Female, Jeish, and Educated The Lives of Central European University Women [Hardcover]

Female, Jewish, and Educated presents a collective biography of Jewish women who attended universities in Germany or Austria before the Nazi era. To what extent could middle-class Jewish women in the early decades of the 20th century combine family and careers? What impact did anti-Semitism and gender discrimination have in shaping their personal and professional choices? Harriet Freidenreich analyzes the lives of 460 Central European Jewish university women, focusing on their family backgrounds, university experiences, professional careers, and decisions about marriage and children. She evaluates the role of discrimination and anti-Semitism in shaping the careers of academics, physicians, and lawyers in the four decades preceding World War II and assesses the effects of Nazism, the Holocaust, and emigration on the lives of a younger cohort of women. The life stories of the women profiled reveal the courage, character, and resourcefulness with which they confronted challenges still faced by women today.

Preliminary Table of Contents:

Acknowledgments
Preface: Finding Our Mothers, Finding Ourselves
1. Emancipation through Higher Education
2. Dutiful Daughters, Rebels and Dreamers: Shaping the Jewish University Woman
3. University Years: Jewish Women and German Academia
4. Professional Quest and Career Options
5. The Marriage Plot: Career and/or Family?
6. Jews, Feminists and Socialists: Personal Identity and Political Involvement
7. Interrupted Lives: Persecution and Emigration
8. Reconstructing Lives and Careers
Epilogue: The Legacy
Glossary and Abbreviations
Tables
Notes
Bibliography
Index

. . . a meticulously researched work.Freidenreich (Temple Univ.) details the lives of 460 Jewish women who attended German or Austrian universities between 1900 and the Nazi Era. Predictably intelligent and assertive, these mostly middle-class women sought intellectually challenging, economically secure, and socially rl£