At the turn of the 20th century, just like today, the expectations for a young woman born into a Hasidic family were rigid: marry young, have many children, and take care of your home. Higher education was not on the table. But Anna Kluger refused to accept that destiny.
Born on June 24, 1890, in Podgórze, Anna (or Chaya, as her family called her) was the daughter of Wolf Kluger, a millionaire steam mill owner, and Simcha Halberstam, a direct descendant of the founder of the Sandz Hasidic dynasty. Despite her family's immense wealth and elite status, Anna was not interested in luxury, but instead had a fierce passion for learning. While Hasidic girls today attend religious schools like Beis Yaakov, those schools didn't exist then. Anna had a taste of secular knowledge at a non-Jewish primary school and didn't want to stop. Instead of getting married young, she desperately wanted to pass her matriculation exams and attend university.
To her family, this ambition was an existential threat. What followed was a harrowing campaign of domestic abuse. Her parents destroyed and burned her school books, physically punished her for reading, and even brought a lawyer to the Jagiellonian University library to demand the director ban her from borrowing books. When this all failed, they tried marriage. They betrothed her at fifteen to a teenage Hassid named Zacharias Arak.
In August 1909, Anna and her younger sister Leonore escaped from their family home, carrying valuables worth 20,000 crowns to fund their survival. They hid in a convent abroad to evade their family's search parties.
Instead of converting to Catholicism to sever ties, the sisters doubled down on their civil rights. They hired Dr. Siegmund Marek, a prominent Social Democrat lawyer, and sued their father in civil court. They petitioned to be released from their father's legal custody, demanding the right to study, the permission to live independently, and a legal mandate forcing their millionaire father to pay for their living expenses.
When a local Kraków court initially ruled against them, the sisters appealed to the Viennese Supreme Court in a highly publicized, dramatic legal battle. What follows is Anna’s own voice. Written in June 1910 as a personal statement for the Supreme Court, this document lays bare her fight for intellectual autonomy amidst abuse and resistance from her family.
Anna Kluger's Personal Statement in Her Supreme Court Appeal
June, 1910
I was born on June 24, 1890. I attended primary school from the year 1896 to 1902. After this I enjoyed schooling in the boarding school of Mrs. Tschapek, where I completed the four-grade Bürgerschule in 1904. After that I received private lessons from Mrs. Clossmann; but after one month I had to give these up upon my mother’s behest, because Mrs. Clossmann was a Catholic. With that the provisions of the parental care for my education came to an end.
Since that time I studied exclusively on my own without any help by eagerly visiting the Jagiellonian Library, where I used the rich treasure of books and by being in contact with my former colleagues who loaned me school books.
When I was 15 years old my parents decided to have me betrothed; thus on December or November of the year 1905, I was betrothed against my will to a younger, barely 14 year old Hasidic boy, Zacharias Arak. At that time I was still an ignorant child, however I instinctively resisted this; but the parents soon knew how to break this childish resistance and to assert their will through my betrothal.
From this moment the parents began to pay active attention to my way of living, taking the position that a Hasidic girl who soon would get married, should not be allowed to occupy herself with any kind of scientific work, but must prepare herself exclusively for her future role as mother. From this time on I was constantly exposed to persecution because I wanted to study. I had to hide my school books at my girlfriends’, because my parents, if they found any at home, destroyed and burned them. For this reason I studied in secret, either during the night at home, or in the reading room of the Jagiellonian Library, in order to avoid the continuous scenes at home, which ended with blows and curses, whenever the parents surprised me with a book they found.
I lived two years under such circumstances, when the parents decided to have me married to Zacharias Arak in August of 1907. As I was older by that time—I was already 17 years old—I stood up for myself with all my might; I begged and pleaded, and tried to explain to the parents that I was not a machine, that they should not disrespect my will and not tie me for my entire life to a man who was a complete stranger to me and on top of that had a severe lung disease. All my pleas remained unsuccessful and found no hearing with my parents, to whom I had to submit and had to get married to a total stranger to me, an unprogressive person. I had no means for flight; my studies had not reached a proper end, for I was not sufficiently prepared for the matriculations examinations; thus, I had to give up my resistance to this connection, helplessly and under duress, in thinking I would be able to obtain a greater freedom if I got married, as my mother always promised me.
After the Jewish religious marriage, my way of life did not change; I worked as before on my education by secretly studying, away from my parents, who, in spite of their promise to let me have complete freedom after the wedding, kept forbidding me to study as before, destroying any school books they found at home, even cursing and beating me for it.
I lived with my husband for a year and a half in my parents’ home, but not as a wedded wife.
Soon after the wedding the parents began to monitor my relationship with my husband and discovered with “horror” that I did not live with my husband in a conjugal relationship. For, when my husband demanded of me right after the wedding the fulfillment of the marital relations I explained to him that he was a complete stranger to me, that I did not know him and was unable to agree to become his wife, and that any act of violence on his part would forever create a chasm between us that could not ever be bridged by anything. My husband, a decent lad, accepted my position and no longer assailed me with demands. My parents however decided, when they found out about our agreement, that I absolutely must give myself to my husband, and for this purpose, my grandfather, the rabbi from Chrzanów Moses Halberstam, as well as Bergmann, the grandfather of my husband, arrived to Podgórze, and together they began to harass me and literally torture me psychologically, but when I declared outright, that I would never agree to marital relations with my husband, they decided, that my husband should empower himself and take me by force, and they even determined the day, a Tuesday, for this purpose.
