Burjan, Hildegard (1883–1933)

Austrian social reformer who founded Caritas Socialis, to aid the poor, aged, and ill. Name variations: Burian. Born Hildegard Freund in Gorlitz an der Neisse, Silesia, on January 30. 1883; died in Vienna, Austria, on June 11, 1933; daughter of Adolf Freund (a merchant); studied in Berlin and Zurich; awarded Ph.D., University of Zurich, 1908; married Alexander Burjan, 1907; children: one daughter, Elisabeth.

Moved to Vienna (1909); converted to Roman Catholic faith and became involved in issues relating to social reform including abuses of child and domestic labor; active during World War I in alleviating the suffering of working-class families in Austria; founded "Caritas Socialis" (1918); elected as the only female deputy of the Christian Social Party to Austrian Parliament (1919); responsible for numerous social reforms during the First Austrian Republic (1919–33); founded "Bahnhofsmission" (1922); revived her "Soziale Hilfe" organization (1924); founded "St.-Elisabeth-Tisch" (1930); was close friend of Cardinal Piffl and Ignaz Seipel.

It is one of history's ironies that the social reformer Hildegard Burjan, one of the most influential and respected Roman Catholic women in 20th-century Austria, was born in the German Silesian city of Gorlitz an der Neisse, on January 30, 1883, into an assimilated, non-religious Jewish family that cherished the secular, humanistic values of 19th-century German culture. Her parents were strongly in favor of her receiving an excellent education, and when they moved to Berlin she was enrolled at the prestigious Charlottenschule. At age 16, she moved to Zurich to complete her secondary education at that city's respected Grossmunsterschule, graduating with honors.

Her studies at the University of Zurich brought her in contact with two powerful personalities, Professors Friedrich Wilhelm Foerster and Robert Saitschik. Both advocated a Christian humanism appropriate to an age of science, rationalism and rapid intellectual and social change. Deeply stirred by these ideas, she considered converting to Roman Catholicism at this time but some misgivings remained. In the spring of 1907, she married Hungarian-born Alexander Burjan, an engineering student. With Hildegard Burjan's 1908 graduation (magna cum laude in German philology) as a Doctor of Philosophy, a promising academic career appeared to be just on the horizon.

Events in the next several years were to radically change the course of Burjan's life. First, she and her husband moved to Berlin, where he began working for a major electric power corporation. Soon after their arrival in the German capital, Burjan became seriously ill. Barely surviving four major operations and seven months' hospitalization, Burjan believed that she owed her life to a "miracle" and to the nuns of Berlin's Catholic St. Hedwig's Hospital, whose compassion had seen her through the illness. Her previous doubts about Christianity evaporated, and she became an ardent convert to Roman Catholicism. Suddenly feeling out of place in Lutheran (and Socialist) Berlin, she informed her husband that she would prefer to live in a Catholic country, and when a career opportunity appeared for him in a telephone company in Vienna, they moved in the summer of 1909. Armed with suggestions concerning the Catholic world of Vienna, Frau Burjan quickly became part of the glittering social life of that imperial capital. More important for her, she became acquainted with leading Catholic prelates. The Burjans' first year in Vienna brought the birth of their daughter (and only child), Elisabeth. Strongly impressed by his wife's piety, Alexander Burjan also converted to the Roman Catholic faith.

Hildegard signed up for Countess Lola Marschall 's "social courses," which provided detailed insights into the serious problems of Vienna's poorer classes and the continuing need for both private charity and public legislation. At this time, she met and chose as her private confessor the Dominican monk Norbert Geggerle, forming a spiritual tie that would endure until her death more than two decades later. Impatient with purely theoretical discussions of the many social ills in Austria, Burjan gathered data on child labor and wrote a simple but eloquent pamphlet condemning this practice as totally unacceptable in a modern society on both moral and social grounds. This strong condemnation from a wealthy and socially prominent Catholic conservative with close ties to the hierarchy of the Austrian church stimulated public debate on this issue. Along with support from leading Social Democratic women like Adelheid Popp , Burjan's agitation soon led to the abolition of child labor in Austria. During the years immediately preceding World War I, Burjan was also attentive to the sorry plight of Vienna's overworked and underpaid domestics, many of whom were poorly educated young women from rural areas.

