Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1900 Monte Carlo, Monaco

Died: 1984 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1933

Other name/s: Helen Rosenau-Carmi

Biography

Art historian Helen Rosenau was born into a Jewish family in Monte Carlo, Monaco in 1900. She was brought up in both Monte Carlo and Bad Kissingen, Germany, where she was privately tutored. She received her abitur, a German secondary school qualification, in 1923 after which she studied art history at various German universities, including Munich, under Heinrich Wofflin; Berlin, under Adolph Goldschmidt; Bonn, under Paul Clemen; and at Hamburg under Erwin Panofsky, where in 1930, she received her doctorate. Her thesis examined the architectural history of Cologne Cathedral, focussing on the historical uniqueness of the building. Wishing to continue her academic career and to study for her habilitation under Martin Wackernagel in Munster, Rosenau travelled to Bremen, planning to research the history of St Peter's Cathedral for her thesis; in 1931 she conducted the first planned archaeological survey of the building. Based on this success, she received a research grant from the Emergency Association of German Science in 1932. She had already presented partial results of her research when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, and the position of Jewish scholars' drastically changed, ousted from German universities and academic institutions. The Emergency Association of German Science no longer granted funding to 'non-Aryans', and Rosenau’s academic career in Germany became impossible. In advance of migration, Rosenau had, however, established links with staff at the Warburg Institute both in Hamburg and London (to where it relocated in 1933), thanking Professor Fritz Saxl (1890-1948) personally in the preface to her Cologne Cathedral book and maintaining correspondence during the 1930s with Gertrud Bing (1892-1964) and Rudolf Wittkower (1901-71).

Fleeing Germany herself in 1933, Rosenau first travelled with her mother to Switzerland, where she conducted research at the Protestant church of Grossmunster in Zurich, then to England in the autumn. From 1934–35 she received support from the British Federation of University Women, for accommodation in a women's residence at Chelsea's Crosby Hall. In 1935 the Federation enabled Rosenau to publish part of the work she had begun in Germany, under the title Design and Medieval Architecture (B. T. Batsford); she also lectured at the Jewish Historical Society on ‘The History of Early Synagogue Architecture and Decoration’. Between 1935 and 1940, Rosenau completed her PhD at the Courtauld Institute and contributed to academic publications, including Apollo, Burlington, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Adult Education, and the RIBA Journal, exploring art historical topics along with wider humanist, educational and feminist interests. In 1936 she was identified under both 'Art History' and 'Archaeology' sections in a list of German scholars in exile, published by Notgemein-schaft deutscher wissenschaftler im ausland which identified 2600 such scholars by 1937. In 1938, she married Zvi Carmi, a Palestinian economist with whom she adopted an infant son, Michael, in 1944. From 1941, she worked at the London School of Economics under sociologist Karl Mannheim, where she researched the representation of the social position of women in art, resulting in the pioneering publication Woman in Art: from Type to Personality (Isomorph, 1944), ‘one of the first feminist tracts in art history’ (Dictionary of Art Historians), which became the subject of renewed scholarship by Professor Griselda Pollock in 2014.

In 1942, Rosenau wrote an article entitled 'Changing Attitudes toward Women' for the booklet Women under the Swastika published by the Free German League of Culture (FGLC), examining the role of women in Nazi Germany and the development of feminism, expressing the hope that the German feminist movement would be resurrected in the future. She contributed regularly to AJR Information, the monthly magazine of the Association of Jewish Refugees, founded in 1946, including reviewing exhibitions at Ben Uri Gallery (among them Bedrich Fritta's drawings in Terezin Concentration Camp in 1948). In the same year (also the year she was naturalised), Rosenau published A Short History of Jewish Art (London: James Clarke and Co. Ltd.) and on the French painter Jacques-Louis David. From the mid 1940s, Rosenau also gave adult education lectures under the auspices of, variously, the Extra Mural Department of London University (including a series for the Ben Uri Art Society in 1948 (Ben Uri Archives)); London County Council ('Art and Society’ at Marylebone Institute); and the Workers Education Association (WEA). After Carmi's death in 1950, Rosenau brought up her son as a single working mother and, in 1951, relocated to the University of Manchester as an assistant lecturer in art history, researching the theory of the French Revolutionary architect Etienne Louis Boullée, among other topics. In 1959 she published The Ideal City in its Architectural Evolution (Routledge). In 1968, she returned to London, teaching again at the University of London and at Leo Baeck College, a progressive Jewish institution; in retirement she gave adult education lectures at the Polytechnic of Central London.

Helen Rosenau died in London, England in October 1984. Her estate is held by the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt (its placement assisted by Mendel (formerly, Max) Metzger, brother of revolutionary émigré artist, Gustav Metzger). In November 2019 Rosenau was the topic of a research paper presented by Rachel Dickson (Ben Uri) at the conference 'Innovation & Acculturation: The Émigré Art Historians and Britain' (QMUL) and, in 2023, Griselda Pollock published Woman in Art (Yale), reappraising Rosenau's role as a pioneering feminist art historian, which included Dickson's biographical essay.

Related books

Griselda Pollock, Woman in Art: Helen Rosenau's 'Little Book' of 1944 (London: Yale University Press, 2023)
Helen Rosenau, Vision of the Temple: The Image of the Temple of Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity (London: Oresko Books, 1979)
Helen Rosenau, Boullee & Visionary Architecture (London: Academy Editions, 1976)
Helen Rosenau, Social Purpose in Architecture (London: Studio Vista, 1970)
Helen Rosenau, Ideal City in its Architectural Evolution (London: Routledge, 1959)
Helen Rosenau, ‘The Humanism of Da Vinci’, The Monthly Record, Vol. 57, No. 8, August 1952
Helen Rosenau, The Painter Jacques-Louis David (London: Nicholson and Watson, 1948)
Helen Rosenau, A Short History of Jewish Art (London: James Clarke and Co ltd, 1948)
‘Social Status of Women as Reflected in Art’, Apollo. No. 37, 1943, pp. 94-98
Women Under the Swastika, (London: Free German League of Culture, 1942)
‘Introduction’ to Notgemein-schaft deutscher wissenschaftler im ausland, London, 1936, unpaginated
Helen Rosenau, Design and Medieval Architecture (London: B.T. Batsford, 1934)
‘Lecture on Synagogue Architecture’, The Jewish Chronicle, 16 February 1934, p. 32
Der Kölner Dom. Seine Baugeschichte und historische Stellung (Cologne: Verlag des Kölnischen Geschichtsvereins, 1931)

Related organisations

AJR Information (contributor)
British Federation of University Women (grant recipient)
Courtauld Institute, London (student)
Extra-Mural Department, London University (lecturer)
Leo Baeck Institute (teacher)
London School of Economics (employee)
School of Architecture, Polytechnic of Central London (student)
The International Women’s News (contributor)
The Monthly Record (contributor)
University of London (teacher)
University of Manchester (lecturer)

Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.

Helen Rosenau art historian