Helen Rosenau

Helen Rosenau (23 March 1900–27 October 1984) was a German-born British academic, feminist, and historian of art and architecture.

Early life and education Helen Rosenau was born in Monte Carlo, the daughter of medical doctor Albert Rosenau and mother Klara Rosenau (née Lion).

Rosenau's 1930 dissertation, on the topic of Cologne cathedral, was submitted in Hamburg. the London County Council (LCC), and the Workers' Educational Association (WEA).

Rosenau returned to the University of London in 1968, lecturing also at the progressive Jewish Leo Baeck College.

Death and legacy Helen Rosenau died in London on 27 October 1984.

In 2023, Yale University Press published a new edition of Rosenau's Women in Art, marking the eightieth anniversary of its original publication. The new setting in full colour is prefaced by a personal memoir by a former student, Adrian Rifkin, a study of the author's life in Britain as a refugee scholar by Rachel Dickson and a portrait of Rosenau as feminist intellectual followed by a suite of seven essays by Griselda Pollock analysing the significance of the book as a work of feminist social history of art .

Selected bibliography

Books

Women in Art: from Type to Personality (1944) The Painter Jacques-Louis David (1948) A Short History of Jewish Art (1948) Boullee's Treatise on Architecture (1954) Social Purpose in Architecture: Paris and London Compared, 1760-1800 (1970) The Ideal City: Its Architectural Evolution in Europe (1975) Boullée & visionary architecture (1976) Vision of the Temple: the Image of the Temple of Jerusalem in Judaism and Christianity (1979)

Articles

Der kölner Dom: seine Baugeschichte und historische Stellung (dissertation; 1930) Design and Medieval Architecture (1934) The Synagogue and Protestant Church Architecture (1941) Architecture and the French Revolution: Jean Jacque Lequeu (1949) Historical Aspects of the Vitruvian Tradition in Town Planning (1955) Gottfried Semper and German Synagogue Architecture (1977)