Obituary for Wilma Iggers

It is with deep sorrow and great gratitude that we bid farewell to Prof. Dr. Wilma Iggers, née Abeles, who passed away at the age of 104.

Wilma Iggers was a Germanist and cultural historian known far beyond the USA, the Czech Republic and Germany, who fled to Canada with her Jewish family in 1938 to escape the Nazi terror and worked throughout her life to promote understanding between people of different religions, cultures and world views. Together with her husband, the historian Georg Iggers, she was active in the black civil rights movement in the USA in the 1950s (Little Rock Nine) and later in the peace movement.

From the mid-sixties, Wilma and Georg Iggers taught in Buffalo, N.Y., but also increasingly spent time researching in Göttingen. They later maintained a permanent residence there and made friends both inside and outside the university.

Wilma Iggers was a recognized expert on Bohemian Jewry. In 2004 she was awarded the Masaryk Prize in Prague for her numerous publications. Wilma will not only be fondly remembered as a bridge-builder between East and West and between Christians and Jews, but also as a mother of three children who was always committed to helping others throughout her life.

We are very grateful to have known Wilma Iggers and will honor her memory as an honorary member of our association “Brücken Bauen e. V.” (www.zweiseitendergeschichte.de).

The Board of Directors:
Dr. Heinrich Pingel, Dr. Hajo Billmann, Birgit Rausch and Jannis Schröder

We join Prof. Wilma Iggers as friends, colleagues and companions:

Prof. i.R. Dr. Klaus J. Bade and Dr. Susanne C. Meyer, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Katerina Capkova, Prag
Prof. Dr. Mario Keßler, Berlin
Prof. i.R. Dr. Jürgen and Dr. Urte Kocka, Berlin
Dr. Rita Kuczynski, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Monika Richarz, Berlin
Prof. Dr. Hanns and Sabine Seidler, Darmstadt
Peter Th. Walther, PhD, Berlin

Herford, Berlin, Darmstadt, Prague, March 6, 2025

Obituaries

• Obituaries: Brücken Bauen e.V. – Association for intercultural understanding (Herford, Germany)
  Group of Göttingen female historians
  Society for Christian-Jewish collaboration (Göttingen, Germany)
  Source: Göttinger Tagblatt, March 8, 2025

• Mario Keßler (Berlin): “Für ein anderes, besseres Amerika. Das Vermächtnis der Literaturhistorikerin Wilma Iggers”. In: Neues Deutschland, March 12, 2025

• Frauke Geyken and Ingrid Laurien (Göttingen): Nachruf auf Wilma Iggers. In: DIE ZEIT, No. 11 (March 13, 2025), p. 60