Dr. Anna Mathä
Personalia
Born:
Died:
Profession:
Persecution:
Dismissed September 1938, hid 3 Jews at home 1942 - 1945 and saved them from deportation to concentration camps
Memberships
Curriculum Vitae
Anna Mathä was born in Vienna in 1906, the daughter of the bank clerk Florian Mathä. After primary and secondary school, she attended the St. Ursula Private Teacher Training College, where she graduated in 1925 and enrolled in 1927 to study natural sciences, geography and psychology at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Vienna. Here she joined the Association of Catholic-German Female Students in Vienna.
In 1931, she passed her teacher training examination and joined the teaching profession in 1932 after her probationary year. After teaching at various schools, she became principal of the St. Ursula women's secondary school in Vienna's 18th district in 1937. She also became involved in the Vaterländische Front.
On September 16, 1938, she was dismissed from the teaching profession due to her political views. "As of September 1938, I was no longer employed in the teaching profession because of my work in preserving Austria's independence and my open opposition to National Socialism, and now began to earn my living as a piece-work typist in writing rooms and as a shorthand typist," Anna Mathä wrote in June 1945.
From 1942 until the liberation of Vienna, Anna Mathä and her mother hid the following Jews in their apartment to protect them from certain deportation:
- Berta Brauner, born on June 30, 1886
- Karoline Lustig, born on August 12, 1887. Karoline Lustig's mother and brother, Marie and Alfred Löwy were deported on July 12, 1942. Alfred Löwy was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp and Marie Löwy to the Theresienstadt concentration camp and later to the Treblinka concentration camp. Neither survived the Holocaust.
- Paul Sondhoff, born on April 16, 1923, was a former student of Anna Mathä. She took him in when his mother Helene and his sister Agnes Alma were deported. Helene Sondhoff, born on December 6, 1893 and Agnes Alma, born on January 2, 1930 were deported to Maly Trostinec on May 27, 1942 and killed there on June 1, 1942.
After the war, Anna Mathä graduated in 1946 and became a teacher at BRG Hegelgasse 14 in the 1st district. She was quickly granted pragmatization and compensated for the two years in which she was excluded from teaching. "You were not used for political reasons from 16.9.1938 to 15.9.1940.", according to the confirmation from the Federal Ministry of Education. She volunteered for the ÖVP-Kameradschaft der politisch Verfolgten und Bekenner für Österreich.
She retired at the end of 1971, single and childless, and died in Vienna in 1991.
Places
Residence:
Citations
Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstands (DÖW)
Universitätsarchiv der Universität Wien
Wiener Stadt und Landesarchiv (WStLA)
