In a complex and difficult world it can seem that making positive change is beyond our individual power to achieve. Yet, the power of an individual to change the world for the better is enduring, even in the most difficult of times, as the life and achievements of Norwich High alumna Dr Mariette Soman, OBE reveals.
Trailblazers: 150 Years of Norwich High Women
An exceptional person, Dr Soman achieved an exceptional amount over her life. Born in 1889 she joined Norwich High School for Girls on 20th September 1898. She was involved in all aspects of school life: a remarkable scholar, a gifted sportswoman and a witty editor and contributor to the school magazine. This short biography only has time to focus on her trailblazing professional career, one which she used forcefully and successfully in the pursuit of a better world.
At Norwich High she quickly demonstrated her ability in languages and philosophy with the register recording her study of Latin, German and Logic. She obtained distinctions in her examinations and was awarded the coveted title of ‘company scholar’. She left Norwich High in the Easter of 1907. Few women went to University in the early 1900s, but Dr Soman secured a place at Girton College, Cambridge to study Languages and a research scholarship of £50. Unable to continue her academic career in Britain, Dr Soman moved to Paris in 1911, continuing her studies at the Sorbonne. Her PHD thesis on the French thinker Renan was published in 1914. A great success, she passed, avec mention tres honourable.
Her academic career was delayed by the Great War. But for Dr Soman war was to provide opportunity as well as tragedy. Her opportunity came through her language skills; skills needed in military intelligence. Dr Soman was recruited into the Naval Intelligence Department, specifically Room 40 – the code breakers. Her job was to translate intercepted German messages and she became one of the first people to hear that the war had ended. She was so highly thought of that following the armistice Dr Soman was asked to serve as the secretary to the British Naval Attaché at Versailles. For her war work she was awarded the Order of the British Empire, OBE, on the 1st January, 1920.
Between 1919 and 1921 she wrote a history of theatre in Norwich and translated a French novel. In 1921 the next remarkable stage of her career began, when she joined the University College of Leicester as a trailblazing Head of French and German. Female academics were rare in the 1920s and 1930s, female heads of department rarer still.
At Leicester Dr Soman met Professor Philip Leon. Professor Leon was a scholar and political activist, whose works such as The Ethics of Power and The Philosophy of Courage were written when married to Dr Soman. Together they worked on numerous translations and had two daughters, Columbine and Elizabeth. From 1933 she worked tirelessly with her husband as an anti-fascist. Remarkably, it was in this period that Dr Soman redoubled her efforts to celebrate German language and culture. Dr Soman was Jewish and her founding of a University Anglo-German Club in 1933 came at the same time the Nazi Party achieved power. In this context it would have been an option for Dr Soman to walk away from her love of Germany and German. She did not. Rather she used her powers to fight not German culture, but the evil of Fascism, the political idea which had gripped it. Even in war Dr Soman combined patriotism with humanism and a desire for a better world.
Dr Soman died in 1941. She should be remembered in the Norwich High community and beyond as a patriot, polymath and trailblazer.
