| Born: | 03-18-1916 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Expelled student |
Henriette SINGER (married: GUENTHER), born on March 18th, 1916 in Vienna/Austro-Hungarian Empire (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna/Austria, Citizenship 1938: Austria), daughter of Josef (Jossel) Singer (b. 1885 in Buczacz/Galicia, d. 1939, typesetter) and Rebekka Singer, née Tobias, lived in Vienna's 20th district, Rauscherstrasse 19/21. She was enrolled finally in the fall term of 1937/38 at the Philosophical School in the 2nd year of her studies and took courses in German language and literature Studies, Art History and History.
In 1938, after the takeover of power of National-Socialism she was forced to quit her studies for racist reason and to leave the University of Vienna.
She had to flee Vienna and was able to leave in time in December 1938, fled to the Netherlands and lived for the time being in Amsterdam. Her mother died in Vienna in February 1939; her father was deported to Nisko/Poland on October 20th, 1939 and murdered. Henriette Singer was able to obtain her U. S. visa in Rotterdam on July 17th, 1939, and emigrated from Rotterdam on the ship SS Veendam to the U. S. on August 26th, 1939, to her uncle I. Schumer, who lived in Brooklyn, New York City, NY, arriving in New York City, NY/USA on September 6th, 1939
On May 15th, 1941, in Manhattan, NYC, NY, she married Paul Felix Guenther (1913-2002), who was born in Berlin/Germany and had already emigrated from the German Reich to Antwerp/Belgium in 1936 for "political" and "racial" reasons, and then to the USA in 1939. Soon after, her husband was drafted into the U. S. Army (1943-1946), first to Fort Francis E Warren, Cheyenne, WY, later to Denver, CO (as an interpreter of German enemy news). The couple had three children, Henry J. Guenther (1947), Rebecca Lynn Brown (1949), and Felix E. Guenther (1956).
Henriette Guenther became a U. S. citizen on January 22nd, 1946, and moved her family several times following her husband's appointments: when he taught at the University of Colorado in 1948 to Boulder, CO, when he taught at Vanderbilt University to Nashville, TN, and when he became a professor of German and comparative literature at Southern Illinois University to Edwardsville, IL where Henriette Guenther continued to live even after her husband retired in 1982.
Henriette Guenther, née Singer, died on September 9th, 1996 in Edwardsville, Madison, IL/USA and is buried at Valhalla Cemetery in St. Louis County, MO/USA.
Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1937–1938; National Archives, Washington D.C./Naturalization Records Colorado/NAI M1192/21; New York City Clerk's Office/index to marriages, Manhattan 4; Social Security Administration Washington D.C./Social Security Death Index; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 476; exhibition: "Ausgegrenzt, Vertrieben, Ermordet" at the Department of Art History at the University of Vienna (2010); Yad Vashem Shoah Victims' Names; www.ancestry.de.
Herbert Posch
