Palimpsest o Ani
Palimpsest on Ana

Author(s): Gordana Stojaković
Subject(s): History, Gender history
Published by: Етнографски институт САНУ
Keywords: Ana Cimer; Ана Грес; Czimmer Anna; dr G. Czimmer Anna; Gresz Bélané; Gresz Cz. Anna
Summary/Abstract: In this paper, I will attempt to investigate the data on the life and work of physician and scientist (bacteriologist and pharmacologist), Ana Cimer (Arad, 1906 – Novi Sad, 1967), who belonged to three cultures: Hungarian, Serbian, and Romanian. Of all the personal information about her, the most consistent is her given name – Ana. Chronologically simplified, she was Dr Ana (Anna), born Cimer (Czimmer), as a married woman Gres (Gresz), widow of Béla Gresz, buried as Gresz Belané. Among these simplifications are several variations of the surnames as Ana wrote them at different times in her life, which hint at, and sometimes clearly testify to, her fruitful work and tragic fate. There is a certain lack of information about her life and work, due to the fact that an extremely interesting correspondence (including photographs and many other important documents) was burned at Ana’s explicit wish. It is unclear exactly when she came to Novi Sad. Written records so far show that the Yugoslav Army hired Dr Ana Gres from January to June 1945, probably for the needs of the newly established Military Transfusion Station, at the Main Provincial Hospital in Novi Sad, which ceased operations after the end of hostilities. There is further written evidence that in January 1948 she returned to Novi Sad at the request of the Ministry of Labour of the FPRY as a foreign expert. From then until the time when serious illness confined her to bed, she would head the bacteriology ward at the tuberculosis hospitals in Venac and Novi Sad. In Arad, where she was born, Transylvanianism involved multilingualism and connectedness, creating a special, shared cultural awareness to which Ana Cimer, as the child of a mixed marriage and a connoisseur of multiple languages, belonged. As Dr Ana Cimer, she worked in Szeged (where she had successfully completed her medical studies in 1931) as a part of the team of Albert Szent-Györgyi von Nagyrápolt, the winner of the 1937 Nobel Prize for Medicine. There, she was part of the elite from Erdelj (Transylvania) who, after the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire (Kingdom of Hungary), sought their place in the mother country – the Kingdom of Hungary. The 1930s were the most prolific period of Ana Cimer’s research work. She published scientific and professional papers in professional journals during her work at the Debrecen Pharmacological Institute, the Szeged Bacteriological Institute (The Szeged Theoretical Institute) and the Budapest State Hygiene Institute. Anna Cimer was a noted expert in Romanian literature (from Benuce to Sadoveanu), and is known to have translated novels by Marcel Aymé and Saint- Exupéry (The Little Prince) from French. In addition, she worked directly (through articles in Lumina and Híd magazines) and indirectly (through an informal literary salon in her apartment and correspondence with many Hungarian writers) in the field of literary creativity in the mid-20th century in Hungarian, Serbian and Romanian. Severely ill and lonely, she died at the age of 61. She was buried in the Old Catholic Cemetery in Novi Sad, although her grave, a humble mound with a wooden cross, is nowhere to be found today. This paper aims to preserve the memory of Dr Ana Cimer Gres.

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