Alma Wittlin

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Alma Stephanie Wittlin , Alma S. Wittlin , (born on March 23, 1899 in or near Lemberg , died on December 31, 1992 in Palo Alto ), married Wittlin-Frischauer at times , was an Austrian art historian, writer, educationalist, emigrant to Great Britain and to the USA and a museologist and museum educator .

life and work

Wittlin on the memorial plaque for victims of National Socialism at the Kunsthistorisches Institut Vienna, since 2008

Wittlin spent her youth in Vienna , she attended the famous girls' school, the Reform Realgymnasium of Eugenie Schwarzwald , which helped her to overcome narrow-mindedness that was passed down in the family. She graduated from high school in 1918. She studied art history , anthropology and philosophy in Vienna . In 1921 she married Paul Frischauer , the marriage lasted until 1932. In 1925 she received her doctorate at the university there in art history under Josef Strzygowski , a combative anti-Semite, on Christian architecture of the first millennium in Spain . Then she worked for specialist or popular magazines with essays on architecture or modern photography.

In Berlin she then worked as a trainee at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum , Department for Byzantine and Oriental Art, and for the PEN Center . She gave lectures at adult education centers in Berlin and Vienna on the historical background of art as well as sociological and psychological aspects of artistic creation. Several trips to Spain deepened her knowledge of the country.

At the same time she wrote popular science books about "Isabella, founder of the world power Spain" and about Abdülhamid II. , Each of which was translated into several languages.

The Isabella book is the Queen's first historical biography in German; In her presentation, Wittlin combines aspects of art history, excavations, philosophy and anthropology, in short, many cultural-scientific aspects with source study. Wittlin depicts the power politics, both of persons and of cliques, in a time of rapid change. Isabelle is portrayed as an extraordinary person, with her hope and her psychological constitution. At the turn of the Middle Ages to the Renaissance, these factors led to a proto-national Spain, with a focused view of a power-brimming nobility. The book was promptly translated into four languages, English, Spanish, Italian and Hungarian.

In May 1933 she campaigned at the PEN Congress in Ragusa for the declaration of German-speaking authors against the persecution of intellectuals by the National Socialist German Reich, which was finally passed against resistance.

Of Jewish origin, although baptized as a Protestant, Wittlin left Austria for England in 1937. At the University of Cambridge , at the Archaeological-Anthropological Museum, she dealt with the question of how museum presentations can be made fruitful for pedagogy. She worked briefly at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto .

In 1952 Wittlin emigrated to the USA, where she received permanent residence permit under federal law on June 30, 1954, and became a US citizen in 1959. She worked until 1960 as head of a traveling Museum of Natural Sciences and Anthropology ( Science Comes to You, Inc. ), headquartered in Santa Fe and in Albuquerque , then in Cambridge (Massachusetts) at the Radcliff Institute and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC , from 1971 in California, most recently at Stanford University .

Through her research and teaching, including in adult and teacher training, Wittlin wanted to encourage museums to appreciate their educational role, to pay attention to it when arranging the exhibits and to look at the effect on students and teachers.

A museologist judges Wittlin's specialist publications in 2012:

“(She created) a true masterpiece of clarity, museologically and historically. In contrast to the sluggishness of European museums and the conservatism of their directors, they called on them to take their educational task seriously. In her investigation of future developments, she not only looked into the future, but also illustrated the dead ends in which the existing facilities were. "

- Dominique Poulot on Wittlin's continued work, 2012

Honors

The International Council of Museums conducts a memorial lecture entitled "Alma S. Wittlin Memorial lectures" at its annual general meeting.

