Bertha Pappenheim was born in Vienna in 1859 and lived since 1888 in Frankfurt am Main. Here she became involved in various charitable institutions, above all in the Jewish women's liberation movement, and noted as one of its most remarkable representatives. In 1907 – a hundred years ago – she founded a home for so-called fallen young women and their children in Neu-Isenburg near Frankfurt, which she ran until her death in 1936. As “Fräulein Anna O.” she is written in the history of psychoanalysis: In the years between 1880 and 1882, she received treatment from Josef Breuer and her “case” was described under this pseudonym in the “Studies on Hysteria” published by Breuer together with Sigmund Freud in 1895.

Bertha Pappenheim travelled across the whole of Europe to publicize the unfavourable conditions above all for Jewish women in Eastern Europe and to help them. In the field of women’s rights she wrote in publications and attended numerous congresses in Europe and the USA. During these journeys, Bertha Pappenheim hunted down rare, historical objects in second-hand shops, bought from art dealers and private vendors collected various antiques, but first and foremost purchased lace and textiles, also artistic works of cast iron. In her letters she called this activity “müffeln” – a “fusty-musty rooting around”; it provided relaxation from her fatiguing work. Besides classical needle and bobbin lace from Italy, France and Belgium dated from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, she also collected nineteenth-century lace and, most of all, lace of the twentieth century. Predominant among the latter are filigree patterns from Central

Europe made in lace schools, or works whose designers’ names are known, including Franziska Hoffmanninger, MathildeHrdlička and Leni Matthaei. Embroidery, costumes and costume parts, also traditional folk textiles complete the collection. Bertha Pappenheim endowed this collection to the Museum für Kunst und Industrie (Museum of Art and Industry), today MAK, in memory of her parents Sigmund Pappenheim from Bratislava and Rechanée Goldschmidt from Frankfurt am Main. It contains around 1,850 pieces of lace and textiles, also her castiron collection – seventy objects from the first half of the nineteenth century, primarily jewelry, but also decorative objects such as candlesticks and lampshade holders.

On show in the MAK Study Collection Textiles are 300 pieces of lace and textiles from the Bertha Pappenheim Donation as well as about half of the cast-iron collection. Both collections consist of examples of outstanding quality and character, considerably enriching the museum. Eventually, in 1932, Bertha Pappenheim was to donate nine articles of clothing to the museum, among them robes she had worn herself, which, when combined with photographs, today convey a vital picture of this small and slender, but energetic, dynamic woman.

On October 2, 2007 prior to the exhibition opening, a memorial plaque was unveiled on house no. 2, Liechtensteinstraße in the ninth Viennese district, once Bertha Pappenheim's Viennese home (today owned by the Volksbank).



Curator: Angela Völker,
MAK Curator Textiles and Carpets
Exhibition Assistance: Dagmar Sachsenhofer
Exhibition Management: Sabrina Handler

Exhibition Term: 03.10.2007–16.03.2008