From Timisoara to New Zealand

Marianne Fillenz, a researcher of the nervous system, was born in Timisoara to a Hungarian Jewish father and an Austrian Catholic mother. She attended a Romanian school, spoke German with her parents, and learned Hungarian from the maids. In 1939, the family emigrated to New Zealand. Marianne returned to the Old World in 1950: she completed her doctoral studies at Oxford, got married, and had children. The memoir leads the reader to the point where the young girl begins her own life and career. In addition to the memoir, the author's correspondence with the world-famous philosopher Karl R. Popper is the imprint of a friendship that lasted more than fifty years. At first, Popper writes polite letters to a talented student, but later he gets to know Marianne's family and friends; he advises her to choose research: in the face of the Cold War threat, it seemed that she might soon be needed "in the biological defense of New Zealand." He reports on the wartime (tele)production of the first London edition of The Open Society and Its Enemies, and recounts his meeting with Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr at Princeton.