Clara Michelson Collection

The Clara Michelson Collection documents the life and work of the writer and graphologist, Clara Michelson. The main subjects of the collection are her life as a Latvian Jew from Riga, her writings and her publications. The collection consists of personal correspondence (Series I), manuscripts with an added list of all titles and publications (Series II) and a photograph.

She wrote in German, French and (her early stories) in Russian. From 1910 - 1913 she was a regular contributor to Die Waage, a Viennese weekly, which published several of her short stories, as well as her essays The Legacy of Tolstoi and Ibsen's Brand and Kant's Categorial Imperative (Folder 8).

In 1936, Philo Verlag printed a small volume of her short stories in German, which can be found in Series II Folder 9. She was also interested and versed in graphology. A publication on graphology, Le Symbole dans l'Écriture, appeared in Paris in 1936. Although Clara was not interested in Judaism as a religion, much of her work addressed Jewish themes. She depicted Jewish life in Eastern Europe in cultural and humanistic terms. Her topics reflect her concern with psychological and sociological issues, as well as the position of women in Eastern European society.

Biographical information on her - especially giving evidence of her travels and emigrations/immigrations - can be extracted from her correspondence with family and friends, especially with Sacha and Leo Rosenthal. The correspondence starts in November 1925, when Clara was in Berlin, and continues until September 1937 (Series II). Main biographical data can be found in her nephew's publication: Max Michelson, City of life, City of Death: Memories of Riga.

There are several letters (Folder 15), manuscripts (Folder 16) and loose notes (Folder 17), that have been added later. The Addenda can be found in Series III.