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Trude Geiringer photographs and scrapbook

 Collection
Call Number: GEN MSS 1700

Scope and Contents

The collection consists of gelatin silver photographic prints, photograph albums, and a scrapbook created by Austrian photographer Trude Geiringer. Albums contain studio portraits and travel photographs of Austria, the Swiss Alps, Rome, and pre-World War II Yugoslavia in regions of present-day Croatia and Slovenia. Also included is a picture postcard featuring a portrait of actor Werner Krauss. The scrapbook contains newspaper and magazine clippings of images taken by Atelier Geiringer und Horovitz. These include portraits of actors Elisabeth Bergner, Ernst Deustch, Tilla Durieux, and Oskar Karlweis, playwright Victor Barnowsky, poet Friedrich Gundolf, dramatist Georg Kaiser, and writers Jakob Wasserman and Thomas Mann. Materials are dated approximately 1927 to 1937, with several undated items.

Dates

  • 1927–1937, undated

Creator

Language of Materials

In German.

Conditions Governing Access

This collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Use

The Trude Geiringer Photographs and Scrapbook is the physical property of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University. Literary rights, including copyright, belong to the authors or their legal heirs and assigns. For further information, consult the appropriate curator.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Gift of Barry Garfinkel (Yale Law 1955) and Gloria Garfinkel, 2019.

Arrangement

Organized into two series: I. Photographs, 1927-1937, undated. II. Scrapbook, 1929, undated.

Extent

7.1 Linear Feet (6 boxes)

Catalog Record

A record for this collection is available in Orbis, the Yale University Library catalog

Persistent URL

https://hdl.handle.net/10079/fa/beinecke.geiringer

Abstract

The collection consists of gelatin silver photographic prints, photograph albums, and a scrapbook created by Austrian photographer Trude Geiringer. Albums contain studio portraits and travel photographs of Austria, the Swiss Alps, Rome, and pre-World War II Yugoslavia in regions of present-day Croatia and Slovenia. Also included is a picture postcard featuring a portrait of actor Werner Krauss. The scrapbook contains newspaper and magazine clippings of images taken by Atelier Geiringer und Horovitz. These include portraits of actors Elisabeth Bergner, Ernst Deustch, Tilla Durieux, and Oskar Karlweis, playwright Victor Barnowsky, poet Friedrich Gundolf, dramatist Georg Kaiser, and writers Jakob Wasserman and Thomas Mann. Materials are dated approximately 1927 to 1937, with several undated items.

Trude Geiringer (1890-1981)

Trude Geiringer was a self-taught Austrian photographer who co-founded the photography studio Atelier Geiringer und Horovitz in Vienna in the 1920s. She was one of many Jewish women photographers who emerged in interwar Austria, including Dora Kallmus and Trude Fleischmann. Born Gertrude Neumann on February 1, 1890 to a middle class family in Vienna, she studied at Eugenie Schwarzwald's girls' secondary school in central Vienna. In 1912, she married Ernst Geiringer (1888-1956), a chemist in the textile industry, with whom she had two children, Edith and Edward.

Geiringer met fellow Austrian Jewish photographer Dora Horovitz in circa 1925 or 1926, and the two women established Atelier Geiringer und Horovitz with the financial support of Geiringer's husband. Geiringer acted as the photographer while Horovitz was responsible for developing the film, and editing and retouching the prints. Their work included portraiture, fashion photography, still life, and sports photography. Many prominent Austrian and German artists, actors, and writers sat for portraits at the studio. Geiringer departed the studio in either 1931 or 1934, and following the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, she and her family left Vienna in July 1938 and emigrated to the United States. Geiringer briefly worked as a photographer at Apeda Studio in New York City and later opened her own studio in New Rochelle, New York, which closed soon after. Unable to establish her photography career in the United States, Geiringer retired in the 1940s, although she continued taking photographs privately. She died on July 15, 1981 in Larchmont, New York.

Processing Information

Collections are processed to a variety of levels, depending on the work necessary to make them usable, their perceived research value, the availability of staff, competing priorities, and whether or not further accruals are expected. The library attempts to provide a basic level of preservation and access for all collections, and does more extensive processing of higher priority collections as time and resources permit.

This collection received a basic level of processing, including rehousing and minimal organization.

Information included in the Description of Papers note and Collection Contents section is drawn from information supplied with the collection and from an initial survey of the contents. Folder titles appearing in the contents list below are often based on those provided by the creator or previous custodian. Titles have not been verified against the contents of the folders in all cases. Otherwise, folder titles are supplied by staff during initial processing.

This finding aid may be updated periodically to account for new acquisitions to the collection and/or revisions in arrangement and description.

Title
Guide to the Trude Geiringer Photographs and Scrapbook
Status
Completed
Author
by Nora Soto
Date
June 2021
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description note
Finding aid written in English.

Part of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Repository

Contact:
P. O. Box 208330
New Haven CT 06520-8330 US
(203) 432-2977

Location

121 Wall Street
New Haven, CT 06511

Opening Hours

Access Information

The Beinecke Library is open to all Yale University students and faculty, and visiting researchers whose work requires use of its special collections. You will need to bring appropriate photo ID the first time you register. Beinecke is a non-circulating, closed stack library. Paging is done by library staff during business hours. You can request collection material online at least two business days in advance of your visit, using the request links in Archives at Yale. For more information, please see Planning Your Research Visit and consult the Reading Room Policies prior to visiting the library.