Sibylle Bolla-Kotek

In 1968, Bolla-Kotek suffered a serious riding accident. The after-effects of this accident and an attack of influenza resulted in her death at the age of fifty-five on 22 February 1969.

In 1958, Bolla-Kotek was appointed ordinary professor of Roman law, papyrology, Near Eastern law, and civic law at the University of Vienna. She was the first woman to be appointed professor in a legal faculty in Austria. Along with Fritz Schwind [de], Walter Selb [de], Gerhard Thür [de] and Peter E. Pieler [de], she maintained the research focus on ancient legal history at Vienna University, which had been established by Leopold Wenger.

Von Bolla left Czechoslovakia in 1945, moving to Tyrol where her sister lived. Contacts with the University of Innsbruck did not bear fruit. In 1946 she received a license to teach from the legal faculty at the University of Vienna. In 1949 she became an extraordinary professor there. She married Alfred Kotek, a doctor, in 1950.

In 1938, von Bolla received a license to teach Roman law and ancient legal history. Among her specialty areas were papyrology and cuneiform texts. One of her colleagues was Bedřich Hrozný, the decipherer of the Hittite language. In 1944, von Bolla received the title of "extraordinary professor," but despite the support of the faculty, promotion to an academic chair was barred to her.

Von Bolla studied jurisprudence at the German University in Prague, graduating in 1935. Her teachers included Egon Weiß [de] and Mariano San Nicolò [de], an expert on cuneiform law. They encouraged her to undertake a legal career.

Sibylle von Bolla-Kotek (8 June 1913–22 February 1969) was an Austrian scholar of legal history and the first female professor in a legal faculty in Austria.

Sibylle von Bolla was born in Bratislava (then Pressburg in Austria-Hungary) in 1913, the daughter of the Hungarian Oberst Gideon von Bolla and his wife Margarethe. The family moved to Teplice in the new state of Czechoslovakia in 1923, where von Bolla attended a humanistic Gymnasium. Her father died in 1929 and her family was supported thereafter by her father's army colleague Theodor Körner.