| Born: | 11-05-1889 |
| Faculty: | Philosophical School |
| Category: | Deprivation of academic degree |
Rachel DEUTSCH (née OSTERMANN), born on November 5th, 1889 in Tauroggen, district of Kowna, Russia [Tauragė/Lithuania] ("native of Vienna, citizenship 1938: Austria), as daughter of Moses Aron Ostermann and Riwa Lea Ostermann, née Schereschewsky (1858-1933).
She had completed her entire schooling in Vienna, most recently the girls' high school of the Wiener Frauenerwerbsvereins, where she also took the school-leaving examination (Matura) in 1907, which, however, did not entitle her to study, so she studied from fall term 1907/08 for three years as an extraordinary student at the University of Vienna, and at the same time prepared to take the school-leaving examination (Matura) at the II Deutsche Staatsgymnasium in Brno. After successfully passing the examination, now with the right to study, she studied from fall term 1911/12 for another two years as a regular student of German and Romance languages and literature before she was admitted to the viva voce ("Rigorosen") in the summer of 1913 and, after her dissertation ("O. F. Berg") had been approved, she finally received her doctorate from the Philosophical School of the University of Vienna on June 10th, 1914, earning the degree of Dr. phil. in German studies, making her one of the first female Germanists to receive a doctorate.
In 1917 she married in Vienna-Ottakring Ing. Theodor Deutsch (1881-1954), a merchant and senior building official from Teschen/Bohemia [Cieszyn/Český Těšín/Poland]; in August 1918 their daughter Judith was born, in April 1921 their daughter Johanna, and they lived in Vienna's 13th district, Hagenberggasse 41/1, where Rachel Deutsch also offered private art history courses.
After the Nazi seizure of power, she was expelled from Austria as a Jew and was able to flee with her family to Palestine [Israel] in time to avoid persecution. She arrived there with her husband and her younger daughter on September 5th, 1938 and they settled in Haifa and Herzliya respectively (her niece, Lisbeth Wechter-Ostermann, was expelled from the University of Vienna as a medical student about that time). In January 1941 they were granted citizenship in the British Mandate of Palestine [Israel], whereupon on May 12th, 1941, the Third Reich revoked their German citizenship and confiscated all property for the state. As a further legal consequence, the Reich Ministry of the Interior in Berlin, through the Reich Ministry of Education in Berlin, demanded that the administration of the University of Vienna also deprive Rachel Deutsch of her doctoral degree. As a result, on July 14th, 1942, Rachel Deutsch was then deprived of her academic degree by the University of Vienna on racist grounds, as she was considered "as a Jew unworthy of an academic degree from a German university" under National Socialism.
The family lived in Herzliya and her daughter Judith, who had been a famous swimmer in Austria and who caused a great stir with her boycott of the Olympics in Nazi Berlin in 1936, married Bernhard Haspel in 1939, who had also been expelled from Vienna and who, as a medical student at the University of Vienna in 1938, was only able to complete his studies under a discriminatory "non-Aryan doctorate" before also emigrating to Palestine [Israel]. Judith Haspel-Deutsch became Israeli swimming champion in the same year and represented the Hebrew University at the World University Games (for more information on both of them, see the memorial book entry on Bernhard Haspel). Her daughter Johanna Hani Lux, née Deutsch (1921-2014) also established herself in Israel.
During a visit to her brother Emil Ostermann (1896-1993) in Vienna in the summer of 1951, Rachel Deutsch applied to the Rectorate of the University of Vienna "to graciously restore the doctoral degree that had been revoked from me in 1942 as a result of the racial laws". Thereupon a copy of the diploma was made without the note of deprivation, and the Academic Senate decided in its meeting of June 28th, 1951 to retroactively reaward the title, of which she informed the Rectorate on July 2nd (the diploma was sent to her brother in Vienna, addressed as "Erich Ostermann", since she had already returned to Israel).
Thus, 9 years after the revocation and long after the end of National Socialism, the doctoral degree was restored to her, and the revocation was declared "null and void from the beginning".
Dr. Rachel Deutsch, née Ostermann, died on August 12th, 1962 in Tel Aviv/Israel and is buried in the Herzliya Cemetery, Herzliya/Israel.
Lit.: Archives of the University of Vienna/graduation registry ("Promotionsprotokoll") PHIL 1913-1922 No. 97, Rectorate GZ 118 ex 1941/42, GZ 561 ex 1944/45 No. 13a, GZ 373 ex 1950/51 (= S 271.108); Deutscher Reichsanzeiger Nr. 111 vom 15. Mai 1941; POSCH 2009, 404; POSCH/STADLER 2005; www.ancestry.de, www.myheritage.at; information by courtesy of Roswitha Hammer, Steine der Erinnerung, Vienna 11/2022, and Rachel Deutsch's grandson Benjamin Haspel, Israel 04/2023.
Herbert Posch
