Raina Fehl

Raina Fehl (August 23, 1920 – May 3, 2009) was an Austrian-born American classicist, writer and editor.

Upon immigrating to the United States, she served in the U.S. Army Service before continuing her education and work in the field of english.

Maria Raina Fehl, known as Raina [Rhine-ă] was born August 23, 1920, in Vienna, Austria, to humanitarian Rosa Gussman Schweinburg and poet, author, and civil rights attorney Erich Fritz Schweinburg.

From her birth, she fought many physical battles, starting with contracting and surviving smallpox in the center where she was born.

She was restrained with tiny baby sized fetters, and came away with only two tiny scars.

In 1939, she immigrated to the United States where she became a citizen in 1944.

During this, she married Philipp Fehl on December 11, 1945.

She had two daughters, Katharine "Kathy" Fehl, and Caroline "Lynn" Coulston.

Although throughout her life she suffered from health problems, she never defined herself by her illnesses or any other of her life's hardships.

Instead, she lived her life with grace and energy and maintained that vitality to the very end of her life.

III.

Editor, The Art of Mourning, Philipp P. Fehl.

Collections

Microfiche collection of ca 5,000 titles.

Co-editor with Philipp P. Fehl.

Books

It seems Raina Fehl had a special affinity for mice.

When her daughters were young, she often helped them fall asleep by telling them stories of a pretty little lady mouse who wore white gloves and managed to keep them perfectly clean even when taking railroad trips.

Years later while working on the Cicognara Project at the Vatican Library, Raina Fehl began writing the Mikki Stories.

Originally written again for her children, these stories were supposedly the work of the scholar Michaela Mouse, affectionately known to her family as "Mikki", the Library Mouse.

Raina Fehl portrayed herself as merely the translator of the English versions.

In time, Mikki's relatives became the authors of the continuing stories.

Much like the "translator", the mice work for the most part in the Salone Sistino in the Vatican Library.

In this excerpt from "The Library Mouse. A Monologue by Michaela Mouse, English version offered by M. Raina Fehl in honor of the birthday of Katharine Fehl", Mikki describes her wonderful place of work:

"I mentioned the Salone Sistino before. That is a beautiful room, indeed. And many, many people come to see it when they go through the Vatican Museum. It really belongs to the Library, as does that entire side or corridor of the museum, but for the visitors it's simply a part of the museum. Most just look at the special exhibits in glass cases in the room. But some do look up at the pilasters that show the inventors of the letters of the alphabet -- Christ is one of them, of the alpha and the omega. Some also look at the big frescos on the walls showing famous libraries in antiquity, really famous stories that went on in them. But there is something that hardly any of them notice. The painters were very conscientious observers of reality and therefore you will find at least one mouse in every one of those scenes. I love going up to look at the mouse peeking out between the books the librarians at Alexandria are putting in order.

They are very well portrayed.

In another there is a mouse that sits on the back of the chair of the hero and looks with him at his manuscripts.

There may even be some mice I never discovered." In many ways, the excerpt depicts how much Raina loved working at the Vatican.

Together with her husband, Philipp Fehl, Raina Fehl worked in the Sala Cicognara in the Biblioteka Vaticana in the Vatican City.

She served in the U.S. Army Service the next year, until 1946, where she was involved as a Psychiatric Social Worker in the U.S. War Department.

In addition to this, she was a research analyst in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials from 1946 until 1947.

In October 2000 she became the Director of the Cicognara Project.

After her death, Raina's daughters discovered an ordinary bound school notebook with the words "Don't Lose Me" written on the cover in her handwriting.

Inside they discovered short stories in Raina's handwriting.

She died May 3, 2009, in Appleton, Wisconsin, and was buried near family at The Eternal Home Cemetery, Block 1540, Row A, Space 6, in Colma California.

Fehl's friends and family recognized her delightful smile, beauty, and knowledge as extraordinary and memorable.

Jennifer Montagu, chair, Gombrich Archive, Warburg Institute noted, "the way she sacrificed so much of her own time and talent to further [her husband's] work, both while he was alive, and after his death; she was an absolute model of devotion. But of course her greatest quality was her own personality, her probity and honesty, and her capacity for loyal friendship."

Her joy in learning is epitomized in the story told by her colleague, Paul Olson, who fondly remembers her driving him to work with a Greek dictionary on the steering wheel.

Paul Olson, Professor Emeritus Department of English, University of Nebraska.

She and her work are discussed in the comic-philosophical novel Harmony Junction by Goddard Graves (2009, privately published).