Bande der Freundschaft

The intensive exchange of letters between 1912 and 1946 between the physicist Lise Meiner, born in Vienna in 1878, and the botanist Elisabeth Schiemann, born in 1881 and raised in Berlin, cannot be seen merely as the documentation of a friendship between two highly gifted scientists. In many passages, the letters are also an important contemporary document. During WWI, Lise Meitner was an X-ray nurse and helped in operating rooms. In 1938, she became a refugee fleeing Hitler’s persecution of the Jews and later lived in Stockholm. Following 1933, Elisabeth Schiemann resisted the regime as well as she could, hiding Jewish friends, finding escape routes, and demanding that the church provide shelter for fellow Jewish citizens. The correspondence between the two women contains only sporadic references to their research. Two introductory biographies reveal a number of similarities between them: both came from well-educated families, both had siblings with whom they maintained close contact throughout their lives, at the beginning of their careers both worked with a male scientist, neither married. Short commentaries provide information about contemporary events and the persons mentioned. Passages from letters to and from other correspondence partners of Lise Meitner are also included. Illustrated with a number of photographs.