Zita Triger (später verh. Spiss)

Born:	12-01-1917
Faculty:	Philosophical School
Category:	Expelled student

Zita TRIGER (later: SPISS), born on December 1^st, 1917 in Vienna/Austria (entitled residency ('heimatberechtigt') for Vienna/Austria, Citizenship: Austria), daughter of Julius Triger (merchant, b. 1891) and Rozalia Laura (née Brief), lived in Vienna's 9^th district, Nußdorfer Strasse 16/18, was enrolled finally in the fall term 1937/38 at the Philosophical School in the 1^st year of her studies and took courses in Romance languages and literature Studies 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 from Vienna and was able to emigrate first to Great Britain and lived in Ilford, England before she was able to leave from Liverpool, England, for the USA on March 22^nd with the SS Britannia and arrived in New York on April 1^st, 1940. She lived in New York City, NY and when she applied for American citizenship on March 19^th, 1941, she stated as her profession: "music teacher". She later married Charles Spiss and continued to live as Zita SPISS in New York City, NY and later in Scarsdale, NY and Syosset, NY.

She endowed numerous charitable and research foundations (e.g. Zita Spiss Medical Research Tr., Scarsdale, N.Y.) and donated and bequeathed numerous Austrian art objects (from antiquity to the 20^th century) to the Metropolitan Museum New York in the 1990s, where some of them are still part of the permanent exhibition today. She died on October 11^th, 1991 in New York, USA.

Lit.: Archive of the University of Vienna/enrollment forms ("Nationale") PHIL 1937-1938; POSCH/INGRISCH/DRESSEL 2008, 491; www.genteam.at.

Herbert Posch