Writing about a Stranger. Therese Schlesinger (1863 Vienna – 1940 Blois)

Vom Gemeintsein im Bild der Vergangenheit

Abstract

This article addresses theories and methods of writing biography with regard to Walter Benjamin’s metaphor of »recognizing the image of the past as one’s own concern«. The author reflects on »recognizing« herself in the historical image and in the work of Therese Schlesinger. Tracing the biography of the Jewish-Austrian feminist, social democrat and member of parliament, who was forced into exile by the National Socialist takeover in 1938, the author refuses to limit the reading of Schlesinger’s biography to a single historicist narrative. Gabriella Hauch argues that we must look for narrative fissures and gaps to make visible the multi-dimensional tangle of cause and effect in biographical research.