Elizabeth Wiskemann

This biography examines the life and career of scholar-journalist Elizabeth Wiskemann (1899-1971) from her youth and student years at Cambridge to her death by suicide. Disappointed in her hopes for an academic career, she reinvented herself as a journalist in Berlin, covering the overthrow of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism for The New Statesman, Nation, and numerous other newspapers and periodicals. Expelled from Germany, she settled in Prague and funded by Chatham House wrote the most important account of the Czech-German conflict and the Sudeten crisis, still a classic, followed by a detailed analysis of Nazi political and economic destabilization of the countries of eastern Europe. Her journalistic skills served her well in the war years when she worked as a secret agent in Switzerland, gathering intelligence, running agents into Axis-controlled Europe, and working closely with Allen Dulles, the O.S.S. chief in Bern. Postwar, Wiskemann returned to freelance journalism, focusing especially on Italy and Germany, while also writing several books, including the first scholarly study of the Hitler-Mussolini relationship and the first major account of the expulsion of 12 million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. Although a prolific writer and highly regarded as a commentator on international affairs, she remained on the fringes of academia until 1958 when she was appointed Professor of International Relations at Edinburgh (the first woman to receive a Chair there in any discipline); she later became one of the first faculty recruited by the new Sussex University. In her later years she published several works of contemporary history, including Europe of the Dictators, 1919-45, widely used in schools and universities. Blinded in one eye by a botched surgery and increasingly anxious as her other eye deteriorated, she became terrified of going completely blind and ended her life. Aside from its intrinsic interest, Wiskemann's biography is illustrative of a whole cohort of women - graduates in the 1920s and 30s - who found ways to pursue their interests in international affairs and contemporary history. In this sense the book foregrounds the gendered experience of these pioneers whose professional lives often intersected through journalism, Chatham House, and service in the propaganda and intelligence agencies of the wartime state.

This biography examines the life and career of scholar-journalist Elizabeth Wiskemann (1899-1971) from her youth and student years at Cambridge to her death by suicide. Disappointed in her hopes for an academic career, she reinvented herself as a journalist in Berlin, covering the overthrow of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism for The New Statesman, Nation, and numerous other newspapers and periodicals. Expelled from Germany, she settled in Prague and funded by Chatham House wrote the most important account of the Czech-German conflict and the Sudeten crisis, still a classic, followed by a detailed analysis of Nazi political and economic destabilization of the countries of eastern Europe. Her journalistic skills served her well in the war years when she worked as a secret agent in Switzerland, gathering intelligence, running agents into Axis-controlled Europe, and working closely with Allen Dulles, the O.S.S. chief in Bern. Postwar, Wiskemann returned to freelance journalism, focusing especially on Italy and Germany, while also writing several books, including the first scholarly study of the Hitler-Mussolini relationship and the first major account of the expulsion of 12 million ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe. Although a prolific writer and highly regarded as a commentator on international affairs, she remained on the fringes of academia until 1958 when she was appointed Professor of International Relations at Edinburgh (the first woman to receive a Chair there in any discipline); she later became one of the first faculty recruited by the new Sussex University. In her later years she published several works of contemporary history, including Europe of the Dictators, 1919-45, widely used in schools and universities. Blinded in one eye by a botched surgery and increasingly anxious as her other eye deteriorated, she became terrified of going completely blind and ended her life. Aside from its intrinsic interest, Wiskemann's biography is illustrative of a whole cohort of women - graduates in the 1920s and 30s - who found ways to pursue their interests in international affairs and contemporary history. In this sense the book foregrounds the gendered experience of these pioneers whose professional lives often intersected through journalism, Chatham House, and service in the propaganda and intelligence agencies of the wartime state.

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

The first cross-disciplinary history of women's international thought, analysing leading international thinkers of the twentieth century.

This is the first biography of Elizabeth Wiskemann (1899-1971), journalist, historian, and distinguished commentator on European affairs. Based upon new archival sources, including Foreign Office and OSS files and private papers, as well as Wiskemann's many publications, it examines her life from her youth and student years at Cambridge to her suicide. Disappointed in her hopes for an academic career, she reinvented herself as a foreign correspondent in Berlin, reporting on the final years of the Weimar Republic, Hitler's ascent to power, and Nazism's expansionist drive in Eastern Europe. Expelled from Germany by the Gestapo, she moved to Prague and in 1938 published a classic account of the Czech-German conflict over the Sudetenland. With the outbreak of the war that she had long foretold, Wiskemann put her investigative skills to good use as a secret agent in Switzerland, working closely with Allen Dulles, the OSS chief in Bern, and running agents into Axis-controlled Europe. She returned to journalism after the war, living for a time in Rome and focusing especially on the political birth of the Italian Republic and Adenauer's West Germany. For Chatham House she also wrote the first (and for many years the only) English-language study of the expulsion of 12 million Germans from Eastern Europe in 1945-47. Aside from the intrinsic interest of Wiskemann's career, the book situates her within a cohort of British women, pioneers in international affairs, whose careers were strongly influenced by Chatham House and war service in the intelligence and propaganda agencies. By the 1960s their expertise was widely recognized and some, like Wiskemann, gained positions in universities where degree programs in IR and contemporary history were slowly spreading and achieving legitimacy. Wiskemann got her first real academic job when she was fifty-nine years old as Montague Burton Professor of International Relations at Edinburgh. In her different roles she enjoyed a great deal of success but in none of the realms in which she operated-journalism, government service, and academia-did she enjoy the same opportunities as men, and she encountered barriers and sometimes outright obstruction. Blinded in one eye by a botched surgery, she became increasingly fearful of going completely blind; terrified of losing her autonomy and independence, she took her own life.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1917 edition. Excerpt: ... (6) Columns for Discount on Purchases and Discount on Notes on the same side of the Cash Book; (c) Columns for Discount on Sales and Cash Sales on the debit side of the Cash Book; (d) Departmental columns in the Sales Book and in the Purchase Book. Controlling Accounts.--The addition of special columns in books of original entry makes possible the keeping of Controlling Accounts. The most common examples of such accounts are Accounts Receivable account and Accounts Payable account. These summary accounts, respectively, displace individual customers' and creditors' accounts in the Ledger. The customers' accounts are then segregated in another book called the Sales Ledger or Customers' Ledger, while the creditors' accounts are kept in the Purchase or Creditors' Ledger. The original Ledger, now much reduced in size, is called the General Ledger. The Trial Balance now refers to the accounts in the General Ledger. It is evident that the task of taking a Trial Balance is greatly simplified because so many fewer accounts are involved. A Schedule of Accounts Receivable is then prepared, consisting of the balances found in the Sales Ledger, and its total must agree with the balance of the Accounts Receivable account shown in the Trial Balance. A similar Schedule of Accounts Payable, made up of all the balances in the Purchase Ledger, is prepared, and it must agree with the balance of the Accounts Payable account of the General Ledger." The Balance Sheet.--In the more elementary part of the text, the student learned how to prepare a Statement of Assets and Liabilities for the purpose of disclosing the net capital of an enterprise. In the present chapter he was shown how to prepare a similar statement, the Balance Sheet. For all practical...