Foto: Philipp Rothe, 13.12.2022
Dr. Käthe Pick Leichter (1895-1942) was an Austrian Jewish Social Democrat, economist, women’s rights activist, journalist and politician. She was arrested by the Nazis in Vienna in 1938, incarcerated in Ravensbrück women’s concentration camp, and murdered at the Bernburg euthanasia facility in the spring of 1942. She had studied and earned her doctorate from University of Heidelberg. Jewish students’ degrees were abolished by the Nazis, but the degree was later awarded posthumously by the university. Now, 80 years after her murder, the university has honored her by naming its new center for doctoral students the Käthe Leichter Forum. Dr. Leichter’s life and accomplishments are highlighted in The Jewish Women of Ravensbrück Concentration Camp by Rochelle G. Saidel. When Dr. Leichter was arrested by the Nazis, her two young sons were rescued. The younger son became New York State Senator Franz Leichter, and he brought six members of his family to Heidelberg for the December 2022 naming ceremony. See the following article.
Heidelberg Newsletter, December 21, 2022 (translated from German)
University of Heidelberg: Käthe Leichter Forum is a new center for doctoral students
A new center for doctoral students at Heidelberg University is named after Käthe Leichter (1895 to 1942). The Käthe Leichter Forum – centrally located on the Im Neuenheimer Feld campus – is intended as a place for consultation and encounters with a specific university profile for the more than 8,700 doctoral students at Ruperto Carola. As a status group, they should also receive increased visibility inside and outside the university. In the presence of Käthe Leichter’s son Franz and his daughter Kathy, University Rector Prof. Dr. Bernhard Eitel officially opened the new center.
Käthe Leichter was a doctoral student of the important sociologist Max Weber, social scientist and pioneer of the modern women’s movement. She engaged in the political resistance against the Nazi dictatorship [and Jewish] and became a victim of Nazi persecution. It is closely linked to the checkered history of Heidelberg University in the 20th century. The new center building INF 370 houses the graduate academy, which centrally coordinates all interdisciplinary advisory, further education and funding offers for doctoral students at Heidelberg University. The Doctoral Convention, which represents the interests of doctoral students inside and outside the university, is also based here.
“Heidelberg University has made it its task to break new ground in the promotion of doctoral students. This includes in particular the optimization of all framework conditions for excellent scientific development of young researchers in the doctoral phase, as is also expressed with the establishment of the Käthe Leichter Forum,” says Professor Eitel. More than 8,700 doctoral students are currently qualifying at Ruperto Carola. According to the most recent survey by the Federal Statistical Office, published this summer, this is the highest number of doctoral students at a university in Germany.