HName:  Rosenau, Helen    known outside her professional career, after marriage as Rosenau-Carmi

DateBorn:  1900

Placeborn: Monte Carlo, Monaco

Datedied:   1984

Placedied:   London, United Kingdom

HDescrip:  Architectural historian.  Rosenau's father was Albert Rosenau (d. 1923), a medical doctor and her mother Klara Lion (Rosenau). She was raised in Monte Carlo and in Bad Kissingen, Germany, where she was privately tutored.  After receiving her abitur in 1923, she studied art history at various universities, including Munich under Heinrich Wölfflin (q.v.), Halle, Berlin under Adolph Goldschmidt (q.v.), Bonn under Paul Clemen (q.v.) and finally Hamburg under Erwin Panofsky (q.v.).  Her 1930 dissertation from Hamburg was on the Cologne cathedral.  She moved to the University in Münster with plans to write her Habilitation under Martin Wackernagel (q.v.).  Rosenau worked on excavations in the cathedrals in Bremen, Cologne and the Großmünster church in Zurich. The new Nazi government forbade Jews, she and her mother emigrated first to Switzerland and then to the United Kingdom in 1933.  She succeeded in writing her habilitation, Desing and Medieval Architecture, using a 1934-1935 stipend from the British Federation of University Women. Rosenau continued study at the Courtauld Institute between 1935 and 1940, researching the architectural history of the synagogue.    She married Zwi Carmi (1883-1900), a medical doctor in 1938.  A Ph.D. degree was granted by the Courtauld, University of London, in 1940.  Rosenau worked at the London School of Economics in 1941 for the socialogist Karl Mannheim (1893-1947), researching the social place of women in the mirror of art.  She became a naturalized Briton in 1945.  After the war, she lectured at a variety of universities, including the University of London, 1947-1951.  She moved to the University of Manchester in 1951 where she researched the theory of the French Revolutionary architect Etienne Louis Boullée, editing and publishing his treatise in 1953. Her The Ideal City in its Architectural Evolution was published in 1959.  In 1968, she returned to the University of London lecturing there and at Leo Baeck College, a progressive London Jewish college Rabbinic institute.

HCountry:  Germany/United Kingdom

HBiography:  Wendland, Ulrike. Biographisches Handbuch deutschsprachiger Kunsthistoriker im Exil: Leben und Werk der unter dem Nationalsozialismus verfolgten und vertriebenen Wissenschaftler. Munich: Saur, 1999, vol. 2, pp. 563-566.

HBibliography: [dissertation:] Der kölner Dom: seine Baugeschichte und historische Stellung.  Hamburg, 1930, published, Cologne, 1931; [habilitation:] Design and Medieval Architecture.  London: B.T. Batsford, 1934; "The Synagogue and Protestant Church Architecture." Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 4, no. 1-2 (1940-1941): 80-84; A Short History of Jewish Art. London,:J. Clarke, 1948; edited. Boullée, Etienne Louis. Treatise on Architecture: a Complete Presentation of the Architecture, essai sur l’art, which Forms Part of the Boullée Papers (Ms. 9153) in the Bibliothéque Nationale, Paris.  London: A. Tiranti, 1953;  The Ideal City in its Architectural Evolution. London: Routledge and Paul, 1959; Vision of the Temple: the Image of the Temple of Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity. London: Oresko Books, 1979; Boullée & Visionary Architecture.  London: Academy Editions, 1976.