1. Anna Tumarkin was a Russian-born, naturalized Swiss academic, who was the first woman to become a professor of philosophy at the University of Bern.
12 Facts About Anna Tumarkin
1. 2.
Anna Tumarkin was the first woman in Europe to be allowed to examine doctoral and professorial candidates and the first woman to sit as a member of a University Senate anywhere in Europe.
3.
Anna-Ester Pavlovna Tumarkin was born on 16 February 1875 in Dubrowna, in the Mogilev Governorate of the Russian Empire to Sofia and Poltiel Moiseevich Tumarkin.
4.
Anna Tumarkin's father was a Bessarabian merchant who had been granted personal nobility.
5.
Anna Tumarkin attended the women's gymnasium and then attended normal school.
6.
Anna Tumarkin and the younger Hoff, would later become life-long companions, though there is no evidence one way or the other to determine if their relationship was a lesbian partnership.
7.
Anna Tumarkin then moved to Berlin where she continued her studies for three years with Wilhelm Dilthey and Erich Schmidt, before returning to Bern to complete her thesis and examination for her Habilitation in 1898, becoming not only the first woman in Switzerland to complete her post-doctoral work, but the first woman in Europe.
8.
Anna Tumarkin's lectures spanned from classic philosophers like Plato and Aristotle to more modern philosophers such as Martin Heidegger and she had a special affinity for Johann Gottfried Herder, Kant, and Baruch Spinoza.
9.
Anna Tumarkin was the only woman to apply for the post, among 30 candidates.
10.
In 1912, Anna Tumarkin became the roommate of Ida Hoff, who by that time had graduated from her studies and become one of the first female physicians in Bern.
11.
Hoff tried to care for her companion at home, but Anna Tumarkin's decline continued and she became increasingly confused.
12.
Anna Tumarkin described his process as "an organic development with its concentric circles: ever in a more profound and original manner".