Today is the birthday, in 1867, of Gisela Januszewska. was an Austrian physician. Having earned her degree in Switzerland, she briefly worked in Germany before becoming the first female physician in the ethnically Serbian town of Banja Luka in Bosnia Herzegovina within the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
She was one of five children of Leopold Rosenfeld, an estate manager in the Slavonian town of Grubišno Polje. She received a degree in medicine from the University of Zurich in 1898. In March 1899, she was appointed Amtsärztin, a public health official, in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka, becoming its first female physician. During her career in Banja Luka, Januszewska was one of few physicians who strove to ensure that Bosnian Muslim women had proper access to healthcare.
She performed minor surgeries and gained fame treating patients with smallpox, typhoid, typhus and syphilis. Widowed in 1916, she volunteered to enter the Austrian military medical corps. Januszewska received several medals for her services, including German Red Cross Decoration and the Austrian Order of the Civil Merit. After the war, in 1919, she opened her own practice in Graz. She was widely respected for her social responsibility: not only did she treat the underprivileged for free, she also financially supported some of them. She was the second Austrian physician to be awarded the title Medizinalrat, an award for outstanding contributions to medicine.
When Germany took over Austria she became subject to their racial policies, Her Graz apartment was confiscated by the Nazis in 1940, and she was forced to move to Vienna, from where she was deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. She died there on 2 March 1943, aged 76.
Januszewska as a physician in Graz
A very tired roof….
Tutering and wrighting…
Today is the birthday, in 1953, of American singer and songwriter Cyndi Lauper, who had the 1984 US No.1 single ‘Time After Time’, and the UK & US No.2 single Girls Just Want to Have Fun, (first recorded in 1979 by American musician Robert Hazard). The song received Grammy Award nominations for Record of the Year and Best Female Pop Vocal Performance. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdQY7BusJNU
