Mildred Fish-Harnack (born Mildred Elizabeth Fish; 16 September 1902 – 16 February 1943) was an American-German literary historian, translator, and German Resistance fighter in Nazi Germany.
Life in the United States
Mildred Elizabeth Fish was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, one of four children born to William C. Fish and Georgina (née Hesketh) Fish. She attended West Division High School (now Milwaukee High School of the Arts), but finished up her last year at Western High School in Washington D.C.[1]In 1926, she was studying and working as a lecturer on German literature at the Milwaukee State Normal School (now the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee).[2] She met the jurist Arvid Harnack, a Rockefeller Fellow from Germany, at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. They later wed in a ceremony at her brother's farm near Brooklyn, Wisconsin[disambiguation needed].[1]
One of her teachers at the University of Wisconsin was William Ellery Leonard. A fellow student and friend was poet Clara Leiser.[3] She finished her senior thesis in 1928: "A Comparison of Chapman's and Pope's translations of the Iliad with the Original". During her time at Madison, she also worked on the Wisconsin Literary Magazine. From 1928-29, she taught English at Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland.
