GERMAN WOMAN SCIENTIST

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23592, 31 August 1938, Page 10

GERMAN WOMAN SCIENTIST

MARRIAGE TO AUSTRALIAN PROTECTION OF PROPERTY (From Our Own Correspondent' SYDNEY, Aug. 23. A marriage in dramatic circumstances of a Jewish woman sccientist and her Australian assistant is reported from Cairns (North Queensland). The scientist, a German by birth, arrived in the far north of Australia several months ago to do zoological work for an oversea institution. Working chiefly on her own in the jungles of the Queensland tablelands, she collected many scientifically-important specimens. She then went to the far west of Queensland to obtain desert fauna. She returned again to the north a few weeks ago to prepare for an expedition into the remote jungles of Cape York Peninsula. In the meantime she had engaged an assistant io help in the work. One day she received an official letter from Berlin which contained a formal demand that she should submit full particulars of her ancestry. The demand was made in regard to valuable property which she owned in Germany, and which was liable to seizure by the Government as her ancestry was non-Aryan. An alternative demand was made that she should produce proof that she was a British subject, by a fixed date, which happened to be only a few days after the receipt of the letter. Being of Jewish extraction, the scientist realised that her property would be confiscated. As she had already become engaged to her assistant, the marriage was carried out at a registry office, just before the date fixed in the Berlin letter. She is now a British subject, and hopes by this means to prevent the loss of her property.