Elise Baumgartel

Jenny Elise Baumgartel , b. Goldschmidt (until 1934 Baumgärtel), (born October 5, 1892 in Berlin , † October 28, 1975 in Oxford ) was a German Egyptologist who specialized in prehistoric and protohistoric Egypt.

Life and activity

Elise Goldschmidt was the daughter of the architect and government builder Rudolf Goldschmidt (1850–1915) and his wife Rosa, nee. Hoeniger. She first studied medicine and then Egyptology at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Berlin with Adolf Erman and Kurt Sethe . On November 9, 1914, she married the art historian and publishing bookseller Hubert Baumgärtel . She had three daughters with him, the marriage was unhappy and they divorced in 1929. Her divorced husband never met his maintenance obligations. In 1927 she received her doctorate from the University of Königsberg with a thesis on dolmen and mastaba supervised by Walter Wreszinski . She then received a scholarship in 1927 to study further with Henri Breuil in Paris and Toulouse , and then until 1933 a scholarship from the Notgemeinschaft der deutschen Wissenschaft . However, she did not find a job. She took part in the excavations in Hermopolis Magna in 1930 and carried out investigations in Wadi el-Sheikh. Then she took part in the Italian excavations on Monte Gargano. In 1933 she undertook a small excavation near Sarajevo.

After the National Socialists came to power, Baumgärtel, who no longer had any professional prospects due to her Jewish descent, went to Great Britain via Paris in 1934. In Oxford she worked temporarily for John L. Myres to earn a living and taught Latin. In London she was able to work from 1936 as an unpaid volunteer, from 1937 to 1939, thanks to financial support from Robert Mond , as an “Honorary Research Assistant” and from 1940 to 1941 as a “Temporary Assistant” at the Petrie Museum of the University College . at times unpaid, lecturer teaching. At that time she changed her name to Baumgartel. From 1948 to 1950, Baumgartel was the curator of Egyptian artifacts at the University of Manchester . In 1951 she went to Oxford University , where, thanks to support from Somerville College , she did research at the Griffith Institute until 1955 . During these years she published her main work, which dealt with the cultures of prehistoric Egypt. In 1955 Baumgartel moved to the United States, where her daughters lived and where she could continue to work scientifically, for example at the Oriental Institute at the University of Chicago . In 1964 she returned to Oxford to work on the flint collection of the Ashmolean Museum and to continue her publication of the prehistoric finds from Naqada .

Fonts (selection)

See VA Donahue's bibliography : A Bibliography of Elise Jenny Baumgartel . in: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. 63, 1977, pp. 48-51.

• Dolmen and Mastaba. The influence of the North African megalithic grave on the development of Egyptian grave construction (= supplements to the ancient Orient 6). Leipzig 1926.
• with Fritz Brotzen : New Stone Age finds from the Carmel Mountains in Palestine, 1925–1926. In: Berlin museums. Reports from the Prussian art collections. Volume 48, 1927, pp. 119-122.
• Neolithic stone implements in the form of types from the older Paleolithic . In: Prehistorische Zeitschrift 19, 1928, pp. 101-109.
• The Cultures of Prehistoric Egypt. Volume 1 London 1947, 2nd revised edition 1955; Volume 2 London 1960.
• (without statement of responsibility ) The Nodding Falcon of the Guennol Collection at the Brooklyn Museum . In: Brooklyn Museum Annual 9, 1967/68, pp. 69-87.
• Petrie's Nagada Excavations. A supplement. London 1970.

literature

• Joan Crowfoot Payne: Elise Baumgartel. In: Journal of Egyptian Archeology. 62, 1976, pp. 3-4.
• Displaced German Scholars. A Guide to Academics in Peril in Nazi Germany During the 1930s (= Studies in Judaica and the Holocaust. Volume 7). Borgo Press, San Bernardino (CF) 1993, ISBN 0-893-70374-5 , p. 7.
• Penuel P. Kahane:  Elise J Baumgartel . In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . 2nd Edition. Volume 3, Detroit / New York a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-0-02-865931-2 , p. 221.
• Morris L. Bierbrier: Who was who in Egyptology . 4th edition. Egypt Exploration Society. London 2012, ISBN 978-0-85698-207-1 , p. 47.
• Sylvia Peuckert: Hedwig Fechheimer and the Egyptian art (= magazine for Egyptian language and antiquity. Supplement 115). De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2014, ISBN 978-3-05-005979-2 , p. 115.
• Cilli Kasper-Holtkotte: Germany in Egypt. Orientalist networks, the persecution of the Jews and the life of the Frankfurt Jew Mimi Borchardt . De Gruyter Oldenbourg, Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-052361-4 , pp. 449-450.

Web links

• Renee Friedman: Elise Jenny Baumgartel 1892–1975
• Estate at the Griffith Institute