Hedi Stadlen, better known in Sri Lanka as Hedi Keuneman, was an Austrian Jewish philosopher, political activist, and musicologist.
23 Facts About Hedi Stadlen
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Hedi Stadlen was one of a handful of European Radicals in Sri Lanka.
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Hedi Stadlen was born Hedwig Magdalena Simon in Vienna to Else Reis and Hans Simon, an eminent economist and banker.
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Hedi Stadlen was one of those whose life was deeply affected by the spread of virulent fascism in Europe in the 1930s.
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Hedi Stadlen was sent to a progressive school in Vienna founded by the Polish-Jewish feminist Eugenia Schwarzwald, at whose home Hedi met such figures as the painter Oskar Kokoschka and the architect Adolph Loos.
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Hedi Stadlen spent her weekends in London, working for the cause of Indian freedom in Krishna Menon's India League, with Indira Gandhi among others.
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Hedi Stadlen was the son of a Dutch Burgher Supreme Court justice in Ceylon.
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Hedi Stadlen Simon graduated with first class honours in 1939, but as a woman was excluded under university rules from the award of her degree.
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Hedi Stadlen married Pieter Keuneman in Switzerland in September 1939.
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Hedi Stadlen Keuneman was elected president of one of the co-operative societies were formed to distribute affordable food, following the outbreak of war.
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Hedi Stadlen monitored food stocks and prices in central Colombo, popularising cheaper, local food cereals such as bajiri, a locally grown sticky grain, earning herself the nickname bajiri nona.
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Between 1940 and 1942, Hedi Stadlen Keuneman taught at University College, Colombo and at the Modern School initiated by another communist emigrant and India League veteran, Doreen Young Wickremasinghe.
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Hedi Stadlen was active in the Friends of the Soviet Union and, with shoulder-length black hair and sometimes barefoot in a red sari, distributed pro-communist literature and addressed meetings among English-speaking supporters.
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Hedi Stadlen wrote a pamphlet publicising Hitler's tyranny, Under Nazi Rule.
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In London in 1946 she met an old friend from Vienna, Peter Hedi Stadlen a distinguished concert pianist who had premiered the Webern Opus 27 Variations.
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Hedi Stadlen chose not to return to Ceylon, and divorced Pieter.
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Hedi Stadlen subsequently married Stadlen, with whom she lived in Hampstead.
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In 1956, a hand injury obliged Hedi Stadlen to turn to music criticism, chiefly for The Daily Telegraph, and academic study.
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Hedi Stadlen collaborated with him, possibly influenced by her musical heritage, as grandniece of Johann Strauss.
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Hedi Stadlen played a crucial role in Stadlen's study of Beethoven's intentions with his metronome markings.
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On Stadlen's death on 20 January 1996, Hedi lied about her age and joined the charity Volunteer Reading Help, and for six years helped disadvantaged children in a North London primary school to strengthen their reading.
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Hedi Stadlen worked with Annette Morreau on a biography of the Viennese cellist Emmanuel Feuermann.
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Hedi Stadlen was survived by her sons Nicholas, a High Court judge, and Godfrey, a senior civil servant in the Home Office.