Marianne Schmidl (3 August 1890 in Berchtesgaden – April 1942 in the Izbica Ghetto) was the first woman to graduate with a doctorate in ethnology from the University of Vienna.[1] An Austrian ethnologist, teacher, librarian and art collector, Schmidl was plundered and murdered in the Holocaust by the Nazis because of her Jewish origins.
- ^ Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. "Restitution of two works from the Kupferstichkabinett". www.smb.museum. Retrieved 20 April 2021.
Dr. Marianne Schmidl was born in 1890 in Berchtesgarden and grew up in Vienna. After becoming the first woman to graduate with a doctorate in Ethnology from the University of Vienna, she worked initially in various ethnology museums, including the Museum für Völkerkunde in Berlin. In 1921 she became a librarian at the Austrian Nationalbibliothek, where she worked until 1938. On 1st October of that year, she was forced into early retirement because her father was of Jewish origin. Deprived of almost all means of financial support by this and other forms of persecution, and by the special levies imposed on Jews by the Nazi regime, she was obliged to sell the artworks which had been in her family for generations. In April 1942 she was deported to the ghetto of Izbica, in the Krasnystaw district of the province of Lublin, Poland