social Democratic Workers‘

Party (SDAPÖ). In 1919 she was one of the first eight women to be sworn in as Members of Parliament. The only non-Viennese among the women MPs, she retained her seat for all four legislative terms of the First Republic.

Maria Tusch was committed to improv-ing the fate of the war-wounded. As a social policy maker she championed the rights of women, working to im-prove the position of female workers and mothers and opposing criminal prosecution for abortion. Tusch was also known as an expert in economic matters relating to the Austrian state tobacco monopoly and was an impres-sive public speaker. Education was her principal cause.

Maria TuschWorker, politician (1868 – 1939)

Maria-Tusch-Straße

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Mela Hartwig was born in Vienna in 1893, the daughter of the Jewish sociolo-gist Theodor Herzl. Her father converted to Catholicism and took the name Hartwig. Mela was classically trained in singing and acting at the Vienna Conservatory. From 1917 to 1921 she performed at various theatres in Austria and was a member of the company at the Schiller Theatre in Berlin. In 1921 she married the Jewish lawyer Robert Spira. That same year she retired from the stage and moved to Gösting near Graz, where she made her first forays into writing.

Spira made her authorial debut in 1927 with the short story “Das Verbrechen” (“The Crime”). With support from Al-fred Döblin and Stefan Zweig she was

able to publish her novella collection “Ekstasen” (“Ecstasies”) the follow-ing year. Her novel “Das Weib ist ein Nichts” (“The Woman is a Nothing”) came out in 1929; like her novellas, it caused a scandal.

Following Austria‘s annexation by Nazi Germany in 1938 Mela and her husband emigrated to London, where she worked as a translator. Virginia Woolf found her a job as a language teacher and she became a member of the international PEN Club, the worldwide association of authors. Mela Spira died in London in 1967. It was not until after her death that her literary work experienced something of a renaissance.

Mela SpiraActor & writer (1893 – 1967)

Mela-Spira-Gasse

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Mimi Grossberg Writer (1905 – 1997)

Emilie “Mimi” Grossberg was born in 1905 into a well-to-do Jewish family of entrepreneurs. After secondary school she worked in the library of the Social Democrat community centre in the Viennese working-class district of Otta-kring. In the late 1920s she trained as a milliner and joined the Social Democratic Party, marrying Norbert Grossberg in 1930. Her parents‘ company went bank-rupt and the couple found themselves in straitened financial circumstances. It was during this period that Mimi Grossberg began to write poetry. Her first volume of poems was published in 1935.

Following Austria‘s annexation by Nazi Germany, Mimi and Norbert Grossberg fled to New York. Mimi‘s parents, how-

ever, were deported and murdered. Her second volume of poetry, “Versäume, verträume...” (“Missing, Dreaming …”) appeared in 1956. After visiting Vienna in 1957 she explored her ambivalent feelings towards her homeland in her text “Märchenfee Österreich” (“Fairy Austria”). Back in New York she came into contact with exiled writers and thenceforth campaigned tirelessly for their cause. In 1968 Mimi Grossberg put together an exhibition on the life and works of 62 writers of Austrian origin living in the USA. In 1974 she was awarded the Decoration of Honour in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria for her research on Austrian writers in exile and made a member of the Austrian PEN Club.

Mimi-Grossberg-Gasse

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Charlotte Schenk-Danzinger was born in Vienna in 1905. After obtaining her higher education entrance qualification in 1925 she trained as a teacher with Marie Jahoda before studying psychol-ogy at Vienna University, obtaining her doctorate under Karl Bühler in 1930. From 1927 to 1935 Charlotte Schenk was employed as Charlotte Bühler‘s assistant. She was a member of the project team for the “Marienthal Study”, which investigated the effects of unemployment on a community. In 1937 she married the engineer Johann Schenk and had two children.

After resuming her career in 1946 she first worked on the standardization of developmental tests for school-age

children before taking charge of the City of Vienna‘s newly-founded Schools Psy-chology Service in 1948. In 1963 she ob-tained her post-doctoral teaching quali-fication from the Faculty of Philosophy at Innsbruck University and worked there as a lecturer until 1970. From 1967 onwards she also taught at the Teacher Training Academy in Vienna.

In 1969 Schenk-Danzinger moved to the University of Graz, where she was Extraordinary Professor of Develop-mental and Educational Psychology at the Institute of Education until 1981. She was an important early champion of research into dyslexia and a found-ing member of the Austrian Dyslexia Association.

Lotte Schenk-DanzingerPsychologist (1905 – 1992)

Schenk-Danzinger-Gasse

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Susanne Schmida was born in 1894 in what is now Poland. She studied philosophy in Vienna under Robert Reininger and obtained her doctorate in 1919, one of the first women to do so. In 1921 she founded the “Reininger Circle”, an interdisciplinary and inter-cultural discussion forum. She married the philosopher Victor Brod in 1923.

Schmida had already started ex-ploring Indian philosophy with her doctoral supervisor Robert Reininger. In the 1920s she began studying and teaching yoga based on the writings of Swami Sivananda, founding a school of expressive dance and gymnastics known as the “School of the League for New Lifestyles” in 1934. Schmida

took a highly critical view of gender roles, institutions, religion and family and distanced herself unequivocally from the racist movements of her time. Her school was based on the philosophy of an integrative European culture. In the 1970s she developed a path of learning for a “spirituality beyond religions”.

Part visionary, part critical philoso-pher, Susanne Schmida remained within the Enlightenment tradition yet encouraged “all people of all cultures and faiths who seek something beyond intellectual enlightenment – the depth of experience that can only be gained by looking inward, which is the equivalent of nirvana”.

Susanne SchmidaPhilosopher (1894 – 1982)

Susanne-Schmida-Gasse

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Yella Fuchs was born in Vienna in 1873 and trained as a gardener. In 1897 she married Emil Hertzka, who from 1909 onwards was the director of the music publishing house Universal Edition. In 1912 Yella founded the first college of gardening and horticulture for girls in Vienna, which also aimed to equip young women with business management skills. Thanks to Yella Hertzka‘s initiative and financial sup-port the Kaasgraben artists‘ colony was established in the Döbling district of Vienna, where the Hertzkas also had their home. Yella hosted numer-ous garden parties there, attended by luminaries such as Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schönberg. From 1909 to 1933 she was president of the “New Vienna

Women‘s Club” and from 1921 to 1938 also president of the Austrian branch of the “International Women‘s League for Peace and Freedom”.

Following her husband‘s death in 1932 she joined the board of Universal Edi-tion and championed women in music. Hertzka‘s horticultural college was closed down in 1937. The following year all the directors of Universal Edi-tion were forced to stand down and the publishing house was “Aryanized”.In 1938 she married Edgar Taussig and fled to London. After the war she was appointed “official trustee” of Universal Edition. Yella Hertzka initiated the restitution procedure but did not live to see the outcome, dying in 1948.

Yella HertzkaGardener, college founder, women‘s rights activist (1873 – 1948)

Yella-Hertzka-Park

Our special thanks go to Municipal Depart-ment MA 7, the City of Vienna‘s Department of Cultural Affairs, for pro-viding the biographies. A comprehensive online encyclopaedia of all street names in Vienna, including historical de-tails, can be accessed via the following link:

www.wien.gv.at/strassenlexikon/internet

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