Elisabeth Freund

Elisabeth Freund (1898–1982) was a German-Jewish immigrant who left Germany in the 1930s, finally immigrating to the US in 1941. Freund developed learning curricula for the blind and founded a Touch and Learn Center at the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia in the mid-20th century. She was born in Breslau, Germany (now part of Poland) in 1898 to a neurologist, Carl Freund.

Elisabeth Freund studied at universities in Breslau, Würzburg, and Berlin.

In the 1930s, Elisabeth Freund lived with her husband and children in Berlin. In 1933, her husband was dismissed from his work at a corporation because he was a Jew.

In 1938, Freund and her husband sent their two daughters through Kindertransport to the US and then in Freund and her husband emigrated to Cuba in 1941 before finally emigrating to the US in 1944.

She began working for the Overbrook School for the Blind in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania run by Julius Friedlaender, the brother of her great-uncle. In 1959, she published the book, Crusader for light: Julius R. Friedlander, founder of the Overbrook School for the Blind, 1832, about Friedlaender.

Freund developed a Touch and Learn Center at the Overbrook School for the Blind that was a model for other blind centers internationally.

She died in 1982.