Gerda Mayer (1927–2021)

Gerda Mayer, née Stein, was born to a Jewish family in Karlsbad (present-day Karlovy Vary), Czechoslovakia. Her parents were Erna (Eisenberger) and Arnold Stein, who owned a knitwear business and clothing shop. She had an older half-sister, Johanna Travnicek. She began writing poetry at a very young age. After Nazi Germany invaded the country in September 1938, the family fled east to Prague and spent six months vainly attempting to emigrate. As a desperate measure, in March 1939, at age 11, Gerda was put by her parents alone on a Kindertransport flight to the UK. Her parents both died in the Holocaust. She attended boarding schools in England and then worked on farms in Worcestershire and Surrey. After the war, she moved to London and took office jobs. In 1949, she married Adolf Mayer, a fellow refugee from Austria. He founded an import business in which she worked while writing poetry in English. In 1960, Gerda Mayer enrolled at Bedford College, University of London, earning a B.A. in English, German and history of art in 1963. She published collections of her poetry and contributed to magazines and anthologies for adults and children. Much of her work drew on the trauma of her uprooting and loss of family These included Monkey on the Analyst's Couch (1980), The Candy-Floss Tree (1984) and A Heartache of Grass (1988).