Luise Hercus


Luise Anna Hercus,, was a German-born linguist who lived in Australia from 1954. After significant early work on Middle Indo-Aryan dialects she had specialised in Australian Aboriginal languages since 1963, when she took it up as a hobby. Works authored or co-authored by her are influential, and often among the primary resource materials on many languages of Australia.

Life and career

Hercus was born Luise Anna Schwarzschild on 16 January 1926 in Munich, Germany, to the artist Alfred and his wife Theodora Schwarzschild. The family descended from a long line of rabbis, merchants and intellectuals. On the assumption of power by Hitler in Germany, their position as Jewish people rapidly deteriorated, despite financial assistance from an uncle who had emigrated to the United States. With her family she took refuge in England in 1938, and the family settled in East Finchley, in northern London where she attended Tollington Hill School. The family, during the air raids over London, moved to Hampstead Gardens. She won a scholarship at 17 to St Anne's College, Oxford, where she graduated with a bachelor's degree in Oriental Studies in 1946, followed by an M.A.
In 1948 she was appointed tutor and lecturer at St. Anne's College, a position she held until 1954, when she emigrated to Australia. She married the scientist Graham Robertson Hercus, on 23 February 1955. Together they had one child, Iain Robertson Hercus, who obtained a doctorate in astronomy.
From 1965 to 1969 she was a research fellow at the University of Adelaide, South Australia. It was at this time that she began to pursue private studies in Aboriginal languages, managing to pull some from the brink of oblivion, as for example with Wangganguru which she recorded with the assistance of her informant, Mick McLean Irinjili. After 1969 she took up an appointment as senior lecturer and then reader in Sanskrit, in the Department of South Asian and Buddhist Studies at the Australian National University, Canberra, Australia..
In the 1970s, Hercus, along with Peter K. Austin and David Trefry, did research on the Diyari language.
Luise had been publishing significant articles on linguistic features of Middle Indo-Aryan dialects since 1953 and a collected volume reprinting and indexing these was published by the ANU Faculty of Asian Studies in 1991.
After 1991 she became a visiting fellow in the Department of Linguistics at ANU, writing up grammars, dictionaries and traditional texts, and continuing fieldwork mainly in the north of South Australia and adjacent areas of New South Wales and Queensland.
A Festschrift was presented to Dr Hercus on the occasion of her retirement in 1990.
In January 2016, AIATSIS presented Hercus with digital copies of the foundational sound recordings, of which she had made over 1,000 hours ranging over 56 native languages and dialects, as a token of gratitude in celebrating her 90th birthday. Among the material, are unique sounding recordings of Pantyikali, Nukunu, Woiwurrung, Dadi Dadi, Djadjala, Gunnai, Narungga, Wadi Wadi, Wergaia, Kurnu, and Nari Nari. In addition, a second Festschrift, the book, Language, land and song: Studies in honour of Luise Hercus, with contributions from over 30 scholars, was published online in 2017, to honour her lifelong engagement with Aboriginal people and their languages.

Indigenous languages

Hercus wrote on, among others, the following languages :
Besides Australian languages, Hercus also studied Romance and early Indian languages.

Works

Hercus was a prolific author, with 163 works to her credit at WorldCat Identities,
but perhaps best known for the following works:
Of particular value to her Aboriginal informants is her
On 12 June 1995, Luise Hercus became a Member of the Order of Australia, for her service to education and linguistics, particularly through the preservation of Aboriginal languages and culture.