The Vienna-based musician and producer Stefan Frankenberger created an audiobook based on the letters from exile between the Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner and the German chemist Otto Hahn. Last year the ACF was delighted to present a staged reading of these letters performed by the local actors Jennifer Mendenhall and Michael Kramer.
This year, in cooperation with the Austrian Cultural Fora in New York and London, we offer to friends of the ACFDC a free copy of the audiobook. It can be downloaded starting December 1, 2020 on the Website of buchfunk.de. Downloads are limited in numbers, first come, first serve.
When: December 2020 through January 2021
Where: online | buchfunk.de
Photo | (c) Sophie: A Digital Library of Works by German-Speaking Women (sophie.byu.edu)
Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner is one of the most renowned women in science. Even though she received more than 40 Nobel Prize nominations, she was never awarded the prize. In 1944 Otto Hahn won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery of the nuclear fission of uranium, the splitting of the atom – a research project Meitner and Hahn started together. In 1938, Meitner, who was Jewish, fled Nazi Germany but still contributed to the research and the breakthrough discovery. From her exile Meitner corresponded with Hahn, thus the nuclear fission plays a major role in their letters. However, the loss of her work and friends weighed hard on her; her loneliness as well as her concern for the world in these dark times are addressed frequently in her letters, revealing an extremely sensitive, profound and eloquent person.
A detailed portrait on the extraordinary life of Lise Meitner is available here: Lise Meitner (1878-1968): The Discovery of Nuclear Fission.