More on Frida Hahn.

Rankin, Robert L rankin at ku.edu
Wed Jan 26 23:08:59 UTC 2011


Sometime back there was discussion of the German scholar, Frida Hahn, who had been a student of Franz Boas and who had produced a draft dissertation on Ponca grammar, a copy of which was found by John Koontz in the APS library filed under Gordon Marsh (the Ioway-Otoe scholar).  I had concluded that, since she returned to Germany during the 1930s and was Jewish, it was possible that she had not survived the war.  This discussion was picked up by a German scholar, Juergen Langenkaemper, who is researching Franz Boas and his students.  He writes me that Frida Hahn did indeed survive the war and ultimately married a man she had met in New York.  She apparently died in 1984 but her daughter is still alive.  I hope that Mr. Langenkaemper will provide us with additional information on Frida Hahn as it becomes available.  It is good to know that the story of Ms. Hahn had a happy ending.

Bob

---------

Here is Langenkaemper's message to me:

 "When I was working about Franz Boas´ in the
early 1930s I had to stop at a certain point because nothing could be said
about Frida Hahn. Except your little discussion in April/May 2008 there
was really nothing. I followed some very speculative positions some of
yours had had and finally arrived at the point that it was clear that she
had survived the war. Finally I found her daughter, and it is absolutely
sure that Katrin Husemann as she called herself later according to her
second name and to the man she had married - she had met him in New York -
was exactly Frida Hahn. She had told her daughter that she had studied
with Boas and that she had been with the Ponca Indians. Photos the
daughter had sent to me last week, proof this. I´ll try to convince her
that we must look if her mother who died in 1985, had left her old Ponca
material at her house near Hamburg. I hope so. I don´t know whether the
Ponca nation might be interested. But if there is anybody left who might
remember the days when Frida Hahn was in Oklahoma, we must act quite
quickly. These persons might be 90 years old.

It´s very sad to hear that Tom Leonard died last year. I think it was him
who told me that his mother (who had adopted him, if I remember well) had
worked for Frida as a school girl. Frida had told about this in a letter
to Boas in summer 1933.

I would be very anxious to get in contact with the Ponca nation, if they
are interested. If you and Kathleen Shea could help that would be great.

Next week, I´ll be in Canada to talk about Boas and his German contacts in
the 1930s, including Frida Hahn and Günter Wagner (Yuchi and Comanche) at
a conference, organized by Regna Darnell. The problem of the code talkers
and Germans who came to the US to study American Indian languages might be
very interesting. Have you heard of others except Hahn and Wagner who had
done this with the help of Boas. Could there have been anyone else than
Boas, Kroeber and Lowie to guide students?

Best regards,

Jürgen Langenkämper"



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