Helen Rosenau

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Helen Rosenau
Born
Helene Rosenau

(1900-03-23)March 23, 1900
Monte Carlo
DiedOctober 27, 1984(1984-10-27) (aged 84)
London
Other namesHelen Rosenau-Carmi
CitizenshipBritish (naturalized 1948)
Occupation(s)Academic, art and architectural historian
Employer(s)University of London, University of Manchester
Known forWomen in Art: from Type to Personality (1944): "one of the first feminist tracts in art history"

Helen Rosenau (23 March 1900–27 October 1984)[1][2] was a German-born British academic, feminist, and historian of art and architecture.[3][4][1] Her 1944 work Women in Art has been described as "one of the first feminist tracts in art history".[1] Forced to leave Germany during the 1930s, Rosenau was one of a number of influential European Jewish intellectuals who brought innovation to academic study in the UK and US.[5]

Early life and education[edit]

Helen Rosenau was born in Monte Carlo, the daughter of medical doctor Albert Rosenau and mother Klara Rosenau (née Lion).[1][2] She was raised in Monte Carlo and in Bad Kissingen, Germany, in a wealthy family,[4] and received her education through private tutoring.[1] After finishing high school in 1923, Rosenau studied art history at a number of universities, including Munich under Heinrich Wölfflin, Berlin under Adolph Goldschmidt, Bonn under Paul Clemen, and Hamburg under Erwin Panofsky.[1]

Rosenau's 1930 dissertation, on the topic of Cologne cathedral, was submitted in Hamburg.[1] She moved then to the University of Münster, planning to complete her Habilitation on medieval architecture.[1][4] With the rise of the Nazi government, Rosenau had her scholarship withdrawn and she was removed from the university.[4] With her mother, she emigrated first to Switzerland and then to the United Kingdom - arriving in 1933.[1][4] Supported by a stipend from the British Federation of University Women, Rosenau completed her habilitation, Design and Medieval Architecture, in 1934.[4] She continued her studies at The Courtauld Institute of Art, earning her PhD in 1940.[4]

Rosenau's repeated requests during 1935 to visit her mother in Baden-Baden were rejected by German authorities, who described her as "subversive" and accused her of having a "communist attitude".[2] In 1940, she was placed on the Sonderfahndungsliste G.B., a list of people named for arrest in the event of a successful invasion of Britain.[2]

Rosenau married Zwi Carmi (1883-1900), a doctor, in 1938.[1] They adopted a son, Michael, in 1944.[2] She became a naturalized British subject in 1948.[4] Rosenau's husband died in 1950.[4]

Career[edit]

From 1935, Rosenau contributed regularly to a number of British academic publications, including Apollo, The Burlington Magazine, and the RIBA Journal.[4] Her articles encompassed art history, as well as her wider educational, feminist, and humanist interests.[4] Rosenau's "progressive humanist and feminist outlook" was also evident in her lectures to the Conway Hall Ethical Society, and columns for the International Women's News.[4]

From the 1940s, Rosenau also gave adult education lectures for the Extra-Mural Department of the University of London,[6] the London County Council (LCC), and the Workers' Educational Association (WEA).[4] She resumed this after her retirement After her retirement, continuing extra-mural lectures for the University of London and Polytechnic of Central London's School of Architecture.[4]

From 1941, Rosenau worked at the London School of Economics under the sociologist Karl Mannheim, researching the historical depiction of women in art.[1] The work she produced, Woman in Art: from Type to Personality, has been called "one of the first feminist tracts in art history";[1] described as "erudite and accessible", and deserving of a place "in the historiographies of both feminist thought and cutting-edge art history across two centuries."[5] She had previously contributed a short article entitled "Changing Attitudes Towards Women" to an anthology published by the Free German League of Culture: Women Under the Swastika (1942).[4]

After the war, Rosenau continued her career in academia, lecturing at universities including the University of London (1947-1951; 1968- ), and the University of Manchester (1951-1968).[1] Her first English language art history book was published in 1948, on the French artist Jacques-Louis David.[1]

At the University of Manchester, Rosenau's research focused on the work of French architect she researched the French Revolutionary architect Étienne-Louis Boullée, whose treatise, Architecture, Essai sur L'art, she edited and published in 1953.[1] In 1959, she published The Ideal City in its Architectural Evolution.[1] Of this, History Today wrote that "the book's main strength lies in its author's synoptic vision and her exposition of the relation between philosophical ideals and architectural forms."[7]

Rosenau returned to the University of London in 1968, lecturing also at the progressive Jewish Leo Baeck College.[1]

Death and legacy[edit]

Helen Rosenau died in London on 27 October 1984.[2][1]

In 2023, Yale University Press published a new edition of Rosenau's Women in Art, marking the eightieth anniversary of its original publication.[5] The new setting in full colour is prefaced by a personal memoir by a former student, Adrian Rifkin, a study of the author's life in Britain as a refugee scholar by Rachel Dickson and a portrait of Rosenau as feminist intellectual followed by a suite of seven essays by Griselda Pollock analysing the significance of the book as a work of feminist social history of art .[5]

Selected bibliography[edit]

Books[edit]

  • Women in Art: from Type to Personality (1944)
  • The Painter Jacques-Louis David (1948)
  • A Short History of Jewish Art (1948)
  • Boullee's Treatise on Architecture (1954)
  • Social Purpose in Architecture: Paris and London Compared, 1760-1800 (1970)
  • The Ideal City: Its Architectural Evolution in Europe (1975)
  • Boullée & visionary architecture (1976)
  • Vision of the Temple: the Image of the Temple of Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity (1979)

Articles[edit]

  • Der kölner Dom: seine Baugeschichte und historische Stellung (dissertation; 1930)
  • Design and Medieval Architecture (1934)
  • The Synagogue and Protestant Church Architecture (1941)
  • Architecture and the French Revolution: Jean Jacque Lequeu (1949)
  • Historical Aspects of the Vitruvian Tradition in Town Planning (1955)
  • Gottfried Semper and German Synagogue Architecture (1977)

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r "Rosenau, Helen | Dictionary of Art Historians". arthistorians.info. Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Kissingen, Stadt Bad. "Datenbank - Biographisches Handbuch - Jüdische Bürger Bad Kissingen". Bad Kissingen (in German). Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  3. ^ "Helen Rosenau". Women Writing Architecture. Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o "'It may be good art history': The rehabilitation of Dr. Helen Rosenau by Ben Uri Research Unit - Issuu". issuu.com. 2021-09-22. Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  5. ^ a b c d "Woman in Art". Yale University Press London. Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  6. ^ "University of London Department of Extra-Mural Studies Reports - Birkbeck College: Publications - Birkbeck College archive - Archives Hub". archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk. Retrieved 2023-11-07.
  7. ^ "The Ideal City - Its Architectural Evolution in Europe | History Today". www.historytoday.com. Retrieved 2023-11-07.

External links[edit]

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