Maria Simon | |
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&sq=Albert Einstein&lang=en&file=File:Maria_Dorothea_Simon.jpg) Simon in 2018 | |
| Born | 6 August 1918 |
| Died | 8 March 2022 (aged 103) Vienna, Austria |
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| Academic background | |
| Education | |
| Influences | |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Sociology |
| Sub-discipline | Social work |
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Maria Dorothea Simon (née Pollatschek; 6 August 1918 – 8 March 2022) was an Austrian psychologist and scholar of social work. Born into a Jewish family in Vienna near the end of the First World War, she was educated in Austria and Czechoslovakia but emigrated to London after the latter was annexed by Germany in 1938. While in the United Kingdom, she worked at the Hampstead Nurseries, an experimental child care centre run by the psychoanalyst Anna Freud. She was married to the jurist and resistance activist Joseph Simon.
After a period in Denmark, Simon studied psychology in Vienna and worked as an academic in the United States. Having returned to Austria in 1963, she was appointed to the directorship of the Akademie für Sozialarbeit der Stadt Wien, an academy for social work in 1970. During her tenure, which lasted until 1983, the academy reformed Austrian social work education in accordance with contemporary professional standards. Simon is credited by the sociologist Barbara Louis with breaking "new ground for future generations [of female students]" (German: "für die nachfolgenden Generationen [von Studentinnen] ... wegweisend") in her field. She lived to the age of 103 and remained involved with her subject during retirement.