Rachel Wischnitzer

Rachel Wischnitzer (born April 14, 1885 in Minsk , Russian Empire ; died November 20, 1989 in Manhattan , New York ) was an art historian who mainly dealt with the history of sacred buildings, especially synagogue architecture.

Life

Rachel Bernstein was the daughter of the timber merchant Vladimir Bernstein and Sophie, nee. Halpern. She had a younger brother, Gustav. After attending grammar school in Warsaw , she studied at the University of Heidelberg from 1902 to 1903 and at the University of Munich from 1910 to 1911 . From 1903 to 1905 she spent at the Brussels Académie Royale and then moved to the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris , which she graduated as one of the first women in 1907 as a qualified architect. She married the art historian Mark Wischnitzer in 1912, which gave Wischnitzer Austrian (cisleithan) citizenship, and their son Leonard was born in 1924.

Milgroim , No. 3, 1923

In 1912 and 1913 she worked at the Jewrejskaya Enziklopedija . In 1920 she moved to England with her husband, where she worked at the British Museum and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University . After moving to Berlin in 1921, she published the Hebrew art magazine Rimmon from 1922 to 1924 and (with Mark Wischnitzer) the Yiddish art magazine Milgroim . From 1928 to 1934 she was editor and employee of the German Encyclopaedia Judaica , in 1931 she worked for the Working Group for Collections of Jewish Art and Antiquities . During the National Socialist era , she worked for the Jewish Museum in Berlin from 1934 to 1938 and was a lecturer at the College for the Science of Judaism .

In April 1938, because her son's passport was revoked, she emigrated with her family to France, and in 1940 to the USA ( New York ). Her mother committed suicide in 1939, her father was deported from Paris in 1944 and was a victim of the Holocaust .

Wischnitzer made her Masters degree at New York University in 1944 . At the same time she was a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. Her thesis was published in 1948 under the title "The Messianic Theme in the Paintings of the Dura Synagogue". Since 1956 she was professor of art history at Stern College, Yeshiva University New York. In 1968, the year she retired, she was given an honorary doctorate .

She died in Manhattan in November 1989 at the age of 104.

Major works

• Symbols and figures of Jewish art , Berlin-Schöneberg: S. Scholem 1935
• The Messianic Theme in the Paintings of the Dura Synagogue , Chicago 1948
• Synagogue Architecture in the United States , Philadelphia 1955
• The Architecture of the European Synagogue , Philadelphia 1964
• From Dura to Rembrandt: studies in the history of art , Milwaukee: Aldrich; Vienna: IRSA Verlag; Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Art 1990 (German and English)

Festschrift

• Artibus et historiae: an art anthology no. 17 (IX), Vienna 1988.

literature

• Wischnitzer-Bernstein, Rahel , in: 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 3-598-11339-0 , pp. 779-786.
• Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Kraus Reprint, Nendeln 1979, ISBN 3-262-01204-1 (reprint of the Czernowitz edition 1925). Volume 7, p. 497.
• Maria Kühn-Ludewig: Yiddish books from Berlin (1918-1936): titles, people, publishers , Kirsch, Nümbrecht, 2008 ISBN 978-3-933586-56-8
• Wischnitzer, Rachel , in: Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945 . Munich: Saur, 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 , p. 389

Web links

• Rachel Wischnitzer , in Jewish Women's Archive

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wendland, 1999, p. 780