Family provenance and early years Eva Kolmer was born in
Vienna into a Protestant family of Jewish provenance. She grew up and attended the
gymnasium (secondary school) in the
Döbling quarter of Vienna, on the north side of the city, a short walk beyond the university. She passed her
school final exams ("Abitur") in 1930.
Student years During her student years Kolmer, while still active as a Communist Party member, also participated in the activities of the
Socialist Students Association ("Verband Sozialistischer StudentInnen Österreichs" / VSStÖ). The 1933
Nazi take-over in
Germany had its counterpart in neighbouring
Austria, where between 1932 and 1934
Chancellor Dolfuss systematically
transformed the country into a
one-party dictatorship. The Communist Party was outlawed in May 1933. Kolmer persisted with her political activism, however: she was arrested in August 1934 Harris was, as it turned out, one of several contacts in the English establishment whom she had been able to cultivate during her visits to London during the 1930s. Others included the Liberal politician,
Geoffrey Mander who, like Wilson, took a particular interest in Austria, along with the formidable feminist campaigner
Margery Corbett Ashby and
the Duchess of Atholl, whom Kolmer later described as "highly prominent but completely mad". In due course the administrative issues began to be resolved and she obtained laboratory work with her former sponsors at the Pearson Organisation. Fairly soon she was dropped by Pearson "on political grounds", however. She was able to stay with
Margery Corbett Ashby for her first month in England. During this time she found time to produce a short report, describing the dramatic events of March 1938 in Austria.
Wilson Harris provided an introduction to the London publisher,
Michael Joseph: she published her account under the title "Austria Still Lives" in London in May 1938 under the pseudonym "Mitzi Hartmann". The fifty pounds she received for the little book enabled her to repay a debt and live on the balance for a short time. She also found casual secretarial and journalistic work. a childhood friend who was now, like her an Austrian refugee from political persecution, living in London. One practical step the government could take on the home front, as it waited to find out what war would involve, was to dust down a
regulation providing for the arrest and detention of
enemy aliens. While the armies of Germany and the Soviet Union concentrated on the carve up of Poland, the significance of this remained unclear, but once
France was invaded, in May 1940, the British government decided that thousands of people who had fled from the Nazis during the previous few years because they were persecuted on account of their Jewishness and/or their political activities, represented a threat. Mass arrests took place. Eva Kolmer, well connected with the British establishment, found herself classified as "an official of a refugee organisation", and so she was not interned. She was indeed permitted to visit Austrian internees in the camps to which they had been consigned by the British authorities. Sources are silent about the effectiveness of her campaigning on her husband's behalf. Within a year or two the British government had changed its mind about the problem of the enemy aliens, and most were quietly released, The Wolloch marriage quickly broke apart, ending in divorce. The British
security services were aware of Eva Wolloch's political sympathies and aware of concerns within the political establishment that known communists among the German and Austrian refugees might make common cause with Britain's home-grown communists, to the detriment of British interests. They certainly took a close interest in her activities while she was in England, although the practical impact on her of British security services' attentions is not clear. By this time Eva Wolloch had already returned to
Vienna, where she had been selected to become secretary of the communist faction in the lower house of a restored
National Council (parliament). It is not without irony that the promising political career set out before her in occupied Austria was trumped by her love for a man. After much agonising, and following discussion with the Austrian party leaders
Johann Koplenig and
Friedl Fürnberg, she would end up moving to the
Soviet occupation zone in Germany in order to rejoin
Schmidt.
Soviet occupation zone When she joined
Heinz Schmidt in the
Soviet occupation zone in the late summer of 1946, Eva Kolmer also became a member of the
recently formed Socialist Unity Party ("Sozialistische Einheitspartei Deutschlands" / SED). While Heinz Schmidt took a top job with
the Berliner Rundfunk (radio station), Eva Schmidt-Kolmer (as she now became) took a position as head of the statistics and information department at the National Administration (in the Soviet zone) for Health Care. In 1948, based in Berlin, she became national secretary of the
Democratic Women's League (" Demokratischer Frauenbund Deutschlands" / DFD), In Schwerin Heinz was employed in a relatively low-grade position as head of the Arts and Culture section at the Regional Headquarters of the
Machine and tractor station. (Agricultural land had been taken over by the state, but tractors and other farm equipment were separately acquired, maintained and allocated as required, so that the
Machine and tractor stations, became vital strategic elements in the rural economy of East Germany, just as they already were in the Soviet Union.) Eva gave birth to the couple's son in May 1950. Following that she was employed as a section leader in the regional head office of a trade organisation. However, in 1951 she was given a job much closer to her heart, as head of the Mother and Child Health Protection Department at the Ministry for Health Care office covering
Mecklenburg. Her talent for extreme multi-tasking was again on display during her time in Mecklenburg, as Eva Schmidt-Kolmer combined her day job with a programme of intensive research on themes involving child health and protection. On 11 July 1952 she received her doctorate: her dissertation was entitled "Health protection for mother and child" (
"Gesundheitsschutz für Mutter und Kind"). Schmidt-Kolmer and her husband were evidently rehabilitated in 1954. They relocated again, this time to
Leipzig, home of the prestigious
Karl-Marx University (as it was then known). In Leipzig Heinz Schmidt became editor in chief of,
Das Magazin. Over the next few years there were a number of comparative studies undertaken in East Germany to compare the outcomes for children brought up within a family and those who grew up in institutions. The studies always revealed substantial developmental disadvantages for the institutionalised children, while children who grew up in a family environment consistently displayed the better outcomes. Schmidt-Kolmer was involved in extensive discussion and testing of different approaches that might be used to narrow or eliminate the gap, such as step-by-step familiarization in place of sudden institutionalisation, personal toys, mixed age grouping, avoidance of frequent personnel changes among care staff and promotion of contact with birth families. In 1956 the couple were allowed to return to Berlin. Armed with her doctorate, on 1 July 1956 Schmidt-Kolmer joined the
social psychology ("Sozialhygiene") department of the Medical Faculty at
the Humboldt University, initially as a senior assistant, mandated by her new boss,
Prof.Kuert Winter, to develop her expertise in the field of social psychology. She received her
habilitation (higher academic qualification) in 1957 or 1958 for work on childhood development during the first three years of life. The qualification opened the way to a long-term academic career, and she accepted a teaching chair in her chosen speciality. According to at least one source, as a university teacher she in effect founded the discipline of "Childhood and youth social hygiene" (
"Hygiene des Kindes- und Jugendalters"), which she then promoted and developed through her research and teaching. That same year she was appointed to head up the "Department for [Social] Hygiene in childhood" (
"Abteilung für Hygiene des Kindesalters") at the Berlin University Institute for Social Hygiene.
Retirement and death After she retired she remained active, producing various papers and books and serving on a number of committees. At the end of her life Eva Schmidt-Kolmer became seriously ill with
cancer. She died in
Berlin on 29 August 1991. == Awards and honours ==