During this time I suffered terrible agonies, for as a human being and as a woman I was subjected to being the object of such deliberations and cajolery and assignments, which were aimed against my human dignity; my parents however regarded this as triviality or even as disobedience of a child toward the parental authority!
During these few weeks before the designated deadline, on which my husband was supposed to violate me, I had to protect myself from various assaults of my parents in acting towards them in such a way as if I actually lived in conjugal relationship with my husband; for I wanted to escape from the horrible psychological torments I was subjected to, as at any moment I had to be prepared to answer a question from my parents if I had already given myself to Arak.
Out of a whole series of such embarrassing scenes I remember a particular event. A certain time after the wedding I ran into my mother during the night in the corridor, and she began to ask me about our conjugal relation; when I remained silent she began to pull at me and push me towards the railing and threatened to throw me down from the hallway.
During this time I decided to flee from home and the disgrace which my parents planned for me, but the attempts were discovered and foiled prematurely by my mother.
Now my mother along with my father began to calm me down and to assure me that they would let me have complete freedom, not to meddle in my marital matters, as well as not to disturb me in my scientific studies.
However, this promise was never kept, for the domestic conditions remained, and things were completely unchanged as far as my studies were concerned. My parents disturbed me as before when I tried to study, heaped beatings and curses on me whenever they saw me with a book, spied to see if there was still a light on in my room after 10 o’clock at night, and when all this did not help they took away the electric light, so that I was forced to study at night by candlelight; and in that way I prepared for the matriculation examinations. My parents went so far as to intervene through the advocate Dr. Aronsohn with the director of the Jagiellonian Library, so that I would be forbidden to read books there or to borrow any: in particular my mother, together with Dr. Aronsohn, went to the director of the library.
As I was studying at home alone for the matriculation examinations without any help, for which I needed information regarding curriculum as well as the pertinent school books, I would need to give private lessons in the German language, in order to acquire the means which I would be able to earn the money and buy the books.
Regarding the meddling of the parents in my marital relations, the situation changed only when my husband travelled for some time to visit his family, so that the opportunity was not there for that question to be asked.
These circumstances brought me to the conclusion that any further stay in my parents’ home was impossible, and so I decided to leave the house without fail, but beforehand to prepare myself for my life ahead by completing the matriculation examinations, in order to have something solid.
The flight itself was now just a matter of time, and so it was indeed made reality in August of 1909.
I could not remain in the parental home any longer, for everything that occurred there was foreign to me and hostile, and I can assert with a clear conscience, that in our house I have never experienced what one calls love for a child.
Besides what was mentioned above, as well as the facts given in the court documents, the following incident may depict my situation during this time more clearly: Because I did not let my hair cut—and with the Hasidim every married woman has to have her hair shaved to the scalp—my mother did not wish to give me anything to eat for two days; and when I finally found an opportunity to escape from the house to buy something to eat, my mother wanted to take everything away from me. Only when I agreed to have my hair trimmed to the scalp did she let me buy something to eat and give me some herself later.
In the autumn of the year 1908, after completing my matriculation examinations, I enrolled in the philosophy faculty at the Jagiellonian University. Although I was dedicated to my studies with full diligence, as I was able to study only secretly and covertly, I soon realized that I would be unable to fulfill my duties, and these circumstances became the deciding factor for my escape.
I hereby declare that the facts stated here as well as all facts recorded in the court files are true and that I am prepared to confirm them by oath at any time; however I have been so far unable to appear in court for questioning, for I fear the fanatical revenge of my parents, and the court will not permit me to be heard in a different Austrian court, for instance, in Vienna.
The high courts eventually ruled in favor of Anna and Leonore. The court appointed them a neutral guardian, granted them the right to attend university, and ordered Wolf Kluger to pay each daughter a monthly stipend of 200 crowns.
Finally free, Anna claimed the life she had yearned for. In 1911, she transferred to the University of Vienna, becoming part of the pioneer generation of female doctoral students in the Habsburg Empire. She earned her PhD in philosophy in 1914, writing her dissertation on the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini.
In 1922, after officially divorcing Zacharias, she married Dr. Jakub Bross, a prominent Jewish Social Democrat. She built a distinguished, independent career in Kraków as a professional translator, a published researcher, and a beloved teacher at the Hebrew Gymnasium.
Tragically, the freedom Anna fought so desperately to secure was stolen from her. In 1942, during the Holocaust, Anna Kluger and her husband were murdered by the Germans in Kremenets. Though her life was cut short by the Nazis, her legacy stands as a monumental testament to the power of a woman’s will, the pursuit of intellect, and the courage to break chains.¹
This story, as well as the story of two other runaway Jewish girls, is told in the excellent The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia by Rachel Manekin. The personal statement from Anna is taken from there.
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