Ilse Lichtenstädter

Ilse Lichtenstädter (10 September 1901 – 23 May 1991) was a Jewish German-American Orientalist who fled Nazi Germany. She studied Middle Eastern languages and philosophy, and also taught at Harvard University.

Life and work Ilse Lichtenstädter was born in Hamburg, Germany, on 10 September 1901. Her father was the scholar Jakob Lichtenstädter, a teacher at the Talmud Thora Realschule. She passed her Abitur in 1922 at a convent school and then became a teacher, while studying Semitic languages and philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in 1927. Shortly after completing her doctorate on Nasib in ancient Arabic poetry in 1931, her influential supervisor Josef Horovitz died. According to Johnston-Bloom, "Lichtenstadter often references Horovitz’s legacy in her own appeals for a renewed Judeo-Arabic symbiosis."

Leaving Germany She was studying for her habilitation when the Nazis (National Socialists) came to power in Germany. In 1933, Lichtenstädter, a Jew, was forbidden by law from continuing her scholarship work in her home country, and so she moved to Great Britain, where she initially made a living by typing and proofreading (1933–1934) as a researcher at the Queen's College Library. At the same time, she attended Oxford University for three years, where she received another doctorate with David Samuel Margoliouth (1858-1940), resulting in an edition of the Kitäb al-muhabbar. From 1935 to 1938, she worked for the Oxford University Press.