Tag: Kalisz

Stephanie Rosen-Hoa at Sorbonne University

The story of Stephanie Rosen-Hoa, aka Horose who wrote the China best seller “恋爱与义务” , later published as Love & Duty in Shanghai has been one of my research center for a while (see post “The story of Horose or S. Rosen-Hoa” to the original post on this topic). Information has been difficult to find, but a breakthrough has recently come up with some surprises.

We know that Stephanie Rosen-Hoa studied at Sorbonne University, as she published a thesis in 1910. The thesis was about germination and anatomical structure of plantago (also called Plantin). This plant has been long used to make remeades.

The thesis is dated from 1910. At that time, Sorbonne University offered two different tracks on scientific studies. One was focused on mathematics (differential and integral calculation, mechanics and astronomy), the other one on physics (phyics, chemistry, mineralogy-geology, botanics and zoology). Stephanie Rosen-Hoa clearly attended the physics track. Her thesis director was M Louis Matruchot, a French specialist of mushrooms who was conference master at Sorbonne University.

Plantin plant

Although Stephanie Rosen-Hoa went to Sorbonne University a long time ago, I have asked the French national archives to extract the student records. It took a while to come, but it was worth the wait as in brought some surprises.

First of all, I only got the student record for year 1910. The name used in the record is “Madame Rosen-Hoa”, as Stephanie Rosen-Hoa was already married to Hua Nan Gui since 1908. The first surprise is that Stephanie Rosen-Hoa is noted as born in “Wielun, Russie”. This is a different city from Kalisz, where the Rosenthal family was supposed to be. Wielun is about 80 km from Kalisz, which at that time probably took one to two days. Wielun was a smaller city than Kalisz, with about 8.000 inhabitants, when Kalisz has more than 20.000 then. Both cities were located in the Russian part after the split of Poland in 1793, although Kalisz was much closer to the border with Prussia.

Both city had a substantial jewish population, with the jews making the majority of the artisans. Archives of jewish families in Wielun show 512 record for the family name Rosenthal. This was quite a common name in Wielun then. The family of Stephanie Rosenthal must have moved to Kalisz on a later basis, as Stephanie always mentioned Kalisz as the city where she grew up.

The other important information from this record is the actual birthdate of Stephanie Rosen-Hoa. It is indicated as 21st October 1883, which is slightly different as the one from her death certificate (27th September 1883).

Stephanie Rosen-Hoa was registered as studying for the “diplôme d’étude”. This must be the “Diplôme d’étude supérieur” , a diploma requiring one year of study after the license diploma which itself took two years to complete. From that, I can assume that Stephanie Rosen-Hoa spent at least 3 years at Sorbonne University, entering the university in 1907, possibly earlier. It is probable that she actually came to France a few year before, probably around 1900-1905, but I have found no proof so far.

The other part of the records focuses on lab attendance. As Stephanie Rosen-Hoa was researching botanics, she had to do some lab work. Those experiments were not free as show by below records, counting the payments for using the “Laboratory of Mr Bonnier”, the president of the jury for Stephanie Rosen-Hoa thesis.

Thanks to Sorbonne records, I was able to get more information about the studies of Stephanie Rosen-Hoa at Sorbonne university. The search continues for more details about the life of this fascinating lady and her French/Polish-Chinese family. For more posts on this topic, please follow this link.

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The story of Horose, or S. Rosen-Hoa

Famous Old Shanghai movie “Love and Duty” was based on French novel “La symphonie des ombres Chinoises” by S. Rosen-Hoa also called Horose. Very little has been written about Horose, but putting together current academic articles and own research, I now have quite a clear picture of who she was and about her unusual life.

Stéphanie Rosenthal was born in Kalisz, Central Poland, in 1883 in a jewish family. She moved to Paris around the turn of the Century. In the 19th century many Polish artists, aristocrats and intellectual came to France, and many spoke French. Stéphanie Rosenthal and her family likely already spoke French when they came to France, allowing her to join the French schooling system. She then studied at the Sorbonne University, where she graduated in botany, with a thesis on germination of Plantago in 1910, aged 27.

Graduation thesis for Stéphanie Rosen-Hoa at Paris Sorbonne, 1910

She met her future husband during her studies, both of them being keen learners and practitioners of Esperanto. Hua Nangui / 华南圭 (1876-1961) was a native from Wuxi, Jiangsu province, China. He arrived in France in 1904 to study at the Public Work High School (ESTP Paris) where he was the first Chinese student graduating from the School in 1908. They got married in 1908, after which he worked for “Les Chemins de fer du Nord” (Great Northern Railway). After the wedding, Stéphanie added the name of her husband to her surname, being now called Stéphanie Rosen-Hoa. They always communicated in French as witnessed by relatives. They moved to China in 1910.

Hua Nangui and S. Rosen-Hoa in 1910

Hua Nangui / 华南圭 worked for the Beijing-Hankou railway until 1913 when he took an official post in the Ministry of Transports and Communication of the new Chinese republic. From that point he was involved in promoting of modern technologies, education and railways in China, publishing the first Chinese Railway engineering textbook in 1916.

The first child of the family was born in 1912, Léon Hoa / 華攬洪. The French edition of Love and duty (La Symphonie des ombres Chinoises, 1932) is dedicated to him. The family bought a plot of land in Beijing 量大人胡同(Liangdaren Hutong), built a house and moved in 1914. Horose first novel was published in Chinese by Shanghai based Commercial Press in 1915, under the name of 羅琛華. The topic is centered on a women doctor who got educated in France and returned to China. It is likely that the novel was written in French and translated in Chinese, probably by Hua Nangui / 华南圭. The topic of Chinese students returning from studies abroad and having to adapt back to China was a quite a key topic amongst Chinese returnees in the 2000s, but it was clearly a revival, having been already discussed in the 1910s. It is likely that the circle of friend of Stéphanie Rosen-Hoa included many returning students from Western countries, and maybe Japan that was also very popular for studies at the time. Her daughter Simone was born in 1916 in Beijing.

Her most well known is probably “Love and Duty” which first published in Chinese in 1923 then in English in 1926. With its modernity theme focusing on the opposition between traditional and modern values, in particular about arranged marriage and women’s education, it clearly resonnated with the popular Chinese literature movement at the time, the May 4th movement. This lead for the book to be made into the movie “Love and Duty” that kickstarted the popularity of Lian Hua movie production company (also called UPC) as well as being the first main role for upcoming Chinese superstar Ran Lingyu. The book credited for the 1931 movie is called in French “La symphonie des ombres”, although it was already published in Chinese as “恋爱与义务” from 1921 and in English as “Love and duty” from 1926. As mentioned earlier, it shows that the original novel was probably written in French, although only published in France much later.

Hua Nanhui, S Rosen-Hoa and their two children (about 1920-22)

China in the 1920s was far from politically stable with the Beiyang government being very weak and the country being mostly controlled by warlords, fighting war against each other for territory control. One of the many examples of the lack of safety at that time was the attack of the Peking Express train in 1922 (see post “The Peking Express” for more details). This is probably one of the main reason why she took a trip back to France in 1926 along with her two children. The second part of her life including travels between China and France will be covered in post “The story of Horose or S. Rosen-Hoa (Part 2)“.

For more details about publication of the Chinese, English and French versions of the “Love and duty” please go to post “Love and duty, the book“. For more details about the movie “Love and duty”, please got to post “Love and duty“.