Elisabeth Moses

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Elisabeth Moses (born January 14, 1894 in Cologne ; died December 21, 1957 in San Francisco ) was a German-American art historian and museum curator .

life and work

Elisabeth Caroline Moses was the eldest daughter of the Jewish ear, nose and throat doctor Sally (Salli) Moses and his wife Luise, née. Rothschild born in Cologne. The father had his own practice in downtown Cologne, headed the ENT department at the Israelite Asylum for the sick and the elderly and practiced at the Catholic St. Franziskus Hospital in Cologne-Ehrenfeld . Her mother was a board member of the Cologne Association for Jewish Nurses .

Elisabeth Moses passed her Abitur in 1912 at the first humanistic girls' high school in Prussia, at Marienplatz in Cologne. She then completed a degree in art history with the minor subjects archeology , architecture and philosophy at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn as well as in Berlin and Munich. One of her teachers was Paul Clemen , with whom she also received her PhD .

After completing her studies, in 1920 she accepted a position as a research assistant at the Kunstgewerbe-Museum in Cologne. Study trips took her and her brother through Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. On one of these trips she met Vicky Baum , with whom she had a lifelong friendship.

In the museum she was involved in the redesign of the museum under the director Karl Schäfer . Among other things, she revised the museum's textile and porcelain collection. At the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum she worked in the department of old paintings . In the arts and crafts association and in the museum, she regularly gave lectures a. a. about the newer art (1919), about various aspects of Cologne art history (1924), Martin Schongauer (1925) or costumes of the Gothic period (1926). In addition, she published, among other things, in the Reallexikon on German art history on cultural-historical topics and on Jewish art in the Rhineland.

On the occasion of the 1925 Rhineland Millennium Exhibition, which took place in Cologne in 1925 , she and the rabbi and historian Adolf Kober oversaw the newly established Department of Jews and Judaism in the Rhineland at the Art History Museum. She designed the Jewish art and Jewish cultural equipment section for the exhibition and brought together numerous valuable Judaica exhibits from all over the Rhineland, some of which are still in the holdings of the Cologne City Museum .

In 1926, Elisabeth Moses was appointed curator of the museum. In the following years she edited and cataloged a. a. the jewelry collection of the Cologne Museum of Decorative Arts, donated by Wilhelm Clemens . In addition, from the mid-1920s onwards, she specialized in the academic study of Jewish art history in the Rhineland. For the international Pressa exhibition , which took place in Cologne in 1928, she worked on the conception of the special Jewish show .

In 1928 she was accused of being involved in the Cologne museum scandal. Together with the museum director Karl Schäfer , she was dismissed, but reinstated in 1929 after it was found that she had been wrongly accused. Together with the new director of the Kunstgewerbemuseum Karl With , Elisabeth Moses was involved in the redesign of the museum. In the spring of 1931 the special exhibition put together by her and Edith Wurmbach became 150 years of fashion. From Rococo to Art Nouveau shown in the Kunstgewerbemuseum in Cologne, for which she also wrote an extensive catalog.

After the National Socialists came to power , Elisabeth Moses was dismissed from service in March 1933 before the law to restore the civil service came into force . In 1934 she fled to Italy and emigrated to the United States in the same year .

In San Francisco, in the fall of 1934, Elizabeth Moses got a job as a curator for arts and crafts at the MH de Young Memorial Museum under the direction of Walter Heil. As in Cologne, she redesigned the arts and crafts department of the museum in America and curated numerous special exhibitions, including Design in '49 (1949) , the Contemporary Handweavers Exhibition (1950, 1955) and Designer Craftsmen of the West (1957) . Since 1947, she has regularly organized special shows with contemporary ceramics in the museum. At the MH de Young Memorial Museum, from the late 1930s onwards, she focused increasingly on the art history of tapestries .

Elizabeth Moses died on December 21, 1957 in San Francisco after a long illness.

Honor

Stumbling stone for Elisabeth Moses, Elisenstraße 3

In memory of the achievements of Elizabeth Moses, the Elizabeth Moses Award is given regularly to promote young ceramists .

