Josefine (Josa) Morgan-Ruffner (geb. Lederer)

Josefine 'Josa' Lederer was born in Vienna as the legitimate daughter of the doctor Moriz Lederer and Antionia, née Michalup. Her mother came from the Venetian noble family Zanetti. Josa Lederer had an older brother named Heinrich.

When her mother secretly moved out in the summer of 1908 after a long family quarrel, Josa Lederer and her brother stayed with their father. The father takes his own life in September 1908; he drinks a bottle of carbolic acid and shoots himself twice in the heart. The children then joined their mother and her new husband, the lawyer Emil Meisel.

After finishing school, she studied drama with Ernst Arndt, among others, and showed an interest in writing and journalism. In 1917, at the age of 17, she married the actor and cabaret artist Paul Morgan.

Josa Morgan's first newspaper articles appeared in 1918 in the magazine 'Forum. Monthly magazine for the legal profession'. In the same year, her husband was engaged at the Lessing Theater in Berlin, where she probably followed him. Josa Morgan also appeared as an actress herself, for example in 1922 at the Deutsches Theater in Munich and in 1924 at the Neue Wiener Bühne. She also wrote irregularly for newspapers and magazines. In 1930/1931, the couple spent new months in the USA, as Paul Morgan was shooting two German Hollywood films there. After their return, Josa Morgan took advantage of this to report on her experiences in newspaper articles and lectures, including on the position of women.

After the National Socialists came to power in Germany, Josa and Paul Morgan were forced to leave Germany in 1933 due to her husband's political cabaret work. From 1934, they lived in Vienna again, but Paul Morgan received almost no more engagements. During this time, Josa Morgan wrote various articles for the Austrian press, primarily in the Kleine Volks-Zeitung and the weekly edition of the Neues Wiener Tagblatt. She is also working on a biography of Lucrezia Borgia.

On March 12, 1938, Josa and Paul Morgan witness the demise of free and independent Austria with the invasion of the German Wehrmacht. Ten days after the occupation of Austria, on March 22, 1938, Paul Morgan was arrested by the Gestapo, allegedly because of a letter from Gustav Stresemann, and sent to prison on May 23, 1938. On May 23, 1938, he was deported to the Dachau concentration camp and transferred from there to the Buchenwald concentration camp on September 23, 1938. Josa Morgan campaigned in vain for his release. Even the entry permit to Holland that she organized could not save him. He died in Buchenwald concentration camp on December 10, 1938, allegedly due to pneumonia.

After the November pogroms in 1938, Josa Morgan managed to escape to Great Britain. In 1939, she traveled to France, where she was detained in the Gurs internment camp in 1940 because of her German passport. After her release in 1941, she was able to leave for Portland (USA).

In the USA, Josa Morgan married the journalist Joseph Ruffner III in New York City on June 18, 1944 and became a US citizen. She goes by the double name 'Morgan-Ruffner'. Around 1948, she published articles, interviews and obituaries in the New Yorker 'Aufbau', among others. After separating from her second husband, Josa Morgan-Ruffner moved to Great Britain in 1956 and lived in London, Berlin and Munich until her death in 1986. Among other things, she wrote regularly for the Sunday edition of 'The Wiener Journal'.

Throughout her life, Josa Morgan-Ruffner was committed to the memory of Paul Morgan. In 1986, she donated correspondence, manuscripts, photographs and other materials from herself and Paul Morgan to the Vienna Holocaust Library.

Josa Morgan-Ruffner died in London at the age of 88.