Elisabeth "Else" Johanna Martha Maria Sohn-Rethel (14 March 1853 – 22 January 1933) was a German painter and singer, active in the mid and late 19th-century.

Biography

Elisabeth Johanna Martha Maria Rethel was born 14 March 1853 in

Rome , established_title = Founded , established_date = 753 BC , founder = King Romulus ( legendary) , image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg , map_caption ...

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

into an

upper class Upper class in modern societies is the social class composed of people who hold the highest social status, usually are the wealthiest members of class society, and wield the greatest political power. According to this view, the upper class is ...

German Jewish The history of the Jews in Germany goes back at least to the year 321, and continued through the Early Middle Ages (5th to 10th centuries CE) and High Middle Ages (''circa'' 1000–1299 CE) when Jewish immigrants founded the Ashkenazi Jewish ...

family. Her mother was Marie Elisabeth Henrietta Philippina Grahl and her father was

history painter History painting is a genre in painting defined by its subject matter rather than any artistic style or specific period. History paintings depict a moment in a narrative story, most often (but not exclusively) Greek and Roman mythology and Bible ...

Alfred Rethel Alfred Rethel (May 15, 1816December 1, 1859) was a German history painter. Early life and education Rethel was born in Aachen in 1816. He showed an interest in art in his early life, and at the age of thirteen he executed a drawing which procure ...

. She was a descendant on her maternal line of the noble

Oppenheim family The Oppenheim family is a German Jewish banking family which founded what was Europe's biggest private bank, Sal. Oppenheim. According to Manager Magazin 2008, the Oppenheim family was among the 30 richest families in Germany, with assets over 8 b ...

, her great grandfather was banker Martin Wilhelm Oppenheim. Her maternal grandfather was miniature painter and

portrait A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expressions are predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person. For this ...

ist, August Grahl, and she was raised by her mother and maternal grandparents at Villa Rosa (in

Dresden Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label=Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...

) due to her father's mental health issues. In 1873, she married painter Karl Rudolf Sohn at the

Loschwitz Loschwitz is a borough (''Stadtbezirk'') of Dresden, Germany, incorporated in 1921. It consists of ten quarters (''Stadtteile''): Loschwitz is a villa quarter located at the slopes north of the Elbe river. At the top of the hillside is the qu ...

church in Dresden. After marriage she moved to

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in ...

, where her husband's family lived. Between 1860 and 1900, she took up the profession of singing because they needed more income, and as result she was welcomed in to Düsseldorf high society and would often perform at salons and other social gatherings. On 8 February 1875, Sohn-Rethel gave birth to her eldest son,

Alfred Sohn-Rethel Alfred Sohn-Rethel (4 January 1899 – 6 April 1990) was a French-born German Marxian economist and philosopher especially interested in epistemology. His main intellectual achievement was the publication of ''Intellectual and Manual Labour: A Cr ...

. Her other children included Otto Sohn-Rethel (1877–1949), Karli Sohn-Rethel (1882–1966), and Mira Sohn-Rethel Heuser (1884–1974). The three sons became painters and her daughter married painter,

Werner Heuser Werner Heuser (1880–1964) was a German painter, engraver, drafter, and professor. He had been a professor of art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf (Düsseldorf Art Academy) from 1926 until 1937, and he was removed from his position by th ...

. In 1928, Sohn-Rethel wrote her memoirs, which was later edited and published as a book in 2016. Sohn-Rethel died on 22 January 1933 at her home in Düsseldorf, a few days before

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

seized power. She was buried in Nordfriedhof cemetery in Düsseldorf.

Publications

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Sohn-Rethel, Else 1853 births 1933 deaths 19th-century German Jews 19th-century German painters 19th-century German women singers 19th-century German women artists Artists from Dresden Artists from Düsseldorf German women painters