Westport Museum Launches Exhibit On Pioneering Female Reporter

From the Westport Museum for History & Culture: WESTPORT, CT — On New Year’s Day 1935, American reporter Sigrid Schultz wired a dispatch describing how German leader Adolf Hitler spent the day in “high pressure conferences” and “in review of his Nazi Storm Troopers and Hitler Youth.” It was two year’s into his rule, Shultz described the “Fuhrer” as “more powerful than any Kaiser of yore” noting that Hitler was “cleverly following the movement of masses, waiting for the critical moment to issue orders to further mold his ‘new Germany.”

It would be the first of many warnings embedded in what would become nearly a decade reporting about the rise and fall of Nazi Germany up to and including the years of the Second World War.

Opening January 20th, Westport Museum’s newest exhibit “Dragon Lady” honors the life and legacy of pioneering reporter, social justice activist and Westporter Sigrid Schultz.

“We have spent over a year researching the work and legacy of Ms. Schultz using primary resources in our own collection and in colleague organizations including the Wisconsin Historical Society which houses the bulk of her papers,” said Westport Museum Executive Director, Ramin Ganeshram.

Born in Chicago in 1893, war correspondent Schultz was bureau chief for Central Europe for The Chicago Tribune in the years leading up to World War II and the first woman to hold that position for a major news service. Fluent in German, Schultz was stationed in Berlin where she witnessed the rise of the country’s National Socialism (Nazi) Party and was acutely aware of the danger the party and its leader, Adolf Hitler, posed to the world.

Filing her most sensitive stories from various European cities under a pseudonym so as not to jeopardize her entrée behind the scenes of the Third Reich, Schultz was a masterful investigator, and her dispatches provided critical intelligence about Germany’s wartime plans. Nazi party leader Herman Göring called Schultz “that dragon from Chicago” and attempted to eliminate her more than once. After being wounded in an Allied Air Raid, Schultz returned to the United States to
reside in Westport with her mother, remaining in the town for more than four decades until her death in 1980.

A founder of the Overseas Press Club, Schultz’ legacy lives on in the form of two scholarship funds she endowed for the study of journalism at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and Central Connecticut State University (CCSU).

“The Museum will be hosting a special tour for the students from CCSU’s Backpack Journalism WWII +75 reporting course that is going to Amsterdam, Normandy, and Paris in late May,” said Ganeshram. According to Vivian B. Martin, Ph.D., Professor and Chair of CCSU’s Department of Journalism several students will be traveling to Europe with the help of the Sigrid Schultz funds.

“Our hope is that this exhibit will honor Sigrid Schultz’ bravery and personal sacrifices to as many people as possible,” said Ganeshram, who is an alumna of Columbia Journalism School. “Hers is a name that deserves to be remembered but nowhere more so than in this town she called home.”

In October 2019, Westport’s RTM members unanimously voted to rename the downtown Westport parking lot where her home once stood after her. Michael S. Friedman, Senior Rabbi at Westport’s Temple Israel believes Schultz' life offers powerful lessons, even today. Temple Israel is a leading organization pursuing social justice in the town.

“I have always been moved by the stories of non-Jews who, in the face of overwhelming Nazi power, put themselves at personal risk to do something good. Sigrid Schultz repeatedly put herself in harm’s way to deliver some of the initial reporting on Nazi persecution of Jews and on the notorious concentration camps,” he said. “Her story prompts each of us to consider whether we could have been so brave, had we been in her shoes.”