Items in this collection do not circulate and may be used in-house only.
Requests for permission to quote from the Gisela Konopka papers should be arranged with the University of Minnesota Archives head.
Gisela Konopka papers, University of Minnesota Archives.
Deposited in University Archives from 1986-1997. An additional deposit was made in 2001.
Collection has not been processed.
The collection contains awards, personal and professional correspondence, committees and organizations agendas and minutes, clippings about Germany, papers and manuscripts by Gisela Konopka, speeches, class materials and audiovisual materials.
Gisela Konopka was born in Berlin, Germany on February 11, 1910. She earned the equivalent of a bachelor's degree from the University of Hamburg in 1933. When the Nazis became the governing power in Germany, Dr. Konopka joined the resistance movement. In 1936, she was arrested and imprisoned in a concentration camp for six weeks. She fled to Austria, only to flee again to France when the Nazi Army invaded Vienna. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States. She married her husband Paul in 1941, a fellow German national, after they settled in America. Dr. Konopka earned her Master's in Social Service Administration from the University of Pittsburgh and her Doctor of Social Welfare from Columbia University in 1957.
Dr. Konopka was nationally and internationally known for her research on delinquent adolescent girls conducted during her time at the University of Minnesota. She began her career at the University in 1947 as a professor of social work. Other appointments held by Dr. Konopka at the University, in addition to her teaching duties, included Coordinator of the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (1968-1970), Special Assistant to the Vice President of Student Affairs (1969-1972) and Director of the Center for Youth Development and Research (1970-1978). At the time of her retirement in 1978, she was Professor Emeritus of Social Work.
During her tenure in academia, Dr. Konopka was President of American Orthopsychiatric Association, Director of the National Conference on Social Welfare and Chairman of the History of Social Welfare group. Dr. Konopka died on December 9, 2003 at the age of 93.
Project Girl records, 1973-1976, University of Minnesota, Social
Welfare History Archives. Records of a national research project, directed by
Gisela Konopka, which interviewed nearly 1,000 adolescent girls in the U.S. and
Puerto Rico. Konopka's book,
National Youthworker Education Project records, 1975-1986, University of Minnesota, Social Welfare History Archives. The NYEP was a training project, 1975-1981, based in the U of M Center for Youth Development. It drew on the findings of Project Girl to train staff members of youth-serving organizations to better address the needs of adolescent girls.
National Association of Social Workers, Oral History Project records, 1978-1980, University of Minnesota, Social Welfare History Archives. Includes a 615-page transcript of an interview with Gisela Konopka. This project, done under the auspices of the NASW, interviewed eight prominent social work leaders. The Social Welfare History Archives also holds taped voice samples of the interview subjects.
Gisela Konopka's role in the social work profession is also documented extensively in the records of various professional associations held by the Social Welfare History Archives, including the National Association of Social Workers, the National Conference on Social Welfare and the Council on Social Work Education.
A finding aid with detailed contents is available in University Archives.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the University of Minnesota Libraries. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.