Else Jerusalem

Else Jerusalem was born Else Kotányi in Vienna in 1876.[1][2] Her parents, Henriette and Max Kotányi, were middle-class Jews of Hungarian origin; her father worked as a wine merchant.

Though she was denied a full university education, she studied philosophy as a guest student at the University of Vienna, becoming one of the first women to attend the school.[1][3]

Jerusalem is best known as a writer and public intellectual. Her work centered on the then extremely controversial topic of female sexuality.[4] Early writing on the subject included Venus am Kreuz (1899) and Komödie der Sinn (1902).[1]

At the turn of the century, she became an influential feminist intellectual in Vienna, serving as a "thought leader" and criticizing such anti-feminist works as Otto Weininger's Geschlecht und Charakter ("Sex and Character").[1][2] She also wrote for such magazines as Maximilian Harden's Die Zukunft.[2] Jerusalem is considered an important member of the fin-de-siècle bourgeois women's movement in Austria.[5]

In her 1902 work Gebt uns die Wahrheit! ("Give Us the Truth!"), based on a speech she had given the previous year, she advocated for sex education to prepare young women for married life.[1][2]

A first-edition copy of Der heilige Skarabäus.

Jerusalem conducted independent research on prostitution in early 20th-century Vienna.[4] In 1909, she published the 700-page book Der heilige Skarabäus ("The Sacred Scarab"), which became a best-seller. The novel was based on her own investigative research. Set in a Vienna brothel, its content was scandalous for the period.[1][2][4]

In 1928, Der heilige Skarabäus was adapted into the German silent film The Green Alley.[1][6] It was published in English translation as The Red House in 1932.[7] However, when the Nazis took power later in the decade, they banned the book.[2] After decades out of print, Der heilige Skarabäus was republished in Austria in 2016, accompanied by research from the scholar Brigitte Spreitzer.[8][9]

After emigrating to Argentina in 1911, Jerusalem also produced a play, Steinigung in Sakya (1929), and a philosophical treatise, Die Dreieinigkeit der menschlichen Grundkräfte (1939).[2]

She married her first husband, the factory owner Alfred Jerusalem, in 1901, and had two children with him: Edith and Fritz Albert. Her son would go on to become the communist writer Fritz Jensen. After she divorced Alfred, she married Viktor Widakowich in 1910.[1] She denounced her Jewish faith in 1911 and was baptized as part of her marriage to her new husband.[2]

In 1912, she moved with Widakowich to Argentina, where she conducted ethnological research.[1] With her new husband, she had a daughter, Miriam.[10] Never satisfied with her life in Argentina, Jerusalem traveled to Europe frequently. She died in Buenos Aires in 1943, at the age of 66.[2][3][9]

• Venus am Kreuz (1899)
• Komödie der Sinn (1902)
• Gebt uns die Wahrheit! (1902)
• Der heilige Skarabäus (1909)
• Steinigung in Sakya (1929)
• Die Dreieinigkeit der menschlichen Grundkräfte (1939)

• Digitized versions of Gebt uns die Wahrheit! and Der heilige Skarabäus via the Austrian National Library