Bergman, Hannah née Estermann, prof. of Spanish; b. Hamburg 17 June 1925. R: Jewish. E: 1933 U.K, 1933 U.S. Cit: 1939 U.S, fmly. Ger. F: → Immanuel Estermann M: Rosa Chwolles, b. Berlin 1902, Jewish, univ. educ, mem. Blau-Weiss, Hadassah, chemist in Ger, 1933 to U.K, 1933 to U.S, 1964 to Isr. S: Eva, b. San Francisco 1932, 1933 returned to U.S, Ph.D. prof. of botany. ∞ 1953 John Bergman, b. Gunzenhausen, Bavaria, Ger. 1923, Jewish, 1934 to Fr, then to U.S, 1945-46 serv, U.S. Army in Ger, 1950 J.D, lawyer. C: Michael, b. 1959.

1931-32 in Berkeley, Calif. with fam; father had Rockefeller Found fel. 1933 father dismissed from Univ. Hamburg. Spring 1933 emigr. to U.K. to join rels. Nov. 1939 emigr. to U.S. with fam. 1943-46 Carnegie Inst. of Technology (now Carnegie-Mellon Univ.), Pittsburgh, Penn; 1946 B.S. 1946-47 att. Smith Coll, Northampton, Mass; 1947 M.A. 1947-48 instr, Smith Coll. 1948-51 att. Univ. California, Berkeley; 1948-50 teaching assist; 1951 Ph.D. 1951-53 instr, Brandeis Univ, Waltham, Mass. 1953-57 lect. and instr, Hunter Coll, New York (C.U.N.Y.). 1958-59 rev. fgn. motion pictures, N.Y. State Dept. of Educ. 1961-67 assist. prof, Hunter Coll. 1967- with Lehman Coll, New York (C.U.N.Y.): 1967- assoc, then full prof, 1968 chmn, dept. of Romance langs; concurr. prof. at C.U.N.Y. Grad. Cent. Mem: Intl. Assn. Hispanists; Am. Assn. Teachers of Sp; Hispanic Soc. of Am. (elected 1974). Spec. in var. aspects of Spanish theatre in the 17th century. A: (1975) New York.

Biblio: "Luis Quiñones de Benavente: His Technique of the Interlude" (diss, Univ. California, Berkeley, 1953; later publ. as Luis Quiñones de Benavente y sus Entremeses [Madrid, 1965]); ed, Entremeses de Quiñones de Benavente (Salamanca, Sp, 1968); ed, compiler, auth. of intro, Ramillete de Entremeses (Madrid, 1970); Luis Quiñones de Benavente (New York, 1972); contrib. num. arts. and revs. in Eng. and Sp. to prof. journs. Sources: Hand, Qu. - R.F.J.I.

Quelle: International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933 - 1945. Volume II/Part 1: A-K. The Arts, Sciences, and Literature. Hrsg. v. Herbert A. Strauss; Werner Röder. München; New York; London; Paris, K.G. Saur, 1983. (leicht modifiziert) (an, ks)

Anfang des Eintrags
Seitenanfang

• "Una caricatura de Juan Ruiz de Alarcón." In: Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica, 4 (1954): 419-422.
• "Para la fecha de 'Las Civilidades' [de Quiñones de Benavente]." In: Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica México 10, 2 (1956): 187-193 1956.
• "El romancero en Quiñones de Benavente." In: Nueva Revista de Filología Hispánica 15 (1961): 229-46.
• Luis Quiñones de Benavente y sus entremeses: con un catálogo biográfico de los actores citados en sus obras. Madrid, ed. Castalia., 1965. [Erw. Fass. d. Diss,Berkeley 1953].
• "Juana Rana se retrata." In: Homenaje a Antonio Rodríguez-Moñino, Madrid, 1966 1: 65-73.
• "Los entremeses postcervantinos de la Biblioteca y Museo del Instituto del Teatro de Barcelona." In: Estudios escénicos, 14 (1970): 12-17.
• Luis Quiñones de Benavente. New York, Twayne Publ., 1972.
• "Algunos entremeses desconocidos de Luis Quiñones de Benavente." In: Pincus Sigele, Rizel; Sobejano, Gonzalo; Aub, Max (Hrsg.): Homenaje a Casalduero: Crítica y poesía. Ofrecido por sus amigos y discípulos. Madrid, Gredos, 1972: 85-94.
• "'Los refranes del viejo celoso' y obras afines." In: Nueva Revista de filología hispánica, 24, 2 (1975): 376-397.
• "El 'juicio final de todos los poetas españoles muertos y vivos' y el Certamen poético de 1638." In: Boletín de la Real Academia Española, 55 (1975): 551-610.
• A catalogue of Comedias sueltas in the New York Public Library (Zus. mit Szmuk, Szilvia E.). London, Grant & Cutler, 2 Bde., 1980-1981.

