| Born: | 09-21-1907 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Gerta SCHMID, born on September 21st, 1907 in Vienna/Austria-Hungary (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, citizenship 1938: Austria), as the daughter of Hermann/Hersch Schmid (1869-1942, owner of a fashion house in Vienna's Kärntnerstraße), and his wife Pauline, née Beck (1878-1942), completed an apprenticeship in her parents' business and began to work there, but at the age of 26 she was able to pass her school-leaving examination (Matura) as an extern at the Elisabeth Gymnasium [Rainergymnasium] in Vienna's 5th district on October 11th, 1933. From the fall term of 1933/34 to the spring term of 1937, she was enrolled at the Philosophical School, took courses in zoology and botany, and by 1938 was already in the final examinations stage. In parallel, from 1936 to 1938, she was researching her dissertation under Hans Przibram at the Biological Experimental Station ("Vivarium") of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in the Prater.
She had already registered for the final examinations ("Rigorosen") in zoology on November 19th, 1937, and entered for the first viva voce ("Philosophicum") on January 27th, 1938, but was reproved by the philosopher Prof. Reininger. Under National Socialism, after the Anschluss, she was forced for racist reasons to abandon the examination procedure and leave the University of Vienna. However, after prolonged uncertainty, she was able to submit her dissertation on July 4th, 1938 ("Entwicklungsbedingungen der imaginalen Rotfärbung am Vorderbein des Dixippus morosus Br. et Redt," advisors: Versluys, Ehrenberg), which was approved on July 6th1938, after she had also passed the reprobation of the first viva with Reiniger on July 5th, and was able to sit for the second viva in zoology and botany with professors Versluys, Ehrenberg, and Knoll on July 11th, 1938, and passed.
Thus, after a long period of uncertainty, she was able to complete her studies after all and to receive her doctorate on July 21st, 1938 - albeit only under numerous symbolic discriminations - within the framework of a "non-Aryan doctorate", while at the same time being banned from working in the entire German Reich.
Gerta Schmid had to flee Vienna and was able to emigrate to England in time with a "domestic permit", and worked as a housemaid in Bullingdon, Oxfordshire, England for the first two years. Her younger brother Erich Schmid (1908-1984, artist) was also able to emigrate to England.
Her parents and her brother Wolfgang Peter Schmid (1918-1942) did not manage to emigrate in time; they were deported from Vienna to German-occupied Riga/Latvia on February 6th, 1942, and murdered there.
Gerta Schmid then lived in London from 1940, and from 1941 also took part in meetings of the British Federation of University Women. In the same year, together with the Viennese emigrants Oskar Peczenik (1898-?) and Ludwig Popper (1904-1984), she succeeded in publishing an article (Antagonism between Thyroid and Posterior Pituitary and its Relation to the Autonomic Nervous System) in the journal Confinia Neurologica on Viennese research in the laboratory of Prof. E. Steinach 1936-1938. At least since the early 1960s Schmid lived in Gainsborough/England, where she worked as a biology teacher at the local girls' grammar school until her retirement.
Dr. Gerta Schmid died at the age of almost 101 on February 7th, 2008 in Gainsborough, Great Britain.
Lit: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1937-1938, final examination registry and file ("Rigorosenprotokoll") PHIL No. 13943, graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") PHIL 1931-1941 No. 2842; Archive of the Austrian Academy of Science, holdings BVA; POSCH 2009, 367; Claudia u. Roland WIDDER (eds.), Erich Schmid, Wien 1908-Paris 1984, Weitra 2002, 11-17, 120; Johannes FEICHTINGER et al. (eds.), Die Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien 1938 bis 1945. Vienna 2013, 111; Memorial Book OaAW.
Herbert Posch
