Rachel Wischnitzer

Rachel Wischnitzer (nee Bernstein; names variants: Rachel Wischnitzer, Rachel B. Wischnitzer = Rachel Bernstein Wischnitzer, before: Rachel Wischnitzer - Bernstein; born April 14, 1885 in Minsk, Russian Empire, † November 20, 1989 in Manhattan, New York) was an art historian, who is mainly concerned with the history of religious buildings, especially of synagogue architecture employed.

Life

Rachel Wischnitzer was the daughter of timber merchant Vladimir Bernstein and Sophie, nee Halpern. She had a younger brother, Gustav.

After attending high school in Warsaw 1902-1903 she studied at the University of Heidelberg and 1910-1911 at the University of Munich. 1903-1905 she spent at the Brussels Royal Academy and then moved on to the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, she was among the first women graduated in 1907 as a graduate architect.

The art historian Mark Wischnitzer she married in 1912. Their son Leonard was born in 1924.

In the years 1912 and 1913 she worked at the Jewrejskaja Enziklopedija. In 1920 she moved with her husband to London and worked at the British Museum and the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.

After moving to Berlin in 1921 they were 1922 to 1924 the Hebrew art magazine Rimmon, and ( with Mark Wischnitzer ) the Yiddish Art Journal Milgroim out. From 1928 to 1934 she was an editor and researcher at the German Encyclopaedia Judaica, 1931 assistant at the Association for Jewish art and antiquities collections.

From 1934-1938, she headed the Jewish Museum in Berlin and was a lecturer at the College of Jewish Studies.

In April 1938, she emigrated, as the son of the passport has been withdrawn, as a Jew with her family to France, in 1940 in the USA (New York). Your mother committed suicide in 1939, her father was deported in 1944 and killed by Paris.

Wischnitzer 1944 made ​​her Masters degree at NYU. At the same time, she was a Fellow of the American Academy for Jewish Research. Her final work was published in 1948 under the title "The Messianic Theme in the Paintings of the Dura Synagogue ".

Since 1956 she was a professor of art history at Stern College of Yeshiva University in New York. 1968, the year of her retirement, she was the honorary doctorate.

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

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 Publishing; Jerusalem: Center for Jewish Art, 1990 ( German and English)

Festschrift

Deportation Dura-Europos synagogue Salomon Wininger Integrated Authority File
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