“Eve Keeps Winning...”: European Intellectuals in Brazil in Times of Totalitarianisms

Abstract

This article seeks to portray part of the trajectories of four professional women who, in the first decades of the twentieth century, emigrated to Brazil escaping the totalitarian experiments that swept across the European continent. From the life stories of psychologists Bettina Katzenstein, Aniela Meyer-Ginsberg and Helena Antipoff as well as of journalist Olga Obry, the study seeks to shed light on the encounters within the group of exiles in the country and also on their interactions with national characters, who, aware of the contributions brought by the newcomers, welcomed their experiences, blended them to the local dynamics and, as a result, new scenarios emerged and new impulses were leveraged, which stand out, up to this day, through the permanence of ideas and practices started in those years. At the same time, the efforts are geared towards a brief overview of both the origins and the obstacles that the protagonists were forced to face in their respective countries, the losses inflicted upon them, but also their achievements in the new land.