Maria Dorothea Simon

Maria Dorothea Simon (; 6 August 1918 – 8 March 2022) was an Austrian psychologist and scholar of social work. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna near the end of the First World War, she was educated in Austria and Czechoslovakia but emigrated to London after the latter was annexed by Germany in 1938. While in the United Kingdom, she worked at the Hampstead Nurseries, an experimental child care centre run by the psychoanalyst Anna Freud. She was married to the jurist and resistance activist .

After a period in Denmark, Simon studied psychology in Vienna and worked as an academic in the United States. Having returned to Austria in 1963, she was appointed to the directorship of the Akademie für Sozialarbeit der Stadt Wien, an academy for social work in 1970. During her tenure, which lasted until 1983, the academy reformed Austrian social work education in accordance with contemporary professional standards. Simon is credited by the sociologist Barbara Louis with breaking "new ground for future generations [of female students]" in her field. She lived to the age of 103 and remained involved with her subject during retirement.

Early life and education Maria Dorothea Pollatschek was born into a Jewish family in Vienna on 6 August 1918. Her father Rudolf was a Bohemian engineer from Mnichovo Hradiště. Her mother Juliane, who came from a family of assimilated Jews in Vienna, was the first woman to study at the Exportakademie, a university for business and economics. Simon attended a primary school in Vienna's and later a gymnasium for daughters of civil servants. As a student, Simon joined the socialist Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair.

It was on a skiing holiday put on by the organisation in 1934 that she met her future husband ,

Academic career From 1945 to 1946, Simon lived with a host family in Denmark while her husband worked at the Embassy of the United States in Copenhagen. The couple's first of four children was born during this period. In 1946, she moved to Seattle and worked for the Jewish Family Welfare Service. She later stated that her experience with psychoanalysis, a popular field within psychology at the time, was a decisive factor in her hiring. Having obtained American citizenship, she returned to her native Austria in 1947,

Legacy The sociologist Barbara Louis describes Simon's contribution to the development of Austrian social work during her directorship as "fundamental and enduring" . Discussing her accomplishments as a lecturer, she credits Simon with having combined her international academic experience with innovative teaching methods. This combination allowed her to open new perspectives to Austrian students in a time when modes of instruction were generally conservative. According to Louis, Simon "broke new ground for future generations [of female students]" in her field. In a volume on the Austrian scholar of social work , the sociologists Peter Pantucek and Maria Maiss label Simon as a "legend" in her field, writing that both Simon and Arlt viewed social work and its study as a "continuation of the Enlightenment project" .