Lillian (Lilly) Margarete Bader (geb. Stern)
| Born: |
08-22-1893 |
| Faculty: |
Philosophical School |
| Category: |
Deprivation of academic degree |
Lillian (Lilly) Margarete BADER (nee STERN) (born on August 22nd, 1893 in Vienna, died in December 1958 in New York/USA), grew up in Vienna and Teplitz [Teplice/Czech Republic], where her father (died in 1909) worked for an insurance company. Her mother worked as a piano teacher and in 1903 took over the Stern Girls' School in Vienna (
Stern’sche Maedchen-Lehr- und Erziehungsanstalt) in Vienna 1st district, Werdertorgasse 12-14, which had been run by other members of the family and had been founded as first school in Vienna to provide some sort of higher education for girls in 1863. Lilly Stern herself attednded the school and later to the Lyceeum to be able to study chemistry at University of Vienna:
"At the time that this future was being considered for me, only a very limited number of women registered yearly at the University of Vienna. Not all studies were yet available to women. They could become doctors of medicine, could study sciences or languages, but not yet, for some strange reason, become lawyers. This 'girl-student' was a type offering great possibilities to the cartoonists of the time, who depicted them smoking cigarettes in man-tailored suits and in high-collared shirtwaists. They were thought to be 'emancipated' which set them apart from the average and which gave them a definite handicap as far as getting married is concerned." (BADER 1956, quoted from
FREIDENREICH 2002, 10.)
In 1918 she married the physician
Dr. med. Edwin Bader, an officer in the Austrian army. After World War I, she became head of her mother's boarding school, finished her studies and graduated at the Philosophical School at the University of Vienna in Chemistry on July 11th, 1919 with the academic degree 'Dr. phil.' (dissertation: 'Über den Abbau von Starinsaeure und zur Kenntnis der Chlorsaeure'). Her two daughters were born in 1921 and 1924.
After the so called "Anschluss" of Austria by Germany in 1938, the school was closed and Lillian Bader emigrated with her family to Great Britain, where she worked as a maid, and in 1940 to the United States, where she worked as a piano teacher. She was deprived of her academic degree on July 14th, 1942 with the racist argument, that she as a Jew was not considered dignified an academic degree of a German university ('eines akademischen Grades einer deutschen Hochschule unwuerdig').
It took 13 years since the deprivation – and a very long time since the end of Nazism – until the regranting of the doctorate took finally place on May 15th, 1955.
Her memoirs about the years 1890 to 1920, which are kept in the Leo Baeck-Institute in New York, are titled 'One Life is not Enough' (1956).
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") PHIL 1913-1922 Nr. 850, rectorate GZ 118 ex 1941/42, Nr. 45, GZ 561 ex 1944/45 Nr. 15; Deutscher Reichsanzeiger Nr. 165 from Juy 18th, 1941; POSCH 2009, 388f.; Lilian M. BADER, Ein Leben ist nicht genug. Memoiren einer Wiener Juedin, Wien 2011; Lilian M. BADER, Ein Leben ist nicht genug. Memoiren einer Wiener Juedin, Wien 2011; Lillian M BADER, One Life is not Enough (1956), Leo Baeck Institute, LBI Archives, LBI Memoir Collection; FREIDENREICH 2002, 10, 15, 72; LICHTBLAU 1999, 545-564.
Katharina Kniefacz, Herbert Posch
