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Zofia Weigl in Rudolf Weigl's lab in Lwów, late 1930s (Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, Pic 1-N-623)On 14 June 2019, the Centrefor Historical Research Berlin of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN) inPankow, Berlin, welcomed a small group of interdisciplinary academics todiscuss a topic that has not lost any of its importance: women and genderand/in science.[1]The participants – professors, research fellows and PhD students – came from avariety of academic backgrounds, which made for a very stimulating and opendiscussion. In particular, we talked about two current research projectsfocussing on the early 20th century: firstly, Justyna Górny’s literary study ofnovels depicting women at German, Austrian and Polish universities; and secondly,Iwona Dadej’s prosopography of women earning a professorship (Habilitation)at Polish universities. Both projects offeredunique insights into the lives of women in academia: The novels Justyna Górnyanalyses – amongst others Ilse Frapan’s Die Arbeit (1903) and VickyBaum’s stud.chem Helene Willfüer (1928) – are documents of the socialconstruction of gender and science: who was granted access to academia and its(social, cultural, financial) resources, by whom, and why? What images did thenovels convey about the changing role of women in society at the turn of thecentury and after the First World War, as well as their self-perception? What werethe differences between fictional and “real” biographies of women in academia,and what does that tell us? Górny’s ideas about the significance of women’sbodies and their represention in novels as well as the relationship betweenuniversity education and nation-building provided much food for thought. Equally, Iwona Dadej’spresentation picked up on central questions in gender history and the historyof science. After her dissertation on transnational networks of Polish andGerman academics in the interwar period, her current project reconstructs biographiesof female professors in interwar Poland. Dadej’s aim is to overcomestereotypical, heroic accounts of women’s lives. Many feminist biographies downplaythe social and cultural construction of gender roles in their narratives. Instead,Dadej wants to focus on the multiple and often overlapping roles of women –scientist, mother, wife, superior, assistant, and so on. In this light,academia is a space where gender roles are negotiated. We at the “London Moment”project – in particular my project that focuses on émigré jurists and theirwork in and around British universities – could benefit from the workshop'sideas in a number of ways. Universities, as otherinstitutions, are spaces of knowledge and science (Wissens- andWissenschaftsräume) that are – among other things – structured bygender. For example, when we think about who was granted access to discussionsabout the international legal order during the Second World War, pathdependencies influenced women’s role in academia. In most countries, womenstill had very limited access to universities and the legal sciences.Accordingly, few women were among the jurists who had to emigrate to Londonduring the Second World War. Female refugees with legal training were mostly ofGerman-Jewish origin, but none of them (that I know of) resumed theirprofessional legal work. This could have various reasons. In general, they were– just like their male counterparts – experts in a foreign legal system and ofno real use for the British labour market except when they tailored theirexpertise to the needs of their new home country. Careers in international andcomparative law as well as criminology were possible, but rare. Additionally, immigratedfemale jurists usually were not granted work permits. Thus, the experience ofmigration forced many women back into “old” roles, i.e. serving their husband’scareer instead of advancing professionally themselves. This does not mean thatthey had no effect on the history of legal science. However, if their roleconsisted in advising and supporting their husbands, e.g. by doing research orediting manuscripts or even only discussing ideas, their work often went unnoticed.As few of them left any personal documents behind and did not work for anorganisation with an institutional archive, their roles often remain invisibleand difficult to detect for the historian.Consequently, in order touncover women’s roles in the history of (legal) science, historians are dependenton respective primary sources. Alongside university papers, autobiographiessuch as Suse Schwarzenberger’s ‘German Academics in the 20th Century: APersonal Story’ (London, no date) can be of great value. The text can beaccessed in several libraries, among them the Wiener Library in London[2] andis a highly readable account of the lives of Suse and her husband GeorgSchwarzenberger, the famous international lawyer. The better part of the autobiographyconcerns the 1930s and 40s, their emigration from Germany to Great Britain in 1934and Georg’s career in British academia.[3] Thepitfalls of this type of source are that the author constructs her ownnarrative in order to make sense of her life and herself as historical subject.In that process, she will inevitably leave out aspects of her life and work thatmight have been of great interest to her readers – on purpose or because shedoes not deem them relevant. Despite these caveats, autobiographies do help usanswer questions such as: how did the author perceive of herself and her rolein science? If her career was upended by exile, did she continue to see herselfas scientist who was on an equal footing with her husband, or did she assume asupporting role? And even if we judge her professional biography as"failure" today, how did she see it? The most difficult task whenworking with autobiographies, however, is to look beyond individuals like SuseSchwarzenberger and make observations about the society she lived in and wasformed by. This can only be done in connection with other historical sources, forinstance the papers of the Society of the Protection of Science and Learning (SPSL)[4] or theLondon Institute of World Affairs, where Georg Schwarzenberger worked beforehis academic career took off. This could tell us a lot about the roles offemale jurists in the “London Moment” and English academia more generally.[1] http://www.cbh.pan.pl/de/geschlecht-undin-wissenschaft. For the program (in German), see below.[2] Also see Weydner,Sara. ‘From the Archives’. 09/11/2017. https://exilegov.hypotheses.org/381.[3] Cf.Steinle, Stephanie. “Georg Schwarzenberger (1908-1991).” In JuristsUprooted: German-Speaking Emigré Lawyers in Twentieth Century Britain, edited by Jack Beatson and ReinhardZimmermann, 663–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; id. Völkerrechtund Machtpolitik: Georg Schwarzenberger (1908-1991). Baden-Baden: Nomos,2002; Ploß, Christoph Johannes. Die “NewCommonwealth Society”: Ein Ideen-Laboratorium Für den supranationalen europäischenIntegrationsprozess. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2017.[4] Also see Weydner, S. ‘BBC-Documentary “Miss Simpson’s Children”: How a Woman ran a Refugee Organisation’. 24/07/2018. https://exilegov.hypotheses.org/619.Program (German)11:00 Uhr Einführung 11:15 - 13:15Justyna Górny (Institutfür Germanistik UW): Studentinnen und Wissenschaftlerinnen – literarischeProjektionen und Konstruktionen am Beispiel deutscher, österreichischer undpolnischer RomaneKommentar: Prof. Dr.Anne Kwaschik (Universität Konstanz)Diskussion14:15- 16:15Iwona Dadej (IH PAN):Geschlechterordnung in polnischer akademischen Kultur in der ersten Hälfte des20. JahrhundertsKommentar: Dr. KatrinSteffen (Nordost-Institut)Diskussion