Elise Steiner: personal papers and correspondence

Elise ('Lisl') Steiner was born in Vienna in 1923. She was the daughter of Johanna (1890-1941, née Neuspiel) and Hermann Steiner (1883-1941) from Moravia, Austro-Hungarian Empire. They got married in 1920. Elise had one brother Leopold (1926-1941). Hermann Steiner served in the Austrian Army during the First World War. Hermann and Johanna worked in the family's stationery shop until it was expropriated by the Nazis in 1938. After the Anschluss of Austria to Nazi Germany, Elise's uncle Rudolf Neuspiel and his family emigrated to the USA. En route they stopped in London where he made enquiries as to how to help the rest of the family to emigrate. He paid the Refugee Committee for one year's schooling and living expenses in advance for his niece Elise. Lisl travelled alone to UK by means of a private arrangement, made by her Uncle Rudolph ‘for her education’. It is thought that she left Austria a few days before the first bulk Kindertransport. After spending a few days with cousins in Golders Green she travelled to the boarding school of Granville College in Southampton. She spent her first Christmas holidays with the Holland family, a host family keen to help Jewish refugee children as Elise's cousins had gone abroad.

Elise’s parents and brother were deported to Kowno concentration camp in 1941 where they all perished shortly after arrival. Many of Elise's closest relatives were killed in the Holocaust.

In 1940, Elise Steiner was employed at a residential nursery for evacuated London children. After the war, she qualified in child development at the University of London and in 1954 was appointed warden of the newly established Children's Centre at the University of Leeds Institute of Education. She worked at the Education Department at Goldsmiths University of London from 1961 to 1984. With her leadership and experience she contributed significantly to the establishment of the distinguished Department of Early Childhood Education in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Donated by Elise Steiner via Pamela Evans (Executor)