Hertha Ernestine Pauli was born in Vienna, the daughter of feminist Bertha Schütz and chemist Wolfgang Pauli. Her brother was Wolfgang Pauli, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1945.
From 1927-33, she played different small roles at the Max Reinhardt Theatre in Berlin and was allied with Ödön von Horváth. From 1933-38, she lived in Vienna, edited the "Österreichische Korrespondenz" and published biographical novels, for example about the feminist Bertha von Suttner.[1]
After her arrival in the U.S., she described her flight in the journal Aufbau.[3][4][5]
In the following years she wrote books about Alfred Nobel and the Statue of Liberty. Her books for children, in particular, had some success. These books included Silent Night. The Story of a Song (1943), in which she explained the origin of the carol.
She married Ernst Basch (pen name, E.B. Ashton), with whom she had collaborated on I Lift My Lamp. Her last book was autobiographical and described the time after the Nazi's union with France.[6]
Alfred Nobel, Dynamite King, Architect of Peace, 1942
Silent Night. The Story of a Song, 1943
Story of the Christmas Tree, 1944
St. Nicholas Travels, 1946
I Lift my Lamp, The Way of a Symbol, 1948
The Golden Door, 1949
Three Is a Family, 1955
Bernadette and the Lady, 1956
Her Name Was Sojourner Truth, 1962
The Secret of Sarajevo: The Story of Franz Ferdinand and Sophie, 1966
Pietro and Brother Francis, 1971
Break of Time, 1972
References
^Biography, univie.ac.at. Accessed 5 September 2022.
^Varian Fry. Surrender on Demand. Random House, 1945.
^Pauli, Hertha (October 11, 1940). "Flucht". Aufbau. 6 (41): 3 – via Internet Archive.
^Pauli, Hertha (October 25, 1940). "Tagebuch einer Flucht". Aufbau. 6 (43): 7 – via Internet Archive.
^Pauli, Hertha (November 1, 1940). "Tagebuch einer Flucht". Aufbau. 6 (44): 10 – via Internet Archive.
^Pauli, Hertha. Break of Time. Hawthorn Books, 1972.
^Biography, encyclopedia.com. Accessed September 5, 2022.
Bibliography
Between Sorrow and Strength: Women Refugees of the Nazi Period, edited by Sibylle Quack, David Lazar, Christof Mauch. Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Marino, Andy, American Pimpernel: The Man who Saved the Artists on Hitler's Death List. Hutchinson, 1999.
Pfanner, Helmut F., Exile in New York: German and Austrian Writers After 1933. Wayne State University Press, 1983.