Elsa Bienenfeld

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Elsa Bienenfeld (born August 23, 1877 in Vienna ; died May 26, 1942 in the Maly Trostinez concentration camp near Minsk ) was an Austrian music historian and music critic of Jewish origin.

Childhood and youth

Elsa Bienenfeld was born as the first of four children to her Jewish parents from Krakow. The father was the court and court advocate Dr. Heinrich Bienenfeld (1849–1895), the mother, Viktoria b. Schmelkes (1852–1918) came from a well-known rabbi family. Elsa Bienenfeld attended the schools in Vienna that were allowed for girls at the time and graduated as an external student at the Academic Gymnasium . During this time she was accepted at the age of eight because of her musical talent at the Conservatorium of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Vienna and, at the age of seventeen, completed practical music studies with distinction.

Study and work

She first studied chemistry and medicine at the University of Vienna . Spurred on by a lecture by Guido Adler , Elsa Bienenfeld finally devoted herself to musicology and, in 1904, was the first woman to do her doctorate at the Institute for Musicology at the University of Vienna with a thesis on Wolfgang Schmeltzl . She was a private student of Alexander von Zemlinsky and Arnold Schönberg , with whom she gave music courses in the reform school of Eugenie Schwarzwald in Vienna. She also taught at adult education centers and at Urania in Vienna . For over 25 years she worked as a cultural critic, primarily for the Neue Wiener Journal and the Frankfurter Zeitung . In Vienna she was also the first woman to publish cultural reviews under her own name. Since 1904 she was also involved as an active member in the publication of the “Monuments of Music Art in Austria”. Her versatile involvement in Viennese musical life also led to her participation in the preparations for the festivities on the 100th anniversary of Ludwig van Beethoven's death in 1927 .

Persecution and death in the extermination camp

During Austrofascism at the beginning of the 1930s, Elsa Bienenfeld was fired from the New Vienna Journal. After Austria was annexed to the German Reich in 1938, she was charged with a foreign exchange offense. She was partially incapacitated , arrested and later housed in a collective flat. In 1942 she was deported to the Maly Trostinez extermination camp near Minsk , where she was murdered on May 26, 1942.

literature

  • Bee field, Elsa. In: Lexicon of German-Jewish Authors . Volume 2: Bend Bins. Edited by the Bibliographia Judaica archive. Saur, Munich 1993, ISBN 3-598-22682-9 , p. 428.
  • Marie-Theres Arnbom : Back then was home - The world of the Jewish upper middle class , Amalthea-Verlag 2014, pp. 127–169.
  • Eva Taudes: "Vienna is becoming so unbearably small-town": Elsa Bienenfeld (1877-1942): Career and work in cultural Vienna in the first half of the 20th century , Vienna: Praesens Verlag 2018, ISBN 978-3-7069-0976-1

Web links

Commons : Elsa Bienenfeld  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database - Elsa Bienenfeld. Retrieved June 30, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Bee field, Elsa
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian music historian and music critic
DATE OF BIRTH August 23, 1877
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1942
Place of death Maly Trostinez extermination camp