Marianne Steinberger-Hitschmann

20.4.1887 - 4.4.1919

Little is known about the life of the Viennese artist Marianne Steinberger-Hitschmann. She was born in Vienna in 1887, and with other female artists of her time shared the fate that she could not receive a proper academic training, which was restricted to men. However, like the well known woman painter Broncia Koller-Pinell she attended the private Art Academy for Women and Girls in Vienna that had been founded by the painter, poetess and suffragette Rosa Mayreder, and was introduced into the decorative secessionist style by Professor Adolf Böhm. Like Koller-Pinell she exhibited at the 1908 Exhibition in the Wiener Kunsthaus.
Different to some of her more rebellious contemporaries, however, she seems to have settled in the niche assigned to women and – in conformity with her gender-role – dedicated herself to those motifs and themes that were adequate for women, to which belonged the applied art.

Thus she is mainly known as bookplate artist and illustrator of children’s books. Her style is a characteristic example of the applied art of the Viennese “Modern Style”.
As frequently happened with the publicly active women of this time, her private and her working life mainly remained obscure. Her marriage with the dentist Dr. R. Hitschmann may have contributed to the fact that she restricted or even ended her publicized artistic activities.

The 29 bookplates known so far have all been created in the first decade of the 20th century. Briefly she was also a member of the Austrian Bookplate Society for whose members she made exlibris, but after 1911 no further bookplates created by her are known.
Apart from bookplates she also created other works of applied art, e.g. calendar pagesbook jackets and the series of postcards "From the Vienna Kriegswaldschule" (Brothers Kohn, Vienna) Till 1925 she illustrated children’s and fairytale books for the publishing companies Konegen and Sesam, creating similarly impressive atmospheres as with her bookplates.

Among the Konegen publications she illustrated are:

Rona, Elisabet: Prinzessin Sonnenschein (1910)
Brentano, Clemens: Gockel, Hinkel und Gackeleia (um 1910)
Storm Theodor: Schneewittchen (um 1919)
Berlepsch, Goswina: Wenn’s dämmert ... Märchen und Geschichten (um 1912)
Scheu-Riesz, Helene – Eugenie Hoffmann (Hrsg.): Das Märchen vom Mondriesen (um 1919)
Hauff, Wilhelm: Die Geschichte vom Kalif Storch, Die Geschichte vom kleinen Muck (1910)
Grimm, Brüder: Aus Grimms Märchen (um 1920)
Nordische Sagen
In the Sesam Verlag appeared: Knoop, Gerhard Ouckama: Fünf Märchen (1925)

The Artur Wolf publishing company published a cycle of 10 etchings bearing the title Melodien.
 
Thanks to Dr. Claudia Karolyi’s research (Cf. Aufbruch und Idylle Exlibris österreichischer Künstlerinnen 1900 - 1945, 12. Sonderveröffentlichung der ÖEG, Wien 2004) we now know that the creative work of the artist was abruptly ended when she died of pneumonia at the age of 32 in 1919.

Heinz Decker