Works, letters, essays

  • Alma Stephanie Frischauer: Old Spanish church building. (= Studies of late antique art history 3). De Gruyter, Leipzig 1930; Reprint De Gruyter, Berlin 1978, ISBN 3110057034 ( additional revised dissertation phil.University of Vienna 1925)
  • as publisher: International PEN Bulletin of selected books - Choix de notices critiques. Vol. 3, No. 3, International PEN, London October - December 1952 and others.
  • Isabella. Founder of the world power Spain. Historical novel. Rentsch, Zurich & Leipzig 1936
  • Abdul Hamid. Shadow of God. Historical novel. John Lane, London 1940. Translated from the German Norman Denny
    • in Arabic: ʻAbd al-Ḥamīd ẓill Alāh ʻalā al-arḍ. Al-Qāhira Publishing House, 1950
  • The Museum. Its history and its tasks in education . Series: International Library of Sociology and Social Reconstruction. Ed. Karl Mannheim . Routledge & Paul Kegan, London 1949 ( digitized version ).
    • Extended version: Museums. In search of a usable future . MIT-Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1970, ISBN 0262230399
      • Partial reprint again in: The Twelve-Point Program for Museum Renewal. In: Gail Anderson (Ed.): Reinventing the Museum, Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on the Paradigm Shift. Altamira, Walnut Creek 2004, pp. 44-60
  • Letters that AS wrote to Europe after 1945 in: Hadwig Kraeutler: Exile without end? Letters from a restless person. Alma S. Wittlin's correspondence in (inter) national networks , in: Irene Below , Inge Hansen-Schaberg , Maria Kublitz-Kramer (Eds.) .: The end of exile? Letters from women after 1945. Series: Women and Exile, 7th edition text + kritik , Munich 2015
  • Hundreds of thousands of children on the street / X Centmille enfants dans la rue, In: Schweizer Illustrierte Zeitung , No. 49, editor H. Brack. Zofingen November 30, 1932 (bilingual)
  • as A. Wittlin: Europe and Spain, in Ciba -Rundschau . Issue 29: The Development of Textile Art in Spain. Ciba, Basel 1938. pp. 1050-1088 of the continuously paginated booklets of approx. 30 pages each
    • engl. Fass .: in The development of the textile crafts in Spain. Ciba Review 29, Basle
  • Alma Stefanie Wittlin: Spain, a world of its own. An Austrian travels all over the Pyrenees Peninsula, in Herbert Stifter (Ed.): Bergland. Illustrated monthly Alpine magazine. Vol. 18, issue 12. Wagner, Innsbruck 1936, pp. 39–46

literature

  • Wittlin-Frischauer, Alma Stefanie , in: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical manual of German-speaking art historians in exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism. Part 2: L – Z. KG Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 799-801.
  • Hadwig Kraeutler: Alma S. Wittlin (1899-1992). In good company and 'self-made'. In: Ursula Seeber, Veronika Zwerger, Claus-Dieter Krohn (Hrsg.): Comets of money. Exile and economy. (= Exile research 33). edition text + kritik, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-86916-451-9 , pp. 228–245.
  • Hadwig Kraeutler: Wittlin, v Alma S. In: Ilse Korotin (Hrsg.): BiografıA. Lexicon of Austrian Women. Volume 3: P-Z. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Weimar 2016, ISBN 978-3-205-79590-2 , Sp. 3573-3575.
  • Hadwig Kraeutler: Alma S. Wittlin. Observations of an emigrant's reflections on war and peace. In: Zwischenwelt , magazine of the Theodor Kramer Society Vienna, 34, 1–2, June 2017 ISSN  1606-4321 pp. 28–32

Web links

References and comments

  1. ↑ Frischauer was a friend of her brother Józef Wittlin . The marriage ended de facto in 1930, which is why this is usually rumored in the literature as the year of divorce. However, the marriage did not end de jure until 1932.
  2. ↑ z. B. Alma St. Wittlin-Frischauer: Once again "Beautiful garden in a rough climate". In: German art and decoration. Apartment art - painting - sculpture - architecture - gardens - artistic work by women. Vol. 26, No. 10. F. Bruckmann, Munich July 1933
  3. ^ Abdul Hamid: The Shadow of God . John Lane at The Bodley Head, London 1940
  4. ↑ Scan
  5. ^ Dominique Poulot: Museums and museologies. In: Mathew Remplay, Thierry Lenain , Hubert Lochner, Andrea Pinotti, Charlotte Schöll-Glass, Kitty Zijlmans (eds.): Art history and visual studies in Europe. Transnational Discourses and National Frameworks. Brill, Leiden 2012, ISBN 9789004218772 , pp. 197-216; here p. 209 ... true masterpieces of museological and historical lucidity. Against the inertia of European museums and the conservatism of their directors, she called for their educational mission to be taken seriously, and showed herself prophetic in her analysis of developments to come, as well as the impasses in the institutions.
  6. ↑ New editions up to the 1990s, also with slightly different titles. Number Translations.
  7. ↑ German version has been lost
  8. ↑ Besides AS letters from Ella Bergmann-Michel , Ilse Bing , Erna Blencke, Erna Döblin, Maria Gleit , Gabriele Kätzler, Hildegard Kramer, Vera Lachmann , Luise von Leyden, Johanna Marum, Lili Pollatz , Anna Siemsen , Minna Specht , Hilde Spiel , Grete Weil
  9. ↑ with numerous references to sources and a photo by Wittlin, approx. 1971.
personal data
SURNAME Wittlin, Alma
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wittlin-Frischauer, Alma Stefanie (married name); Wittlin, Alma Stephanie; Wittlin, Alma St .; Wittlin, Alma S .; Wittlin, Alma Stefanie; Wittlin, Alina Stephanie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American writer, museologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 23, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Lviv
DATE OF DEATH December 31, 1992
Place of death Palo Alto