Anneliese Riess

Childhood in humble circumstances

Anneliese Riess was born in Hamburg in 1910, the youngest of three siblings. After the First World War, the family lived in modest circumstances and moved to Berlin in 1921, where her father worked as a representative for a textile company. There, the financial situation slowly improved and Anneliese Riess began to take an interest in theatre and art.

Change from German studies to archaeology

Anneliese Riess enrolled at Berlin University in 1930 to study German studies. She enjoyed the opportunity to explore her own interests in the first few semesters, attended courses in various disciplines from law and medicine to art history and discovered her interest in ancient history. After two years, she transferred to the University of Freiburg for a semester, where she attended lectures by Heidegger and completed her first course in archaeology. However, she spent most of her time hiking in the Black Forest and along the Rhine. Anneliese Riess travelled through Italy with a friend in the summer of 1932. Completely impressed by the Italian cultural treasures, she decided to study archaeology in Berlin.

Continuation of studies in Italy

After the National Socialist takeover, Anneliese Riess witnessed how some of her fellow students suddenly appeared at the university in uniform. One acquaintance used the book burning on Opernplatz in May 1933 for personal gain and stuffed his coat pockets with books. On one occasion, National Socialist students wanted to throw Anneliese Riess out of the cafeteria, but her friends stood around her and protected her.

Anneliese Riess decided to leave Germany and continue her studies in Italy. She arrived in Rome in autumn 1933, but as she did not yet speak Italian and was otherwise ill-prepared for her stay abroad, she felt lonely at first. But the staff at the German Archaeological Institute helped her to find her way around the unfamiliar city. At the end of 1936, she completed her doctorate in Rome on the myth of Heracles.

In the meantime, Anneliese Riess' father had travelled to the USA and tried to establish a livelihood for the family there, while her mother initially stayed in Berlin and then temporarily joined her son, who had emigrated to South America in 1933. Anneliese Riess' sister Elsa also moved to Italy as a representative of a Munich company.

Unwanted in Italy

Anneliese also had no career prospects in Italy due to the growing anti-Semitic marginalisation. She therefore trained as a baby nurse in Geneva within a few months and then kept her head above water with odd jobs in Rome.

On the occasion of Hitler's state visit to Rome in May 1938, she was ordered to travel to her sister in Turin and report to the police there every day for several weeks so that she could not, in her own estimation, carry out an assassination attempt on Hitler in Rome. She then decided to emigrate to the USA.

Life in the USA

In April 1939, Anneliese Riess finally received the visa that saved her life and met up with her father in New York. Her mother travelled from South Africa shortly afterwards, but was unable to return to Germany after the Reichspogromnacht and had to leave the family property behind. Elsa was interned in southern Italy during the war and was liberated by the British army after more than three years.

Thanks to her Swiss education, Anneliese Riess quickly found work in New York and also learnt shorthand and typing so that she could work in offices. In this way, she also met the famous psychoanalyst Spitz and became interested in his research on developmental psychology. She eventually decided to become a self-employed psychologist and took up a second degree. In 1957, at the age of 46, she was awarded a doctorate in psychology and opened her own practice. She also taught at City University in New York.

Despite her enthusiasm for psychology, Anneliese Riess regretted in retrospect that she had not become an archaeologist. Until her death, she read archaeological journals and visited excavation sites on her travels.

She died in New York in 2005.