Leseprobe

160 Loss and Memory prejudice and outright slander she faced due to her cultural and religious background. In this respect, the memoir reflects a singularly Jewish experience of the period. As well as personal ambition, the decision by Eri- ka and her sister Thekla to continue their educa- tion was due primarily to the encouragement of their mother, Elsa Salzburg. While it would have been unthinkable for a woman of their mother’s generation to have attended university and pur- sued a career, this was precisely what the two sis- ters sought to do after completing their education at the girls’ Gymnasium . Moreover, Elsa Salzburg not only supported her daughters’ education in principle, but also made the financial sacrifices necessary to pay for the girls’ school fees. Of course, there were also pragmatic considerations underlying Elsa Salzburg’s support for her daugh- ters’ schooling: given the family’s precarious fi- nancial situation, the aim was to ensure the girls benefited from a university degree that would qualify them for working life and hopefully set them on course for full economic independence. A few years previously, Elsa Salzburg and Dr Sieg- mund Salzburg had no choice but to withdraw Thekla and Erika from the Studienanstalt (girls’ Gymnasium ) during the academic year 1922–1923 because they could no longer afford the fees. The two girls were forced to leave school before having the opportunity to complete their Abitur (which they were due to take, respectively, in 1925 and 1926). The girls’ fate was by no means isolated. In the ‘Report of the Academic Years, 1916 to 1927’ published by the school, a general trend was not- ed in the period between 1922 and 1924 when the total number of schoolgirls dropped by around twenty percent in comparison to 1920. The report ascribed this drop to ‘the fallout from parents’ fi- nancial difficulties and their children’s unpromis- ing future prospects’.7 Thekla was able to resume her schooling, with a focus on humanities and the classics, soon afterwards, swiftly advancing to the most senior class, when pupils finally take their Abitur examinations. By contrast, in the register of pupils preparing for their Abitur compiled by the Gymnasium in 1926, Erika is listed in the col- umn of girls who had left the school without com- pleting the school leaving certificate. Neverthe- less, she used her time productively: in the five intervening years between being forced to leave the Studienanstalt and resuming preparations for the Abitur exams in 1928, Erika completed an ap- prenticeship, gained professional experience, and even spent time living abroad. Yet right until she returned to the Gymnasium at 22 years of age, Eri- ka never once lost sight of her ultimate goal of completing her Abitur . Appraising herself critical- ly with the benefit of hindsight, Erika Plaut sug- gested that this ambition was motivated primarily by some residual bourgeois conventionalism and a yearning to belong to the ‘selected class of uni- versity people’.8 Rather than hoping to become an independent working woman, Erika Plaut would later admit that her sights were in fact set on find- ing a husband from a suitable class background and fulfilling what she considered to be her pre-ordained role as a mother.9 People of Erika’s parents’ generation were keen to ensure their children received a wide-ranging ed- ucation in the classics and humanities. However, another principle underlying their daughters’ up- bringing was an emphasis on expanding their experiences and knowledge not only of their home city, region, and country, but also other countries in Europe and beyond. The family’s international- ist outlook was perhaps due in part to the influ- Erika Plaut (right) with daughter and granddaugh- ter, New Hampshire. Photograph taken 1967 or 1968.