Sophie Pataky

Sophie Caroline Pataky, née Stipek (5 April 1860 – 24 January 1915) was an Austrian bibliographer. Her two-volume Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder (Dictionary of German Women of the Pen) published in 1898, was the first German-language encyclopaedia of women writers edited by a woman.

Cover of Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder

Production of Encyclopedia

Born in Podiebrad, Austrian Empire, Pataky was married to the engineer and patent attorney Carl Pataky (1844-1914).[1] He had founded a specialist publishing house for metal technology in Vienna in 1875,[2] in which Pataky collaborated alongside her "family duties."[3] The couple had lived in Berlin since the late 1870s or early 1880s.

Pataky initially had no connections to the feminist movement, but attended the International Women's Congress at the Berlin Town Hall in the summer of 1896. As a result, she became interested in women's issues and began researching literature by and for women. At that time, the most recent encyclopedia was Carl Wilhelm Otto August von Schindel's work Die deutschen Schriftstellerinnen des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts, which had been published in the 1820s. The lack of a sequel or another comprehensive work or encyclopaedia on nineteenth-century women writers prompted Pataky to contact women writers herself, collect biographies of women writers since 1840 and eventually publish them in the two-volume work Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder. Both volumes were published in 1898 by Pataky’s publishing house; however, that business specialised in metal technology and the encyclopaedia was moved to the publishing house of Schuster & Loeffler in 1899.[4]

Name of Encyclopedia

Pataky originally planned to publish the books under the title Lexikon deutscher Schriftstellerinnen (Encyclopaedia of German Women Writers), but changed the title when numerous women writers refused to contribute because they did not see themselves as writers. Pataky's aim was "to present women writers in general, regardless of the form in which they express their intellectual activity with the pen",[5] to be recorded in the book. In total, Pataky named 6000[6] Women authors, with a large number represented exclusively by their address. By including cookbook authors, journalists, and editors among others, she provided a more comprehensive picture of women writers than, for example, Franz Brümmer, who published at the same time.

Around 1898, Pataky was a board member of the German Women Writers' Association.[7] At this time, starting from her encyclopaedia project, she began to compile a library of works by German-speaking women authors. She had the authors presented in Deutsche Frauen der Feder send her their own works, which were then collected in the Bibliothek deutscher Frauenwerke.[8] By 1898, Pataky had already collected over 1000 books. In this context, a dispute with the author Anna von Krane has survived, who accused Pataky of wanting to enrich himself with the books.[7] The correspondence with Krane, together with a few manuscripts of the project, has survived in the Archive of the German Women's Movement in Kassel.[9]

Later life

Pataky and her husband lived in Merano from 1907, where they acquired and lived in the Villa Steffihof in Untermais. In the same year, Carl Pataky took K. J. Müller into his publishing house as a silent partner. Müller took over the publishing house after Carl Pataky died on 11 August 1914 during a holiday in Bad Reichenhall.

Sophie Pataky died of a cerebral stroke at her home in Untermais on 24 January 1915 and was buried in the local Catholic cemetery on 26 January 1915. In her will she bequeathed 20,000 crowns to the Municipal Sanatorium in Merano[10] and the Maiser Versorgungshaus 10,000 Kronen. Data on further book projects are not known.

Publications
  • Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder. Eine Zusammenstellung der seit dem Jahre 1840 erschienenen Werke weiblicher Autoren, nebst Biographieen der lebenden und einem Verzeichnis der Pseudonyme. Herausgegeben von Sophie Pataky. Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898
    • 1. vol: A-L
    • 2. vol: M-Z

Numerized:

References
  1. Carl Pataky married Sophie Stipek in his second marriage. From his first marriage he had a daughter who married first the publisher Richard Schuster and later the publisher Ludwig Loeffler (Verlag Schuster & Loeffler). Cf. Birgit Kuhbandner: Unternehmer Zwischen Markt und Moderne: Verleger und die zeitgenössische deutschsprachige Literatur an der Schwelle zum 20. Jahrhundert. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, p. 93, 141.
  2. Cf. 132 Years of Installation DKZ, retrieved 16 September 2021.
  3. Preface. In Pataky (ed.): Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder. A compilation of the works of female authors published since the year 1840, together with biographies of the living ones and a list of pseudonyms. Vol. 1. Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 5.
  4. Birgit Kuhbandner: Unternehmer zwischen Markt und Moderne: Verleger und die zeitgenössische deutschsprachige Literatur an der Schwelle zum 20. Jahrhundert. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 2008, p. 141.
  5. Preface. In: Sophie Pataky (ed.): Lexikon deutscher Frauen der Feder. A compilation of the works of female authors published since the year 1840, together with biographies of the living ones and a list of pseudonyms. Vol. 1. Carl Pataky, Berlin 1898, p. 10.
  6. In both volumes, the wrong number 600 is often mentioned, which was due to a transcription error and eventually found its way into various publications. Cf. Lucia Hacker: Schreibende Frauen um 1900: Rollen - Bilder - Gesten. Lit, Berlin 2007, p. 27 Note 13.
  7. Notes on the Partial Estate of Sophie Pataky (1860-?) in the Archive of the German Women's Movement in Kassel, p. 3 (PDF; 11 kB)
  8. Cf. Bibliotheksstempel in der Zentral- und Landesbibliothek Berlin
  9. Vgl. nachlassdatenbank.de
  10. According to the Maiser Wochenblatt of 27 March 1915, p. 5 (Numbered on Teßmann-Bibliothek).
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