Eugenie Schwarzwald (1872–1940)

Eugenie Schwarzwald, née Nussbaum, was the second of four children born to a Jewish family in the village of Polupanowka, Galicia, an area between Poland and Ukraine. As a child, she moved with her family to Czernowitz (now Chernivtsi or Chernovsty), where she attended secondary school and a teachers’ college for women. In 1895, she enrolled in the University of Zurich, and graduated with a doctoral degree in philosophy in 1900. The same year, she married Hermann Schwarzwald, a lawyer, and went to live with him in Vienna. Frau Doktor, as she was known, founded the first coeducational state school, and became an advocate of equal educational opportunities for girls. She created advanced courses to enable girls to enter university and adopted the latest educational reform trends from Maria Montessori and others. She also hosted a salon in her home that was frequested by social reformers, writers, and musicians such as Robert Musil, Elias Canetti, and Rudolf Serkin. During World War I, she recruited volunteers from all stratas of society, including aristocrats, businessmen, and politicians, to implement large-scale social programs for the poor, particularly children. After the Nazi regime came to power in Germany, she organized help for refugees fleeing to Austria. She also wrote and published short stories and essays for several newspapers and journals, among them the Neue Freie Presse. She was in Denmark on a lecture tour at the time of the German Anschluss (annexation) of Austria, and was warned by friends not to return to Vienna. With their support, she settled in Zurich, where her husband was able to join her. She died two years later of breast cancer.