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Marianne Schmidl

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Marianne Schmidl (born August 3, 1890 in Berchtesgaden; died April 1942 in the Izbica Ghetto) was an Austrian ethnologist and art collector who was plundered and murdered because of her Jewish origins.

Family and education

Marianne Schmidl's mother, Maria Elisabeth Luise Friedmann (1858–1934), lived in Munich, and worked for the writer Paul Heyse. Schmidl's great-grandfather was the painter Friedrich von Olivier, a close friend of Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, and her great-grand-uncles were the brothers Heinrich Olivier and Ferdinand Olivier, who were also artistically active. Her father, Josef Bernhard Schmidl (1852-1916), of Jewish origin, was a court lawyer from Vienna and a social democrat. Shortly before the marriage on July 23, 1889, which was vehemently rejected by the Friedmann family, he converted to Protestantism. The Jewish background of her father would prove fateful for Schmidl when the Nazis came to power.

Marianne was the oldest of two sisters in Berchtesgaden, where the family owned a holiday home. However, she grew up in Vienna and received the best possible education for girls at the time. From 1905 to 1909 she attended the progressive “Black Forest School” of the pedagogue and salonière Eugenie Schwarzwald.

From 1910 Schmidl studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the University of Vienna. In the winter semester of 1913/14, however, she switched to ethnology as a major, anthropology and prehistoric archeology as a minor.[1] Shortly before that she had joined the Association for Austrian Folklore and had worked out a folklore topic for the first time with “Flax growing and flax processing in Umhausen”. Michael Haberlandt and Rudolf Pöch were among her teachers. In 1916 she was the first woman to receive her doctorate.[2][3]

Working life

Marianne Schmidl first worked at the Berlin Museum of Ethnology. From autumn 1917 she went to Theodor Koch-Grünberg at the Linden Museum in Stuttgart as an “assistant for African questions”. After a brief episode in the Grand Ducal Museum for Art and Applied Arts in Weimar, Marianne Schmidl was unable to find an adequate job for a long time. Michael Haberlandt later asked whether “the two characteristics female and Jewish were an obstacle to filling a position within ethnology”. Finally, Marianne Schmidl found a job again, albeit not in her own particular profession: from March 1921 she worked at the Austrian National Library and was appointed civil servant in 1924. She worked at the library as a lecturer for anthropology, science, mathematics and medicine. In addition, she continued her scientific research in the field of African cultural history, specializing in particular in basket weaving. From 1926 she worked on a research project on African handicrafts at the Museum für Völkerkunde in Vienna, which was financed by the Saxon Research Institute for Ethnology in Leipzig. In the course of this, she researched ethnographic museums in Switzerland, France, England, Belgium, Germany and Italy. [4]

Nazi persecution and deportation

After Austria's Anschluss or "annexation" to the Nazi German Reich in 1938, Marianne Schmidl was declared Jewish because her father was Jewish, even though she considered herself to be Christian.[5] She was forced out of her job, and thrown into poverty by the special taxes Nazis inflicted on Jews in order to take their property. Schmidl was forced to sell her family's artworks but was unable to flee. In April 1942 she was deported to the Izbica ghetto in Poland and from there presumably to the Belzec or Sobibor concentration camps.[6]

Her last sign of life was in May 1942. The circumstances and the exact date of her death are unknown and it took until 1950 until she was pronounced dead.

Marianne Schmidl's art collection and its restitution

An der Isar, Zeichnung von Friedrich Olivier 1844, restituiert vom Münchner Lenbachhaus

Marianne Schmidl is remembered today not only as Austria's first PhD in ethnology, but also because - in the course of the principles for the restitution of looted art formulated at the 1998 Washington Conference - she was the original owner of many drawings by the brothers Olivier and Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld could be made out.

After her mother's death in 1934, she inherited the entire family collection of drawings by the Olivier brothers and von Schnorr von Carolsfeld. After the "Anschluss" of Austria in 1938, Schmidl was forced to submit a property declaration on September 30, 1938 for her art collection on which the Nazi imposed special taxes. The special taxes for Jews, the repayment of the funding for their research, the reduced salary, all of this left Maria Schmidl with no choice but to sell the collection of drawings.[7]

Her non-Jewish brother-in-law, Karl Wolf, brought the lot to the Viennese dealer Christian Nebehay, who in turn passed them on to the Leipzig action house C. G. Boerner.

On April 28, 1939, 19 sheets belonging to Schmidl were auctioned anonymously as “Collection W” (today identified as “Collection Wolf”).

The Albertina in Vienna resiituted 8 sheets by Friedrich Olivier to the family's heirs in 2013.