The onset of World War I, greeted with immense enthusiasm by virtually all sectors of the population, soon led to major shortages of food, fuel and fiber. As is always the case in wartime, the poorer classes suffered the most. Burjan responded to their need by organizing the Verein "Soziale Hilfe" to purchase the basic elements of family survival on a wholesale basis in order to pass on the savings obtained to working women who found themselves increasingly hard-pressed to sustain their families. Supported by the Austrian church hierarchy, this organization appreciably improved the lives of at least 12,000 Austrian women. Burjan also organized sewing circles that enabled poor working women to produce articles of clothing that earned them modest but essential wages. The idea underlying these sewing circles was "education for self-help."

During the final phase of World War I, when the suffering of the masses in Vienna grew worse, Burjan founded a charitable organization named "Caritas Socialis," which would grow to become a major social agency of Austria's Roman Catholics in the next decades. By 1922, Caritas Socialis sisters were rendering assistance to the poor, aged and ill in Vienna and elsewhere in Austria. As the acknowledged founder of the organization, Hildegard Burjan had the role of an informal mother superior and general mentor. The beneficent role of Caritas Socialis in a society shattered by war was acknowledged even by its political adversaries. Although a bitter struggle raged between Catholic conservatives and Marxist Social Democrats, even militant socialists could find only words of praise for Hildegard Burjan.

The post-1918 Republic of Austria did not possess a viable economy and most of its citizens were demoralized by the immense problems faced by a new democracy in a Central Europe that smoldered with ethnic hatreds and class animosity. In this grim situation, Burjan founded, in 1922, the "Bahnhofsmission" to assist weary and impoverished travelers at train stations. In 1924, convinced that in time of peace the needs of society's outcasts and defeated must not be ignored, she revived her "Soziale Hilfe" organization. In 1930, as the world depression made conditions worse, she founded the "St.-Elisabeth-Tisch," which provided a simple but nourishing meal daily to some of Vienna's impoverished middle class.

By the early 1930s, Hildegard Burjan was in poor health, a result of her tireless work on behalf of the poor as well as the increasingly debilitating complications from her diabetes. She refused to cease her activities despite her physical decline. Burjan consulted on various social problems of the day with Chancellor Ignaz Seipel, a personal friend (and priest) whose own health was in rapid decline. She died on June 11, 1933, in Vienna, greatly mourned by Viennese of all faiths and virtually all political orientations. Only the growing Nazi Party despised both her and the Catholic Church to which she had been so devoted. With Burjan doubly cursed as a "blood-Jewess" and "disciple of Rome," the charitable organizations so closely linked with her name were banned in 1938 when Austria was annexed to Nazi Germany. After 1945, however, the Caritas Socialis organization was rapidly rebuilt, to the universal acclaim of the war-shattered people of Austria. Hildegard Burjan was proposed for sainthood after the Second Vatican Council, a slow process of beatification that still continues. In January 1983, her adopted country of Austria marked the occasion of the centenary of her birth by issuing a commemorative postage stamp in her honor. Her gravesite can still be visited in Vienna's Zentralfriedhof.

sources:

Ackerl, Isabella, and Friedrich Weissensteiner. Österreichisches Personenlexikon. Vienna: Carl Ueberreuter Verlag, 1992.

Biographical file, Arbeitsgemeinschaft "Biografisches Lexikon der österreichischen Frau," Institut für Wissenschaft und Kunst, Vienna.

Burjan-Domanig, Irmgard. Hildegard Burjan: Eine Frau der sozialen Tat. Salzburg: Otto Müller Verlag, 1950.

Gellott, Laura S. "Mobilizing Conservative Women: The Viennese Katholische Frauenorganisation in the 1920s," in Austrian History Yearbook. Vol. 22, 1991, pp. 110–130.

Havelka, Hans. Der Wiener Zentralfriedhof. Vienna: J & V Edition, 1989.

Kuderer, Peter. Hildegard Burjan: Ein Leben werbender Liebe. Vienna: Selbstverlag der Caritas Socialis, 1953.

Rennhofer, Friedrich. Ignaz Seipel, Mensch und Staatsmann: Eine biographische Dokumentation. Vienna: Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1978.

Waach, Hildegard. Ein Pionier der Nächstenliebe, Hildegard Burjan: Skizze eines grossen Lebens. Vienna: Verlag Herder, 1958.

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John Haag , Associate Professor, University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia