Charlotte Krause her Life and Literature

Author(s): Shreeprakash Pandey
Publisher: Parshwanath Vidyapith

Page 33

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actually living in her field of her research, with the people concerned, i.e., the Indians, the Jaina monks, nuns and laity ? Is it because she was a woman, who did not thread the usual path of women by leaving her native place, by shunning a promising career and by spending her life in research and work abroad? And is it perhaps also due to the disastrous effects and consequences of World War II, which not only immediately ruined millions of people, innumerable countries and traditions, but for many years afterwards severed all cultural communication? Many questions about motives and reasons of her curriculum vitae must unfortunately still remain unanswered. We can attempt here at least to sketch out the main lines of her biography, and especially to collect and list the available information about her scholarly work, lest it too will be lost to later students of the history of Jainism.
Charlotte Krause was born in Germany on May 18, 1895 in the city of Halle on the river Saale. Her parents were Anna and Hermann Krause, a merchant and patron of the fine arts. Her three brothers were younger than she, with professions in the arts and in business. Charlotte passed her matriculation in 1914 in the then famous Girl's High School of Dessau, where she received a thorough grounding in classical as well as modern languages, in the humanities and in science. After a two year break in her education, due to the outbreak of the First World War, Charlotte Krause enroled in the famous University of Marburg as a student of science, which had been her special interest since childhood, when she used to observe and study plants, animals and natural phenomena in the large country-estate of her maternal grandfather. It was then that she developed a deep-rooted love for nature and its creatures, by the study of which she had hoped to solve some of the great problems of life and creation.
In her studies she also had the opportunity to listen to great teachers of philosophy and history. She was immensely intrigued by these subjects and so decided finally to specialize in philosophy and