Margaret Schlauch (25 September 1898, Philadelphia, PA, US – 19 July 1986, Warsaw, Poland) was a scholar of medieval studies at New York University and later, after she left the United States for political reasons in 1951, at the University of Warsaw, where she headed the departments of English and General Linguistics. Her work covered many topics but included focuses on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon, and Old Norse literature.
Early life and education Schlauch was born in Philadelphia; her father was a German-born professor of mathematics.Christine M. Rose, "Margaret Schlauch (1898–1986)", in Women Medievalists and the Academy, ed. Jane Chance, Madison, Wisconsin / London: University of Wisconsin, 2005, , pp. 523–39, p. 526.Associated Press, "Estate Put In Probate Court To Keep Funds From Going To Poland", Ocala Star-Banner, August 26, 1955, p. 11. She earned a bachelor's degree from Barnard College in 1918 and Master's and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University in 1919 and 1927; from 1923 to 1924, she studied at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München on a fellowship from the American Association of University Women. During her graduate studies she taught English at Theodore Roosevelt High School in New York.
Career From 1924 to 1950, Schlauch was a faculty member in the English Department at Washington Square College (the then Greenwich Village undergraduate division) of New York University. She became an assistant professor in 1927, associate professor in 1931, and full professor in 1940,Rose, pp. 526–27. the first woman to be appointed a full professor at the university."'Linguistics,' Topic Noted By Speaker", Schenectady Gazette, April 2, 1969, p. 12. She spent a summer as a visiting faculty member in German at the University of Chicago and another in English at Johns Hopkins University, and was a Guggenheim fellow in German and Scandinavian literature from 1929 to 1930.Rose, p. 527.Fellowships 1929 , John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, retrieved June 23, 2013. During World War II, she assisted in the preparation of a course in Icelandic for the War Department, and at one point taught mathematics.Rose, pp. 524, 530.
Early in 1951, in response to a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee, Schlauch left the United States for Poland, writing an explanatory letter to the chair of the English Department at New York University, Oscar Cargill, in which she stated that she had been "so very happy at N.Y.U.!"Rose, p. 524. The university announced her resignation to the New York Times, where it was the subject of a "long, above-the-fold article".Rose, pp. 523–24: "Professor Prefers Iron Curtain Land: Dr. Margaret Schlauch, N.Y.U. English Instructor, to Teach at Warsaw University", New York Times, February 6, 1951. The story was picked up by the Associated Press.Associated Press, "Teacher Accepts Red-Poland Post", Spokane Daily Chronicle, February 6, 1951, p. 53.
She taught at the University of Warsaw from 1951 until retiring in 1965. From 1954 until her retirement, she was head of the Department of English, and from 1954 to 1956, she also headed the Department of General Linguistics. She was founder president of the Polish-Icelandic Cultural Society, which came into being largely at her suggestion on 13 May 1959. She was elected a corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences in 1961 and in 1966 honored with a festschrift to which prominent scholars in medieval studies and linguistics from many countries contributed.Rose, p. 525.Studies in Language and Literature in Honour of Margaret Schlauch, ed. Mieczysław Brahmer, Stanisław Helsztynski, and Julian Krzyżanowski, Warsaw: P. W. N. Polish Scientific Publishers, , . She became a citizen of PolandYale Richmond, "Margaret Schlauch and American Studies in Poland During the Cold War", The Polish Review 44.1 (1999) 53–57, p. 53. and other than visits to the United States to lecture and as a visiting professor at Vassar College and the University of Connecticut, remained abroad; she spent many summers researching in the British Museum. She was "lionized" in Poland, where her generosity included subscribing to foreign journals that the university library could not afford and donating them, as well as sharing her personal library with students. After her death, a symposium was held in her honor by the Modern Philology Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences,Andrzej J. Michałek, "Wspomnienie o Margaret Schlauch", islandia.org.pl, 2001, retrieved June 23, 2013 and in May 2002, a Schlauch Symposium was held at the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań.Some papers published in Studia Anglica Posnaniensa 38 (2002).
Politics Schlauch was a committed Marxist, although she denied ever having been in the Communist Party when investigated in 1941 by the Rapp-Coudert Committee as part of its examination of Communism in New York educational institutions.United Press international, "Margaret Schlauch, 88; American Expatriate", New York Times, July 22, 1986."Schappes Demands Right to Face Foes", The New York Times, March 17, 1941 (pay-per-view): "In another statement, Dr. Margaret Schlauch of the English Department of New York University characterized the Coudert committee as "undemocratic". An obituary by a former student, Annette Rubinstein, described her as "the dynamic center of an informal Marxist study group" in New York, and she became chair of the Greenwich Village American Labor Party.Annette T. Rubinstein, "Margaret Schlauch: 1898–1986", Science & Society 50.4 (Winter 1986/87) 387–89, p. 387, cited in Rose, p. 526.Alan M. Wald, American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War, Chapel Hill, North Carolina: University of North Carolina, 2012, , p. 121, regards her specifically as the possible hub of a circle of female Communists and Communist sympathizers. She also wrote for the Marxist periodical Science & Society, of which she was a founding editor, praising the Soviet Union and applying Marxist principles to "literary, historical, and linguistic study" in a much more doctrinaire manner than in her academic publications.Rose, pp. 531–32. In the 1930s, she was chairman of the Association of University Teachers and of the New York Teachers Anti-War Committee."Backs Students on Trial: Teachers Association Protests City College Disciplinary Action", New York Times, January 11, 1933 (pay-per-view): "The Association of University Teachers, of which Professor Margaret Schlauch of New York University is chairman, prote[s]ted yesterday"."Disorder Laid to Faculties", New York Times, April 17, 1934 (pay-per-view): "The New York Teachers Anti-War Committee, of which Professor Margaret Schlauch of New York University is chairman". She was always a feminist. In 1935, she wrote a 30-page pamphlet, "Who Are the Aryans?", a "sane and clear" exposition of the wrongness of Nazi racial theory.Rose, pp. 530–31. She joined the Polish United Workers' Party shortly after her arrival, and letters she wrote late in her life express admiration for the general in power under martial law.Rose, pp. 525, 526.Alan M. Wald, pp. 306–07.
Private life and death Schlauch's sister Helen Infeld was a mathematician married to Leopold Infeld, a Polish-born physicist who had been a naturalized Canadian citizen but was made stateless by Canada along with his children following his campaigning for nuclear disarmament, and moving to Poland in 1949; it has been suggested that joining them influenced her decision to leave the U.S., but she appears to have been lonely and isolated in Poland at first; according to Rubinstein's obituary, she received no invitations from colleagues for five years, although she eventually became as popular as she had been at New York University.Rose, p. 533.
She never married. After what appears to have been a stroke in 1974, she became increasingly housebound and in need of helpers. She died in Warsaw on 19 July 1986;Rose, pp. 525–26. her books and her papers have been handed over to the University of Warsaw.
Honors 1958 Officer's Cross of the Polish Order of Polonia RestitutaRose, p. 534."Schlauch, Margaret", Who's Who in Poland, ed. Lidia Becela et al., Interpress Publisher, Warsaw, [Wörthsee]: Who's Who, the international red series, 1982, , p. 762. 1961 Corresponding member, Polish Academy of Sciences 1968 Icelandic Order of the Falcon, The Hartford Courant, May 20, 1968 (pay-per-view) 1984 or 1985 Medal of the 40th Anniversary of People's Poland
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