Gizela Reicher-Thonowa : a forgotten mother of Polish comparative literty studies

The article aims to construct the biography of Gizela Reicher-Thonowa (1904-1941?), the author of an outstanding book Ironia Juliusza Słowackiego w świetle badań estetyczno-porównawczych (Juliusz Stowacki’s irony in the light of aesthetic-comparative studies) (1933). Initially, Reicher-Thonowa’s work encountered misunderstanding on the part of the academic community as too innovative and advanced for her contemporaries’ thinking on Polish Romantic literature. Moreover, being a woman and Jewish, she could not expect to make a career in humanities in prewar Poland. Gizela Reicher-Thonowa’s biography has been constructed from the scanty documents and letters preserved in archives. It presents the following stages of her life: comparative studies at the Jagiellonian University in Cracow, doctoral defense in 1926, her marriage to Albert Teitelbaum (vel Thon), leaving for Łódź, arrival to Cracow with her daughter during the war in 1940, and finally, her employment in a Jewish organization aiding orphans. It is the last stage of her life documented in archives. The International Tracing Service Arolsen informs that Gizela Reicher-Thonowa’s family was murdered in 1941 in Bełżec concentration camp, and Gizela herself most likely also died at the hands of the Nazis.