Annie Altschul

Born:	02-18-1919
Faculty:	Philosophical School
Category:	Expelled student

Annie ALTSCHUL, born on February 18th, 1919 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Vienna/Austria, Citizenship: Austria), daughter of Ludwig Altschul (killed in a railway accident when she was only five year old) and Marie Altschul (businesswoman) lived in Vienna 4th district, Waaggasse 19. She attended the high school ('Realgymnasium') of the Wiener Frauen Erwerb Vereins in Vienna 4th district, Wiedner Guertel 68. There she met her class mate Lucie Smetana (later married Fowler), who became one of her best friends and with whom she held contact into old age.
After she had graduated from high school on June 17th, 1937, Annie Altschul began to study maths and physics at the University of Vienna, while Lucie Smetana started her medical studies. She enrolled at the Philosophical School in the fall term 1937/38 and took courses in Mathematics and Physics in the 1st year of her studies that also became her last at the University of Vienna. After the "Anschluss" Annie Therese Altschul was able to emigrate, together with her mother, sister and young nephew to London in 1938. Her school friend Lucie Smetana also emigrated to Great Britain. She worked as a nanny and a housemaid. Then she trained as a nurse and midwife at Epsom County Hospital. Deciding to qualify further, she found inspiration for a new type of mental nursing when she went as a student to an Army mental hospital set up at Mill Hill School, north London. In 1946 Annie Altschul became a staff nurse and a sister at the Maudsley Hospital, a world psychiatric centre. Rapidly she became a sister tutor. She started to study psychology at Birkbeck College in London. She also joined the stdy programm at Boston University School of Nursing during a one-year stay in the USA 1961/62 and also travelled to Canada and Australia to study nursing there. During the next decade, nursing developments at the Maudsley centred around the ideas and presence of Altschul.
Although she developed no models of nursing she early published Psychiatric Nursing (1957), clearly setting out what the nursing care of the mental patient should be. This book and Psychology for Nurses (1962) ran to several editions. She travelled the world, observing and developing her ideas. In nurse training she and others introduced the innovation of "working in groups". In 1964 Altschul left the Maudsley to be a lecturer in the Department of Nursing Studies at Edinburgh University. In 1976 she became Professor of Nursing Studies at Edinburgh University and remained there until her retirement in 1983 and gained academic recognition for psychiatric nursing in Britain. She was awarded with the academic degree of a Master of Science for an empiricial study about the relation between patient and nursing people and that this relations need non-routine interaction. The study is classic for todays psychiatrist nursing sciences. Her research influenced not only the transfer of psychiatric care into the community but also the provision of housing for the aged.
Annie Altschul was temporary supervisor for the World Health Organization (WHO) of UN, and also gave lectures at the Nursing School of "Red Cross" in Switzerland. 1984 she was invited by European Nurse Researcher and gave a lecture in Vienna: "Nursing Research for a better Care". For many years she was a member of the Socialist Medical Association. She was appointed CBE ("Commander of the Order of the British Empire") in 1983. Appropriately she is commemorated for students by the Professor Annie Altschul Publication Prize which she established.
Together with Lucy Fowler she visited her birth city Vienna in 1968. Her response to retirement was to study for a degree in mathematics and in her eighties she combined her enthusiasm for mathematics with a lifelong love of children by helping youngsters in a primary school as a voluntary teacher.
She died in Edinburgh on December 24, 2001.
She was honoured with a day-long conference, where the papers Annie wrote in the USA in 1960-61 were discussed, and a Festschrift shortly before her death (see TILLEY 2004). The Festschrift was also filmed by documentary film maker Jack Shea.

Lit.: Marlene NOWOTNY, Vertrieben und dann erfolgreich, in: science.orf.at, 14.08.2015; TILLEY 2004; Stephen TILLEY, Re-Reading Altschul: Notes on Knowledge and Tradition, 2001; WOLFF 2004, 11-13; WINSHIP et al. 2009; obituary in The Independent and The Guardian; information by Dr. Stephen Tilley, University of Edinburgh, 2012; Susan SOYINKA, A Silence that Speaks. A Family Story through and beyond the Holocaust, Eliora Books 2013, 135, 138f.; 155; KNIEFACZ/POSCH 2017a.

Herbert Posch