Helene Scheu-Riesz

Helene Scheu-Riesz was an Austrian women's rights activist, pacifist, children's writer and publisher. In addition to supporting the Austrian women's movement, in November 1900 together with Yella Hertzka and three others she founded the Viennese Women's Club. She later became active in the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, representing Austria at the organization's 1919 international congress in Zurich, the 1921 congress in Vienna and the 1924 congress in Washington, D.C. Scheu-Riesz took a special interest in children's literature, translating and writing books herself and founding the publishing house Sesam-Verlag in 1923. After the death of her husband, the Austrian intellectual and social democrat politician Gustav Scheu, as she was of Jewish heritage, in 1937 she moved to the United States. There she created the publishing house Island Press on the remote Ocracoke Island. She founded Open Sesame Inc. New York in 1949 to continue her philanthropic work of distributing world literature as a means of promoting internationalism and peace. In 1954, she returned to her house in the Hietzing district of Vienna where she spent the remainder of her life.