| Born: | 09-08-1907 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Elisabeth SOFFER (KALS REILLEY, née KATZ, divorced SOFFER, widowed CLAWSON), born on September 8th, 1907 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), daughter of Otto Katz (1871-1933) and Irma Katz, née. Taussig (1886-1933), studied painting in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux Arts and in 1926/27 at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna, while also pursuing a successful career as an amateur jockey. She had resigned from the Jewish Community on June 18th, 1932 (non-denominational) and had married the furniture architect Hans Soffer (1892-1970) in Vienna on June 27th, 1932 (Werkbund) and they lived in Vienna's 3rd district, Rechte Bahngasse 28/IV/17 from May 1933 to July 1938
Elisabeth Soffer had been enrolled at the Philosophical School of the University of Vienna as an extraordinary student since the spring Term of 1937, most recently in the spring term of 1938 in the 2nd year of her studies, and attended lectures in ethnology and prehistory.
Under National Socialism, after the Anschluss, she was forced to abandon her studies and leave the University of Vienna for racist reasons.
She moved with her husband to Vienna's 1st district, Adolf-Hitler-Platz 8 (formerly Freiheitsplatz, today Rooseveltplatz) at the end of July 1938, but divorced him shortly afterwards. She had to flee Vienna and was able to leave for the time being for Paris/France, but then embarked the SS Conte di Savoia in Cannes to emigrate further on to the USA where she arrived in New York, NY on February 3rd, 1939.
Her ex-husband Hans Soffer was only able to emigrate to the U.S. a year later as an antique dealer via Trieste, Italy, and arrived in New York, NY, on the SS Vulcania on February 21st, 1940, opened the "Soffer Shop" at 201 E. 56th str. and was granted U.S. citizenship on June 4th, 1945. He died in Vienna on March 14th, 1970 and was buried at the Central Cemetery there.
Elisabeth Soffer worked as a librarian in a metallurgical plant and as a freelance photographer during the war and became a U.S. citizen on May 25th, 1944. She became a researcher and reporter for Time magazine, where she covered, among other things, the U.N. session on the creation of the State of Israel. She later moved to Fortune magazine, where she covered the emergence of what would become Xerox. She married widower Harry G. M. Clawson (1895-19??) on August 24th, 1950, in New York City, NY, and in 1951 bought a 200-year-old farmhouse on Long Island, NY, in Muttontown, East Norwich, Nassau County, where she lived until her death. She bred poodles for show, worked with horses for riding and hunting, and threw herself into garden design. With her gardeners Jimmy Jarman and Walter Queren, she created a well-received garden.
She studied library science at Long Island University at the C. W. Post Campus (LIU Post), a private university in Brookville, Nassau County, and graduated in 1963, after completing several courses in architecture and garden design at Yale University, and began amassing an outstanding private collection of rare garden books and prints, which she donated to the New York Botanical Garden in 2002. She was a trustee of the Horticultural Society in New York, a member of the Garden History Society in London and the Congress of International Bibliophiles in Paris.
After the death of her second husband, she married Ewing Willard Reilley (1906-1988), a co-founder of McKinsey & Co, on September 8th, 1967, in New York. She founded the Garden Library at Planting Fields, where she was a member of the Board of Trustees and librarian until her retirement in 2001 at age 93. On her 99th birthday, the newly established reading room was named in her honor (The Elizabeth Reilley Reading Room). She also founded the Post Library Association to support the C.W. Post Campus Library and endowed the Elizabeth K. Reilley Scholarship at the Palmer Graduate School of Library and Information Science there. In 1989, she received the Distinguished Alumni Award from C.W. Post.
Elizabeth Kals Reilley, widoed Clawson, divorced Soffer, née Katz, died over the age of 100 on March 29th, 2007 in East Norwich, Nassau County, New York/USA and is buried in Laurel Hollow, Nassau County, NY.
Lit: University of Vienna Archives/National PHIL 1937-1938; www.genteam.at, www.myheritage.at, www.ancestry.de, www.findagrave.com.
Herbert Posch