On March 21, 2013, in front of the former home of the Moses family in Elisenstraße 3, on the initiative of the Cologne City Museum, for Elisabeth Moses and her parents Sally (Salli) and Lucie (Luise) as well as for her brother, the doctor Paul Moses, the artist Gunther Demnig laid four stumbling blocks .

Controversy over the naming of Elisabeth-Moses-Strasse in Cologne

On March 13, 2017, the Cologne City Council decided to name a new road in the Dellbrück district of Cologne in honor of Elisabeth Moses after her. After several citizens 'applications submitted by the Cologne-Dellbrück Citizens' Association and the Cologne-Dellbrück Local History Association , the decision was revised by the City of Cologne in January 2018 and Elisabeth-Moses-Straße was renamed Seels Klosterhöfchen .

Literature by Elisabeth Moses (selection)

Books

  • The screen. Cultural-historical study. On behalf of the Hieronymus Eck company. DuMont Schauberg, Cologne 1924
  • The jewelry from the W. Clemens collection , DuMont-Schauberg, Cologne 1927
  • 150 years of fashion. From Rococo to Art Nouveau , catalog of the exhibition April / May 1931 in the Kunstgewerbe-Museum der Stadt Köln, Köln 1931, 208 pp.

Essays

  • Depictions of plants in German art of the 14th and 15th centuries Century. Their shape and their meaning . In: Journal for Christian Art, Issue 34, 1921 pp. 157–165; Extract from her dissertation
  • The section 'Jews and Judaism in the Rhineland' at the Millennium Exhibition in Cologne June-August 1925 . In: Soncino-Blätter, Heft 1 (1925/6), pp. 86-88
  • Caspar Benedikt Beckenkamp (1747-1828) . In: Wallraf-Richartz-Jahrbuch / Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte , Issue 2, 1925, pp. 44–77
  • Cologne women's costumes . In: KÖLNISCHE ZEITUNG: 1st to 4th special issue for the Rheinische Millennium Celebration. Cologne, May to August 1925
  • Gothic goldsmith work from the Clemens Collection in the Kunstgewerbemuseum of the City of Cologne , In: Die Uhrmacherkunst, Heft 51, 1926, p. 602
  • About a Cologne manuscript of the Mischnah Torah des Maimonides . In: Zeitschrift für bildende Kunst , Leipzig 1926/7, pp. 71–76
  • Do we need museums? In: Festschrift Gymnasiale Studien-Anstalt, 1928, pp. 69–77
  • Jewish cult and art monuments in the Rhineland . In: Journal of the Rheinischer Verein für Denkmalpflege und Heimatschutz , vol. 24 (1931), pp. 99–201 (with Adolf Kober)
  • Agraffe . In: Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte , Vol. 1, Stuttgart 1933, pp. 216–220
  • Pendant (gem) . In Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte , Vol. 1, 1935, pp. 699–705
  • California museum metamorphosis . In: Art News, Issue 36, 1937, pp. 12-13
  • Three centuries of European and American domestic silver MH De Young Memorial Museum , San Francisco 1938 (with Walter Heil)
  • International silver survey . In: Art News , Issue 37, 1938, pp. 10-12
  • Gothic riches for San Francisco . In: Art News , Issue 38, 1940, pp. 7–8
  • A gothic tapestry in the MH de Young Museum . Hunting rabbits with ferrets woven at Toumai . In: The Pacific Art Review, No. 1, 1941/2, pp. 24-30
  • A Gothic sculpture of the Madonna and Child . In: The Pacific Art Review , No. 1, 1941/2, pp. 26-29
  • A Dutch armory of the 17th century . In: The Pacific Art Review, No. 1, 1941/2, pp. 33-36
  • Brosche , In Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte , Vol. 2, 1944, pp. 1217–1219
  • Jewish ceremonial objects and items of historical interest, December 14-29, 1945. Celebrating the ninety-fifth anniversary of the founding of the congregation Emanu-El, Arguello Boulevard and Lake Street , San Francisco, 1945
  • A case for the decorative arts . In: The Pacific Art Review , No. 4, 1945/46, pp. 36-45
  • Appreciation of ceramics in the United States . In: Faenza , No. 34, 1948, pp. 54-58

