Erica Tietze-Conrat (1883–1958)

Erica Tietze-Conrat was born in Vienna, Austria to a prominent Jewish family that had converted to Protestantism. Her father Hugo Conrat was a well-to-do businessman and passionate music lover. He was a close friend of Johannes Brahms, who often visited the household. Erica played the piano and also moved in musical circles that included Alexander von Zemlinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alma Mahler. In 1905, she became the first women to complete a doctorate in art history at the University of Vienna. That same year, she married fellow graduate student Hans Tietze, who was, like her, studying with the "Vienna School" art historian Franz Wickhoff. They couple would go on to have four children. As there were few teaching positions open to women in Europe at the time, Erica assisted her husband in his commission on the preservation of Austrian monuments; eventually they became a research team. They became friends with many contemporary artists, including Oskar Kokoschka, who painted a portrait of them in 1909, which is now at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
In 1938, the family fled the Nazi Anschluss (annexation) of Austria to Italy, and later emigrated to the USA, settling in New York City, where they joined a large cultural expatriate community. Erica and her husband published numerous scholarly articles and books on art history, particularly Renaissance artists, as well as on contemporary Viennese artists. Among the couple's pioneering works was the extensively researched Drawings of the Venetian Painters of the 15th and 16th Centuries, published in 1944. In 1955-1956, Erica was a lecturer at Columbia University, her only academic appointment.