Elisabeth Jungmann

Who was Elisabeth Jungmann?

Elisabeth Jungmann was an interpreter and the secretary, literary executor and second wife of caricaturist and parodist Sir Max Beerbohm.

A German Jewess, born in Lublinitz in Upper Silesia, the daughter of Adolf and Agnes Jungmann and the sister of Otto Jungmann and sociologist and historian Eva Gabriele Reichmann, she served as a nurse for the German army during World War I. Jungmann was the personal secretary and English interpreter for Gerhart Hauptmann from 1922 to 1933, and then for Rudolf G. Binding. Binding had hoped to marry Jungmann but was prevented from doing so by the Nuremberg Laws.

Jungmann had been a friend of the Beerbohms since 1927 when she had translated at a meeting between Beerbohm and Hauptmann, who wintered in Rapallo in Italy. She became a regular visitor to their home, the Villino Chiaro in Rapallo. Because she was a Jew Jungmann left Europe and went to Britain at the start of World War II, where she resumed her friendship with the Beerbohm's at their temporary home in Abinger. During the War Jungmann worked for the Jewish Central Information Office in London as a research assistant.