literature

  • Bettina Mosler: Elisabeth Moses, art historian from the Adenauer period in Cologne: in search of a lost biography . In: Kölner Museums-Bulletin, No. 4, Cologne 1999; P. 33f.
  • Tobias Arand: The Jewish department of the Cologne 'Millennium Exhibition of the Rhineland' 1925 , In: Monika Grübel and Georg Möhlich (ed.): Jewish life in the Rhineland. From the Middle Ages to the Present , Böhlau, Cologne / Weimar 2005
  • Moses, Elisabeth , in: Ulrike Wendland: Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Art Historians in Exile. Life and work of the scientists persecuted and expelled under National Socialism . Munich: Saur, 1999, p. 446f.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Barbara Becker-Jákli: The Jewish Cologne past and present . Emons, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-89705-873-6 , p. 123 ff .
  2. ↑ Barbara Becker-Jákli: The Jewish hospital in Cologne: the history of the Israelite asylum for the sick and the elderly from 1869 to 1945 . Emons, Cologne 2004, ISBN 3-89705-350-0 , p. 202 f .
  3. ↑ a b c Ulrike Wendland: Biographical Handbook of German-Speaking Art Historians in Exile: Life and Work of the Scientists Persecuted and Expelled under National Socialism . Saur, Munich 1999, ISBN 978-3-11-096573-5 , pp. 446 .
  4. ↑ Nicole Nottelmann: The careers of Vicki Baum: a biography . 1st edition Kiepenheuer & Witsch, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-462-03766-1 , pp. 154 f .
  5. ^ Barbara Becker-Jákli: The Jewish Cologne past and present . Emons, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-89705-873-6 , p. 284 .
  6. ^ Gerhard Dietrich: Museum of Applied Art Cologne - Chronicle 1888-1988 . Ed .: City of Cologne. Cologne 1988.
  7. ^ Jürgen Wilhelm: Two millennia of Jewish art and culture in Cologne . Greven, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-7743-0397-3 , pp. 94 ff .
  8. ^ Barbara Becker-Jákli: The Jewish Cologne past and present . Emons, Cologne 2012, ISBN 978-3-89705-873-6 , p. 284 .
  9. ↑ Tobias Arand: The Jewish department of the Cologne 'Millennium Exhibition of the Rhineland' 1925 . In: Monika Grübel, Georg Mölich (Hrsg.): Jewish life in the Rhineland: from the Middle Ages to the present . Böhlau, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-412-11205-4 , pp. 194 ff .
  10. ↑ Horst Matzerath: "... one cannot forget the time, that is not possible": Cologne residents remember the years 1929-1945; on the 40th anniversary of the end of the war . Ed .: City of Cologne. Cologne 1985, p. 74 f .
  11. ↑ Ursula Wiedenmann, Beate Schmeichel-Falkenberg: Crossing Borders: Women, Art and Exile . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3147-4 , p. 129 .
  12. ↑ Martha Drexler Lynn: American studio ceramics: innovation and identity, 1940 to 1979 . New Haven 2015, ISBN 978-0-300-21273-0 , pp. 146 .
  13. ^ City of Cologne: More "stumbling blocks" in Cologne. Retrieved January 6, 2020 .
  14. ^ Citizens 'application for the renaming of a new street in the Dellbrück district by the Cologne-Dellbrück Citizens' Association and the Cologne-Dellbrück Local History Association. July 19, 2017, accessed January 6, 2010 .
  15. ↑ Central Name Archive: Renaming, renaming, inclusion and cancellation of streets in Cologne . In: City of Cologne (Ed.): Official Journal of the City of Cologne . tape 29 . Cologne July 25, 2018, p. 306 .
personal data
SURNAME Moses, Elisabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Moses, Elisabeth Caroline (maiden name); Moses, Elizabeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American art historian, non-fiction author, museum curator
DATE OF BIRTH January 14, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne
DATE OF DEATH December 21, 1957
Place of death San Francisco