Muriel Gardiner
Muriel Gardiner | |
---|---|
Born | Helen Swift Morris | November 23, 1901
Relatives | Gustavus Franklin Swift (grandfather) Nelson Morris (grandfather) Ruth Morris Bakwin (sister) Harry Bakwin (brother-in-law) |
Muriel Gardiner Buttinger (née Morris; November 23, 1901 – February 6, 1985) was an American
Early life and career
Gardiner was born on November 23, 1901, in
After graduating from Wellesley College in 1922 she traveled to Europe where she lived until the outbreak of World War II. She attended the University of Oxford and then, in 1926, went to what was then still "Red Vienna", hoping to study psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud. She received a degree in medicine from the University of Vienna and married Joseph Buttinger, leader of the underground wing of the Social Democratic Party of Austria.[2][1]
After the Social Democratic Party was banned following an armed insurgency against the newly founded
Gardiner edited The Wolf-Man by the Wolf-Man, which documents the case history of
Between 1965 and 1984, Gardiner gave a total of 585 acres (2.37 km2) to the
In 1983, Gardiner became entangled in the controversy between
Gardiner wrote that, while she never met Hellman, she had often heard about her from a friend, Wolf Schwabacher, who was Hellman's lawyer. In Gardiner's account, Schwabacher had visited Gardiner in Vienna and, after Muriel Gardiner, Joseph Buttinger, and their daughter moved into their house at Brookdale Farm in Hopewell Township near Pennington, New Jersey, in 1940. The house was divided with the Gardiner-Buttinger family living in one half and Wolf and Ethel Schwabacher in the other for more than ten years.[5] Most people now believe that Hellmann wrote a fictional story in her "memoir", based on stories told by Schwabacher about Gardiner's life. Gardiner's editor further cited the unlikelihood that there were two millionaire American women who were medical students and anti-Nazi activists in Vienna during the late 1930s.[4]
Personal life and death
She was briefly married to physician Harold Abramson in 1925. Her second husband was British artist Julian Benedict Orde Gardiner (1903-1982); they had a daughter, Constance, whom she raised in Vienna before sending her to New York City to live with her sister, Dr. Ruth Morris Bakwin, a pediatrician married to Dr. Harry Bakwin.[6] She married Joseph Buttinger before the couple fled Europe in 1939. Muriel Gardiner died of cancer on February 6, 1985, in Princeton, New Jersey, aged 83.[4]
Legacy
- Muriel-Gardiner-Buttinger-Platz in Vienna is named in her honour.
- The Western New England Psychoanalytic Society in New Haven, Connecticut, runs a series of monthly meetings called the Muriel Gardiner Program in Psychoanalysis and the Humanities.
References
- ^ a b c d e Cengel, Katya (March 2023). "The American Heiress Who Risked Everything to Resist the Nazis". Smithsonian Magazine. Smithsonian Institution. Retrieved 15 February 2023.
- ^ a b c d Joseph Berger, "Muriel Gardiner, who Helped Hundreds Escape Nazis, Dies", nytimes.com, February 7, 1985; accessed December 16, 2011
- ^ Stony Brook-Millstone Watershed Association website; accessed December 16, 2011.
- ^ a b c McDowell, Edwin (April 29, 1983). "New Memoir Stirs 'Julia' Controversy". New York Times. Retrieved December 16, 2011.
- ^ Muriel Gardiner, Code Name "Mary": Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground (Yale University Press, 1983), xv-xvi
- ^ "A Courageous Granddaughter of Nelson Morris - Code Name "Mary" — Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground" (PDF). Chicago Jewish Historical Society. Spring 2008.
Further reading
- Sheila Isenberg, Muriel's War: An American Heiress In The Austrian Resistance, Palgrave, 2010,