In the first Czechoslovak Republic, the Jews felt assimilated and recognized until the dismantling of the state ended this state by the Hitler regime. This also affected the Wilma Iggers born on March 23, 1921 in Mirschigkau (now Mířkov), a small community in southern Egerland, who grew up in the nearby Bischofteinitz (Horšovský týn). Most recently, the cultural historian and Germanist lived in Albany, near Buffalo in the US state of New York, where she died on February 23, four weeks before her 104th birthday.
Wilhelmina Abeleles, so her birth name, grew up with a German mother tongue and learned in preparation for the Czech grammar school. She soon dominated the language fluently and inspired herself for Czech culture and literature, especially her world of fairy tale and legends, of which her memory book »Bohemian Jews. A childhood in the country “testifies to Monika’s Richarz in 2020. In September 1938, the family left Czechoslovakia in the direction of Canada and found foot on a farm near Hamilton (Ontario). There she learned from the Munich Agreement, which her former home delivered to the German occupants.
Wilma learned English very quickly. From 1940 she studied German and French and acquired the doctoral degree in Chicago with a work via Karl Kraus. There she also met her future husband. Georg Iggers (1926–2017) came from a Jewish parents in Hamburg. He became a very well-known historian with a focus on international historiography history, while her specialty initially became the German-language literature and then the European-Jewish social history. Wilma and Georg received three sons, to whom they presented an exemplary life: they worked, initially with time contracts, at small universities of the American south before both received professorships in Buffalo at the State University of New York at Buffalo, Wilma am Canisius College. However, the successful academic career never bought themselves with political concessions. Both were at a time that the high personal and professional risks were active in the civil rights movement, campaigned for the end of the “breed” separation and supported conscientious conscience who refused to order to Vietnam.
Wilma and Georg Iggers also became central between the worlds in the Cold War. As soon as this was possible, they searched contacts to Bischofteinitz; Wilma Iggers finally gave the place the honorary citizenship. Also alive in Göttingen at times, both opened ways to study and research in North America to study a young West German scientist generation. As guests from universities and academy institutions from the GDR, they made contacts with critical, left-wing church circles. It was also a matter of course for both of them, the support of the GDR historians threatened and often affected after 1990 – although they had criticized their former premises. The author of these lines also learned a lot about solidarity from Georg and Wilma, who became close friends. Wilma’s history, such as the history of the literature, on the history of Bohemian women and about the Jews in Czechoslovakia, as well as the double autobiography written together with her husband, two sides of history. Life report from troubled times «(2002) beyond the scientific and contemporary value from humanity of a contemporary contemporary that is awaited in every respect.
Until her last day of life, Wilma Iggers embodied an America, which the clique around Donald Trump came to the power, hopefully in vain.