Caroline Ethel Cooper (25 December 1871 – 25 May 1961) was an Australian musician and diarist best known for the weekly letters she wrote to her sister Emmie in Australia while she was trapped behind enemy lines in

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

during

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

Early life

Cooper was born in Adelaide in 1871, the daughter of Arthur Cooper the deputy surveyor general and Harriette Cooper (née Woodcock) a music teacher. Cooper attended ''Miss Annie Montgomerie Martin's progressive school'' and studied music under I. G. Reimann.

Musical career

Ethel Cooper played the trombone and piano. She travelled to

to continue her music studies from 1897 to 1906. She returned to Adelaide and played trombone in visiting orchestras at the ''Theatre Royal'' and formed a Women's Orchestra.

WW1 and Letter writing

Cooper returned to Leipzig and documented her experiences living in wartime Germany from 31 July 1914 and 1 December 1918 in 227 weekly letters to her sister. She was living in Leipzig when the war started, and she chose to stay.Paull, John (2020
Rudolf Steiner and Anthroposophy: Encounters of our Spy in Leipzig, Germany, during WW1
Journal of Bio-Dynamics Tasmania, 136: 34-41. As the war dragged on, she tried to leave but was forbidden. She was denounced by neighbours as a spy on several occasions but in each case she talked her way out and remained free. Despite being confined as an alien to Lepzig, she covertly travelled into the countryside and even to a military barracks. Ethel Cooper also visited Allied POWs held in Germany and attended German military hospitals for wounded soldiers. It was not possible to post her letters back to Australia, so the first 52 were smuggled to Switzerland. The rest of the letters were hidden in music scores and furniture until she could send them from England in 1918. Cooper's sister, Emmie, later deposited the letters in the State Library of South Australia's collection. Cooper returned to Adelaide following the war before returning to Europe to help with relief work in Poland and Greece.

Media Portrayal

Ethel Cooper is one of the 14 main characters of the series

14 - Diaries of the Great War ''14 - Diaries of the Great War'' (titled ''Great War Diaries'' when aired on the BBC) is a 2014 international documentary drama series about World War I. It uses a mix of acted scenes, archive footage, and animation. All episodes were directed b ...

. She is played by actress Megan Gay.

Memorials

* The Ethel Cooper Scholarship for Pianoforte at University of Adelaide. was established by her biographer Decie Denholm in 1982 for a student studying the piano.

Personal life

Cooper never married. Caroline Ethel Cooper died on 25 May 1961 in Malvern, Australia at the age of 90.

References

External links

Excerpts from Behind the Lines : One Woman's War, 1914-18
from the State Library of South Australia {{DEFAULTSORT:Cooper, Ethel 1871 births 1961 deaths Australian trombonists Australian diarists Women diarists 19th-century Australian women 20th-century Australian women