Kate Bosse-Griffiths

Käthe Bosse-Griffiths (16 July 1910 – 4 April 1998) was an eminent Egyptologist. Born in Germany, she moved to Britain as a political refugee and married a Welshman. She became a writer in the Welsh language, and made a unique contribution to Welsh literature.

Early years Käthe Bosse was born in Wittenberg in Germany in 1910, the second of four children. Her father, Paul Bosse (1881-1947), was a distinguished gynaecologist and head of Wittenberg town hospital. Her mother Käthe Bosse (née Levin, 1886-1944) was of Jewish parentage, but Bosse was brought up in the Lutheran Church. After completing secondary school in her hometown, she was admitted to the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, where she gained a doctorate in Classics and Egyptology in 1935. Her thesis focused on the human figure in late Egyptian sculpture. Soon after, she started work at the Egyptology and Archaeology Department of the Berlin State Museums, but she and her father were dismissed from their posts when it emerged that her mother was Jewish.

Bosse escaped Nazi persecution and left Germany for Britain in 1936. In 1938, while at Oxford as a senior member of Somerville College, she met a fellow Egyptologist and research student, J. Gwyn Griffiths. Griffiths, a Welsh and Classics scholar was brought up in the Rhondda and graduated from University College Cardiff (now Cardiff University) where his influence in Ancient Egypt was kindled by Kathleen Freeman.

Bosse and Griffiths returned to the Rhondda and made their home in the village of Pentre, living at 14 St Stephen's Avenue. Griffiths had been appointed a teacher at Porth County School. Her sister Dorothee was imprisoned for six weeks, but released. She also published scores of articles on archaeological matters.

Bosse-Griffiths' literary output of short stories and novels included Anesmwyth Hoen (1941), Fy Chwaer Efa a Storïau Eraill (1944), Mae'r Galon wrth y Llyw (1957; reprinted with a new introduction in 2016 by Honno Welsh Women's Classics), and Cariadau (1995), and two travel books, Trem ar Rwsia a Berlin (1962), and Tywysennau o'r Aifft (1970). Her novels and short stories concentrate on Welsh women's lives and ideas which were taboo, such as abortion, adultery, and women's relationship with religion.

Bosse-Griffiths' son Heini wrote A Haven from Hitler, which told the story of her family and escape from Nazi Germany.