A prominent suffragette and Lucy Stoner of our acquaintance tipped us off to the presence in this country of the editor-in-chief of the only comprehensive encyclopedia of women in the world, so off we went to the Hotel Tudor to see Dr. Blanche Christine Olschak, whose compendium has been published in German, in Zurich, as “Lexikon der Frau;” in Spanish, in Barcelona, as “Enciclopedia de Mujeres;” and will, if she succeeds in her negotiations with American publishers, appear here as “The International Women’s Encyclopedia.” “It covers six thousand years and has ten thousand biographies and fifteen thousand other entries, under key words,” she said after we met in the hotel lounge. She unslung a Swissair knapsack from her back, extracted two fat volumes, and spread them on a table. “Eight pounds, sixteen hundred pages, seven hundred and twenty portraits, three hundred and forty-two contributors from all over the world. The Zurich edition,” she said. “Unique. There have been women’s Who’s Whos, including Hesiod’s ‘Catalogue of Women’—women who wedded immortals—and Boccaccio’s ‘De Claris Mulieribus,’ about famous women, but this is the first encyclopedia dealing with women in all fields of life. I take this knapsack with me everywhere, because people are so interested.” She reached into it again and handed us a prospectus, in English, indicating that her opus contains special studies of the position of woman from the sociological, political, economic, and cultural points of view in all countries in all ages, as well as articles bearing on marriage, bridal customs, polygamy, polyandry, abduction, frigidity, ugliness, makeup and face treatment, perfumes, table manners, and innumerable other topics involving ladies.
Dr. Olschak, a spirited, brown-eyed, wavy-haired beauty, was wearing a white nylon blouse and a black jumper. “I was born in Vienna in 1913,” she said. “I took a doctorate in political science and economics at the University of Graz in 1937, and plunged into writing about the status of women. I studied the women of the Near East for my first book, ‘Queens of the Orient,’ and the women of the Far East for my next book, ‘Ladies on the Dragon Throne.’ I have also translated Sappho and written her life story. In 1945, after the death of my husband, Robert Schneiter, in a Russian prison camp, I went to Salzburg and became editor of the Alpen-Journal, a monthly magazine. Later, as foreign correspondent on women’s affairs for some Austrian papers, I travelled from the Far North to the equator. My material grew and grew, and in 1949 the Encyclios Verlag, in Zurich, put me in charge of its projected women’s encyclopedia. It was published in 1954. I had a staff of twelve editors and engaged many of my old teachers as contributors. At first, they couldn’t believe that through dear little Oly—that’s my nickname—they could earn Swiss francs. My, they were chauvinistic, each of them begging for more space for her specialty!”
Oly advised us that she is the only child of a general in the pre-1918 Austrian Army, who is hale and hearty in Vienna at eighty-five; that she has a sixteen-year-old. daughter, Ruth, at school in England; and that this is her first visit to the United States. “New York is the cleanest metropolis in the world,” she volunteered. “The pedestrian here is the king of the roads—cars are driving so carefully. You have a perfect organization of streets, so even the shiest greenhorn from the Continent can sit in a bus and wait for the right number to get off. I like your nylons, your mail chutes, and your kitchens, which make the life of the wife easier and lovelier, and I have found the most brilliant women here, who attain balance and harmony in life by being wonderful mothers and wives while at the same time having wonderful careers. In Europe, we are trying to realize this ideal, but seldom do.” ♦
