Käte Bosse-Griffiths

Infobox Writer
name = Käte Bosse-Griffiths


imagesize =
caption =
birthname = Käte Bosse
birthdate = 16 June 1910
birthplace = Wittenberg, Germany
deathdate = 4 April 1998
deathplace = Swansea, Wales
occupation = Curator
subject =
movement = Cadwgan Circle
notableworks =
spouse = J. Gwyn Griffiths
children = Robat Gruffudd
Heini Gruffudd

Käte Bosse-Griffiths (16 June 1910–4 April 1998) was a German born Egyptologist who after moving to Wales became a writer in the Welsh language. ["The Welsh Academy Encyclopaedia of Wales". John Davies, Nigel Jenkins, Menna Baines and Peredur Lynch (2008) pg337 ISBN 9780708319536]

Early history

Käte Bosse was born in Wittenberg in Germany in 1910, and although of Jewish parentage, was brought up as a member of the Lutheran Church. After completing her secondary education in her home town she was accepted into the University of Munich where she gained a doctorate in Classics and Egyptology in 1935. Soon after she started work at the Egyptology and Archaeology Department of the Berlin State Museums. When it was discovered that her mother was a Jew she was dismissed from her post.

Bosse left Germany for Britain and found research work at the Petrie Museum at the Univeristy College London and later at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. In 1938, while at Oxford, as a senior member of Somerville College she met fellow Egyptologist J. Gwyn Griffiths. Griffiths, a Welsh scholar brought up in the Rhondda, was at that time a professor at Oxford, but the two of them returned to the Rhondda and made their home in the village of Pentre. They married in 1939 and Bosse became Käte Bosse-Griffiths. During the Second World War, Bosse-Griffiths and her husband set up the Cadwgan Circle from their home in Pentre, an avant-garde literary and intellectual group whose membership included Pennar Davies and Rhydwen Williams. Among these literary Welsh speakers Bosse-Griffiths found a love of the Welsh language. During the same years in Germany, Bosse-Griffiths's mother died at Ravensbrück, a notorious women's concentration camp, while her brother, a doctor, was able to flee Germany to Sweden. [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19980410/ai_n14159920 The Independent, Obituary of Käte Bosse-Griffiths]

Academic and literary career

When her husband became a lecturer at Swansea University, the couple moved to Sketty in Swansea. Bosse-Griffiths became a member of Swansea Museum, where she would later achieve the position of Keeper of Archaeology, a role she would undertake for 25 years. She helped bring Sir Henry Wellcome's Egyptian collection, at the time held in storage, to the Department of Classics at Swansea, and would spend her entire career studying and writing about this 5,000 piece collection. It would later be housed at the Wellcome Museum, which is housed at the Egypt Centre at Swansea University.

Bosse-Griffiths was also a published author, her first novel "Mudiadau Heddwch yn yr Almaen" (1942) was written in the Welsh language, while academic works include her 1955 collection "Amarna Studies and Other Collected Papers". [http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/information/biography/abcde/griffiths_kate.html Minnesota State University; Kate Bosse-Griffiths]

External links

* [http://www.swan.ac.uk/egypt//infosheet/set%20up.htm University of Wales Swansea] History of the Egypt Centre with pictures of Bosse-Griffiths.

References