In 2014, two more drawings by Olivier from the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin in 2015 two sheets from the Kupferstichkabinett in Dresden were restituted.[8]

In 2016 'A Branch with Shriveled Leaves' which had been sold under duress by Schmidl in Austria in 1939, was restituted by the National Gallery of Art.[9]

In 2019 a drawing by Friedrich and another by Ferdinand Olivier were restituted from the Lenbachhaus in Munich.[10]

Works (selection)

  • 1913 Flachs-Bau und Flachs-Bereitung in Umhausen. In: Zeitschrift für Österreichische Volkskunde. Band 19, 1913, S. 122–125.
  • 1915 Zahl und Zählen in Afrika. In: Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, Band 45, 1915, S. 166–209. Diese Arbeit (Dissertation) war grundlegend für einen neuen Ansatz, der damit Schluss machte, die Mathematik als eine universelle, von Kultur und Gesellschaft unabhängige Wissenschaft zu betrachten. Sie konstatierte, dass es vielmehr völlig andere Arten und Ausdrucksformen des Zählen und Rechnens gibt. So konnte sie bereits mit ihrer Doktorarbeit in der akademischen Welt Ansehen erwerben.
  • 1928 Altägyptische Techniken an afrikanischen Spiralwulstkörben. In: Festschrift für Wilhelm Schmidt, (SVD), S. 645–654.
  • 1935 Die Grundlagen der Nilotenkultur. In: Mitteilungen der Anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien. Band 65, 1935, S. 86–125. (Der letzte von ihr veröffentlichte Aufsatz)
  • 2005 (Posthum) Afrikanische Spiralwulstkörbe. In: Katja Geisenhainer: Maria Schmidl (1890-1942), Leipzig 2005, S. 265–339.

Literature

  • F. Hillbrand-Grill: "Schmidl (Theresie) Marianne". In: Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Vol. 10, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1994, ISBN 3-7001-2186-5, p. 325.
  • Susanne Blumesberger: Verlorenes Wissen. Ein gewaltsam abgebrochener Lebenslauf am Beispiel von Marianne Schmidl. In: Helmut W. Lang (Hrsg.): Mirabilia artium librorum recreant te tuosque ebriant. Phoibos, Wien 2001, ISBN 3-901232-27-3, S. 9–19.
  • Doris Byer: Marianne Schmidl. In: Brigitta Keintzel, Ilse Korotin (Hrsg.): Wissenschafterinnen in und aus Österreich. Leben – Werk – Wirken. Böhlau, Wien/Köln/Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-205-99467-1, S. 655–658.
  • Katja Geisenhainer: Marianne Schmidl (1890–1942). In: Zeitschrift für Ethnologie. Band 127, 2002, S. 269–300.
  • Katja Geisenhainer: Marianne Schmidl (1890–1942). Das unvollendete Leben und Werk einer Ethnologin. Universitätsverlag, Leipzig 2005, ISBN 3-86583-087-0 (enthält auch Schmidls unvollendet gebliebene Arbeit über afrikanische Spiralwulstkörbe).
  • Ilse Korotin: „[...] vorbehaltlich eines jederzeit zulässigen Widerrufes genehmigt“. Ausgrenzung und Verfolgung jüdischer Wissenschafterinnen und Bibliothekarinnen. In: Österreichische Bibliothekarinnen auf der Flucht. Verfolgt, verdrängt, vergessen? Praesens, Wien 2007, ISBN 978-3-7069-0408-7, S. 103–126.

References and notes


[[Category:1942 deaths]] [[Category:1890 births]] [[Category:Austrian people]] [[Category:People who died in the Holocaust]] [[Category:Librarians]] [[Category:Ethnologists]]

  1. ^ "Wer war Marianne Schmidl?". www.lenbachhaus.de (in German). Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  2. ^ Geisenhainer, Katja. "Marianne Schmidl (1890-1942)". nomadit.co.uk. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  3. ^ "Stein der Erinnerungfür Marianne Schmidl" (PDF).{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
  4. ^ "Schmidl, Marianne | Lexikon der österreichischen Provenienzforschung". www.lexikon-provenienzforschung.org. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  5. ^ "U.S. National Gallery returns art to heir of Holocaust victim". Haaretz.com. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  6. ^ "U.S. National Gallery returns art to heir of Holocaust victim". Haaretz.com. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  7. ^ "Wer war Marianne Schmidl?". www.lenbachhaus.de (in German). Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  8. ^ Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu. "https://www.smb.museum/en/whats-new/detail/restitution-of-two-works-from-the-kupferstichkabinett/". www.smb.museum. Retrieved 2021-03-23. {{cite web}}: External link in |title= (help)
  9. ^ "National Gallery of Art Returns World War II-Era Duress-Sale Drawing to Heirs". www.nga.gov. Archived from the original on 2019-08-15. Retrieved 2021-03-23.
  10. ^ "Lenbachhaus - Restitution zweier Zeichnungen". www.lenbachhaus.de (in German). Retrieved 2021-03-23.
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