Helen Adolf

Helen Adolf (December 31, 1895 – December 13, 1998) was an Austrian–American linguist and literature scholar.

Early life and education Helene "Elly" Adolf was born in 1895 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Her family was Jewish. Her mother, Hedwig Adolf, was an artist, while her father, Jakob Adolf, was a lawyer. Adolf had one older sister, Anna Simona Adolf (Mrs. Spiegel; 1893–1983), who became a medical doctor. Helen and Anna Adolf were first cousins of writer Leonie Adele Spitzer.

She received her medical degree from the University of Vienna and eventually moved to the United States to work in medical education. Adolf attended the University of Vienna and graduated in 1923 with her PhD in literature. Unable to find work in Vienna, she moved to Leipzig, Germany to seek work.

Career in Europe

Upon moving to Leipzig, she worked for Reclam. At Reclam, she worked on creating publications focused around the history of the German Confederation through the beginning of World War I in Germany. Outside of working at Reclam, Adolf also wrote poetry and studied subjects like religion and psychology. She also translated literature, including Sainte Thérèse d'Avila by Jeanne Galzy. She served as secretary at the International Society for the Psychology of Religion from 1923 until 1938.

Selected works by Helen Adolf

"F. Hallali, Germ. Halali = "Praise (My Soul)"?" Studies in Philology. Vol. 46, No. 4 (Oct. 1949), pp. 514–520. "New Light on Oriental Sources for Wolfram's Parzival and Other Grail Romances." PMLA. Vol. 62, No. 2 (Jun. 1947), pp. 306–324. "Schlußwort." The German Quarterly, Vol. 34, No. 3 (May 1961), p. 237. "Studies in the Perlesvaus; The Historical Background." Studies in Philology. Vol. 42, No. 4 (Oct. 1945), pp. 723–740. "The Essence and Origin of Tragedy." The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. Vol. 10, No. 2 (Dec. 1951), pp. 112–125.