Susanne Miller

Susanne Miller
Born	Susanne Strasser 14 May 1915 Sofia, Bulgaria
Died	1 July 2008 Bonn, Germany
Occupation	Political activist Historian
Spouse(s)	1. Horace Miller 2. Willi Eichler
Parent(s)	Ernst Strasser Margit Rodosi/Strasser

Susanne Miller (born Susanne Strasser: 14 May 1915 – 1 July 2008) was a left wing activist who for reasons of race and politics spent her early adulthood as a refugee in England. After 1945 she became a German historian.

Susanne Miller was born in Sofia in the early summer of 1915, less than a year after the outbreak of the First World War. She was born into a prosperous conservative family originally of Jewish provenance. Her father, Ernst Strasser, was a banker: her mother, Margarete/Margit Strasser (born Rodosi), gave birth to the Strassers' second child, Georgina, approximately twenty months after Susanne's birth. In 1919, however, the girls' mother died as a result of the 1918/20 influenza pandemic. When she was five Susanne was baptised as a Protestant, but her father's motives in arranging this seem to have been more social than religious.

Around 1920/21 Ernst Strasser married again. By his new wife, born Irene Freund, Susanne and Georgina quickly acquired two more half-siblings, Erika and Edgar. The family also relocated: between 1921 and 1929 they lived in Döbling, on the northwest side of Vienna. Susanne later recorded that it was here, while still a child living in one of the city's most affluent quarters, that she became aware of the huge social inequalities in the Austrian capital. At home she was acutely aware of the way her conservative family was distanced from the servants they employed.

After starting off at the local primary school, her secondary education took her to a co-educational where her academic enthusiasms became particularly focused on history and so-called "Golden Age" historiography. In 1929 the family moved back to Bulgaria in connection with Ernst Strasser's work, and Susanne Strasser switched to the in Sofia. By this time she was already becoming interested in socialist politics. It was in Sofia, still aged only 17, that Susanne Strasser passed her School Certificate (Matriculation / Abitur) exam.

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