Oxford and Germany

Catherine Duleep Singh, a daughter of Punjab’s deposed maharaja, grew up in Britain. She and Bamba studied Modern Languages at Somerville between 1890 and 1894. Faridah Zaman situates their education within aristocratic privilege and imperial dispossession, while acknowledging that the sisters’ own understanding of their Oxford position remains uncertain.[1]

Catherine later shared a home in the German city of Kassel with Lina Schäfer. Krithika Varagur’s archival reporting describes their household and Catherine’s return to Britain in 1938. The relationship and years spent in Germany formed part of a life that subsequently became bound to helping people escape Nazi persecution.[2]

Sponsorship, shelter and work

Varagur reconstructs the Hornstein family’s arrival in Britain through sponsorship letters and later family recollections. Catherine arranged support for their entry and welcomed them to her home at Penn, Buckinghamshire. The children attended a local school, while Ilse Hornstein worked in the household. Assistance continued beyond the border crossing: a May 1939 newspaper advertisement records Catherine recommending a German Jewish companion-nurse for employment. Such actions connected paperwork with accommodation and prospects for resettlement. Varagur also describes her efforts on behalf of refugees facing internment after war began. These documented arrangements give substance to her later reputation as a protector of refugees.[2]

A later museum interpretation

For the Pitt Rivers Museum’s Beyond the Binary project, community curator Shakira Morar selected necklaces to represent aspects of Catherine’s life. Punjabi prayer beads, an Indian necklace intended as a shrine offering, imitation pearls and a German necklace were interpretive symbols, not belongings attributed to Catherine. Morar used the objects to foreground relationships and connections across countries, including her reading of Catherine’s love for Lina. This later curatorial act belongs to the history of her recognition, while remaining distinct from Catherine’s own recorded words or choices.[3]

Sources & notes

Source records include access dates and, where known, limits on what was examined. Checks used AI assistance; independent human or specialist review has not been completed.

  1. Faridah Zaman; Somerville College Magazine 2026. Somerville and the Duleep Singh Sisters ↗ · Source date: 2026-10-15 · Locator: Same actual signed article as PEO 70-S 1; specific Oxford study, family and Christian-upbringing paragraphs. Accessed 2026-11-02.The signed college account was inspected. It explicitly limits knowledge of the sisters’ personal understanding of their position.Return to Oxford and Germany, paragraph 1 ↑
  2. Krithika Varagur; The New York Review of Books. The Anti-Nazi Punjabi Princess ↗ · Source date: 2021-11-27 · Locator: Full article, especially Kassel house/document discussion and Hornstein family sponsorship, May 1939 Times employment notice and Coalhatch House accounts. Accessed 2026-11-02.The complete reported investigation was inspected. Its cited family recordings were not listened to, and precise motives remain interpretive.Return to Oxford and Germany, paragraph 2 ↑Return to Sponsorship, shelter and work, paragraph 1 ↑
  3. Shakira Morar, community curator; Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford. Beyond the Binary: Shakira Morar ↗ · Source date: publication date not established · Locator: Full signed community-curator statement; “Why This Story?” and “Why the necklaces?”; four object-caption identifiers. Accessed 2026-11-02.The signed curator statement and object captions were inspected. These are later symbolic selections, not evidence of personal ownership.Return to A later museum interpretation, paragraph 1 ↑
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Record PH-PEO-0072 · English edition · human review not performed