Herausgeberin von:

• Quiñones de Benavente, Luis. Entremeses. Salamanca u.a., Anaya, 1968.
• Ramillete de entremeses y bailes: nuevamente recogido de los antiguos poetas de España siglo XVII. Madrid, Castalia, ¹1970, ²1984.

Quellen:

• KVK
• http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/L/A-Robert.R.Lauer-1/BIBQuinones.html (31.05.2005)
• http://cvc.cervantes.es/obref/verdad_sospechosa/bibliografia.htm (31.05.2005) (ks)

Zusammengestellt von Kirsten Süselbeck.

Anfang des Eintrags
Seitenanfang

Nachruf

Hannah Estermann Bergman (1925-81) - born, like her friend Margit Frenk, into a cultured Jewish-German Hamburg family, came as a child to this country and earned her B.S. degree in 1946 at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, a school at which her father, a noted scientist, held a professorship. Hamburg was famous throughout Central Europe for its traditional openmindedness toward the Hispanic world; whether this factor was instrumental in making Hannah fall under the spell of classical Spanish literature I do not undertake to assert. It is a fact, however, that just one year later, namely by the time she earned, with distinction, her M.A. degree at Smith College, she had become a confemed devotee of the Spanish Golden Age theater, drawing most of her inspiration from the expert guidance of Ruth Lee Kennedy. It was Dr. Kennedy who prompted and helped her to move to Berkeley for her predoctoral training, chiefly with José F. Montesinos. The year the Ph.D. degree was conferred on her at the West Coast was also the year of the start of her long and happy marriage to a lawyer in New York City, a leap which rather precisely determined the course of her subsequent teaching career: at Brandeis (1951-53), at Hunter (1953-57), then for twenty long years at CUNY's Lehman College in the Bronx, where she briefly became department chairman (1968-69) and in the end was promoted to a full professorship. She returned to Berkeley as a visiting professor for just one quarter in the 'seventies; her younger sister Eva, who had followed in her footsteps as regards the westward trek but shared their father's scientific bent (UCB Ph.D. in Soil Science, 1958), remained loyal to California.
Hannah is represented in RPh only by a short string of brief reviews (cf. XXIV:4 [May 1971], 675f. for one example), because her touching infatuation with a single and, to all intents and purposes, minor figure of the Golden Age theater, namely Luis Quiñones de Benavente (1589?-1651), made it difficult for this Editorial Office to persuade her to assess samples of medievalistic literary research. Her dissertation, titled "L. Q. de B.; his Technique of the Interlude" (June 1953), paved the way for at least four convergent or overlapping books: L. Q. de B. y sus entremeses (M.: Castalia, 1965) - its value enhanced by a biographic catalogue of the actors mentioned in the Chosen author's writings; ed. Entremeses (Salamanca [1968]); ed. Ramillete de entremeses y bailes nuevamente recogido de los antiguos poetas de España, siglo XVII (M.: Castalia, 1970); as well as a 1972 book in the Twayne Series, hence written in English, once more L. Q. de B.
This short list of book-length publications gives the impression of one-sidedness; actually, Hannah had anything but a one-track mind. Among other avocations and enthusiasms she was a Jewish activist (her widowed mother, who has outlived her, resides in Israel at present, I understand). One may argue that Hannah could have sought richer fulfillment of her potentialities by writing on Biblical or medieval Jewish themes in Lope, in the wake of Maria Rosa Lida de Malkiel (see BH, LXXV, 73-113); or she might have participated in the restoration of the Judeo-Spanish theater, in Amsterdam and, as we now realize thanks to Elena Romero's Complutense thesis (1979) and the three-volume venture based on it, also in the Balkan Peninsula. By concentrating on one minor writer of the past, to whose interludes only a single modern critic shortly before her, namely José Manuel Blecua, had lent more than passing attention (1945), she conserved perhaps sufficient energy and vitality for acquitting herself with zest of her other commitments: as an exemplary college teacher, mother, wife, and friend.

Quelle: Malkiel, Yakov. Four obituary notices. In: Romance Philology, XXXVI, 2 (1982): 225-226. (ks)

Anfang des Eintrags
Seitenanfang