Wilma Iggers

Wilma Abeles Iggers (23 March 1921 – 24 February 2025) was a Czech-born German-American Germanist and cultural historian. She is known for her work on Czechs, Germans and Jews in Central Europe and Bohemia, and publications such as The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia and Women of Prague. Ethnic Diversity and Cultural Change from the Eighteenth Century to the Present.

She fled Czechoslovakia in 1938 due to the threat of National Socialism and emigrated to Canada with her family. She received her B.A. from McMaster University, and her M.A. and PhD from the University of Chicago where she met her husband Georg Iggers. She taught at a variety of institutions across the United States including the historically black Philander Smith College, Dillard University, and Canisius University.

Early life Childhood in Czechoslovakia She was born in the village of Mířkov near Horšovský Týn in Czechoslovakia to a Czech-Jewish family. Iggers attended elemntary school in Horšovský Týn. They both taught there until 1957 when they moved to New Orleans, Louisiana to teach at Dillard University until 1961. After this, Iggers and her husband took some time to travel to Germany and France where they lived first in Le Mée and later on in Göttingen. She was promoted to professor in 1974.

Most of Iggers' scholarly work consisted of studying texts about Jews in the Czech lands. She had a particular interest in the social and cultural history of the area and its people. This research led to the publication of her book The Jews of Bohemia and Moravia which is a collation of texts on the topic from the last 250 years. In 1990 she began to split her life between the United States and Germany, and she retired from teaching permanently in 1991.