While working on the final review of the Identity in Immigration collection, a series of Oral History interviews conducted by Dr. Alexander Freund, the Chair in German-Canadian Studies, I noticed two big milestones worth sharing.
On this day—September 28th—in 1993, Dr. Freund conducted an Oral History interview with Elisabeth “Lisa” Schwabe in Vancouver, B.C.
A little bit about Lisa: she was born in Kassel (West Germany) in 1923. She attended high school, one year of business school, one year at a women’s college and then contributed to the work service during the Third Reich. She trained as a technologist at Siemens in Berlin from 1941-1943 and worked in that field before immigrating to Vancouver in November 1951. She wasn’t able to work as a technologist there because it was seen as an ‘unfit position’ for a woman, so she had to go into domestic service in West Vancouver for five months. She then worked in low-paid factory jobs before getting married in September 1953. She stayed home for three years to attend to her sick child, born in 1954. Her husband died in 1957, just three years after their marriage, and by that time she had returned to the paid workforce and worked on the assembly line of an electronics factory. After her husband’s death, she was promoted to the role of technician.
Today is the 30th anniversary of Lisa’s interview, and despite the distance from the original context, many of the topics discussed within are still relevant today. She shares many details about her lived experiences, including state violence in the wake of the Second World War; gender-based discrimination in Canada which prevented her from working in her field of expertise; and what it meant to be German in the context of Canadian society.
Another milestone we’re commemorating happened earlier this year. On April 28th, Lisa Schwabe celebrated her 100th birthday. When her family reached out to us to mark this special day with her, we were so glad to be able to contribute to it with a bound copy of her interview transcript and a card signed by all GCS staff.
Thank you, Lisa, for letting us celebrate you and tell your story!
Lisa’s interview, even 30 years on, is still a valuable resource for research on many different topics. That’s why we’ve featured her interview on What they Can Teach Us, our trilingual educative website. Listen to and read excerpts of Lisa’s interview here.
German-Canadian Studies 