A radical translat
Professor’s new book shines a light o She was a revolutionary who delivered lectures on feminism and worked with the likes of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She founded a school for girls and advocated passionately for women’s education. She wrote for newspapers, traveled extensively, and began a Viktorija Bilic passionate relationship with another woman– a Milwaukeean named Mary Booth. Her name was Mathilde Anneke, and she’s at the heart of Viktorija Bilic’s latest research. Bilic, an associate professor in UWM’s Translation and Interpreting Studies program, is the coeditor of the new book, “Radical Relationships: The Civil War Era Correspondence of Mathilde Franziska Anneke.” She and coeditor Alison Clark Efford, a historian at Marquette University, debuted their work on Sept. 1. The book is a collection of Anneke’s letters, translated from their original 19th century German to reveal a glimpse into the life of a woman that history has mostly passed over. “Very few people know about (Anneke),” Bilic lamented. “She’s not as well-known as she should be.” A revolutionary radical When Bilic says Anneke was a radical, she means it. Anneke fought right alongside the men during the failed 1848 revolution in Germany. Defeated, Anneke and other “1848ers” fled their native land and settled in Milwaukee. 4 • IN FOCUS • October, 2021
“Milwaukee was called ‘German Athens,’ because so many immigrants moved there,” Bilic said. “In 1910, half of the city’s population claimed German ancestry. In the late 19th century, people would walk into a store and vendors felt like they had to put up signs: ‘English Spoken Here,’ because of course, German was spoken there.” There were other famous names in the wave of ‘48ers, including Peter Engelmann, for whom UWM’s Engelmann Hall is named, and Karl Schurz, whose wife, Margarethe Meyer Schurz, founded the first private kindergarten in Wisconsin. In Milwaukee, Anneke met Mary Booth, and a relationship blossomed between the two women. As Anneke’s husband Fritz fought for the Union during the Civil War, she and Booth traveled to Zurich and lived together until Booth’s death in 1865. Anneke later returned to Milwaukee, where she spent the rest of her life advocating for women’s education and suffrage. Unfortunately, Bilic said, there is so much about Anneke’s life that had to be left out of the book. For length, they focused on the letters Anneke wrote during the Civil War. “The letters are very emotional and also tell about her relationships – radical relationships with Mary Booth, her partner; with Fritz, her husband; and other radical women she met and associated with when she was in Zurich,” said Bilic. A friend or lover? For historians, the great mystery surrounding Anneke’s life was the nature of her relationship with Mary Booth. They were domestic partners, but were they lovers? Bilic doesn’t know. “I’ve seen sources where people made her to be a queer pioneer or something. She wasn’t that,” Bilic said firmly. “We (Bilic and Efford) believe that Mary Booth was the love of her life, in a way, because Mathilde says so in her letters. She also tells Fritz, ‘We should have stayed friends. … We’re not connected like lovers anymore.’ Her letters to Mary and Mary’s to her were very affectionate, but we never know whether it actually became physical. They shared a bed, yes, but that was also not uncommon in the day.” In the end, Bilic said, she translated the letters between Anneke and Booth to the best of their ability and left
