Writing Time Rome – Helene Wieruszowski

DHI Rome  has recently launched "Writing Time Rome – Helene Wieruszowski", a programme for established researchers specialising in the periods and disciplines represented at our institute. Anyone wishing to work on a major manuscript for 1–6 months, in an intellectually stimulating environment away from academic commitments, is very welcome to join us. The only condition is that you are keen to engage with other researchers at the institute and willing to present your writing project as a public lecture at the DHI.
 
With "Writing Time Rome" we honour the German-American historian Helene Wieruszowski, who – having obtained her doctorate in Bonn in 1918 with the study "Die Zusammensetzung des gallischen und fränkischen Episkopats bis zum Vertrag von Verdun" – worked at the Prussian Historical Institute, the predecessor of DHI Rome, from 1924 to 1926.
 
In 1949, Helene Wieruszowski became a professor of history at The City College of New York. During the Weimar Republic, she had been denied habilitation in medieval history because she was a woman; under National Socialism, she was forced to give up her post as a librarian at the Bonn University library due to her Jewish heritage and lost all prospects of employment in academia. In 1940, she emigrated to the USA. After her retirement, among other works she published her monograph "Politics and Culture in Medieval Spain and Italy" (Rome, 1971). Helene Wieruszowski died in 1978 in Sorengo, Switzerland.
 
If you are interested in the fellowship dedicated to this outstanding researcher, please email Monika Kruse and include a project description of 1–2 pages. Please note that "Writing Time Rome" does not envisage financial support. For further information please click here for the German grants.

Catherine A. Epstein, Woman, Refugee, Historian. The Life and Career of Helene Wieruszowski, in: Axel Fair-Schulz/Mario Kessler (eds.), German Scholars in Exile. New Studies in Intellectual History, Lanham: Lexington Books 2011, pp. 85–92.
Tobias Peter Jansen, "Entlassen auf Grund der Nationalsozialistischen Gesetzgebung". Dem Andenken der Bonner Mediävistin und Bibliothekarin Helene Wieruszowski (1893–1978), in: Rheinische Vierteljahrsblätter 89 (2025), pp. 63–91.