Ellen Ettlinger: A Folklorist Flees the Nazis

Portrait of Ellen Ettlinger, pictured sitting on a hotel terrace alongside the River Nile. Luxor, Egypt. Photographer unknown. 17 March 1935.

Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford

This display marks the eightieth anniversary of the outbreak of the Second World War by highlighting the work of Ellen Ettlinger (née Rathenau) (1902-1994), a Jewish folklorist who was forced to flee Germany in 1938 due to persecution by the Nazi regime. She was born into a wealthy family which had set up the large electronics firm Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (AEG); yet although members of the family were notable both as industrialists and politicians, they increasingly fell foul of right-wing persecution due to being Jewish. A member of the Folklore Society, this display shows Ellen’s research records, organised according to place and category, which she donated to the Pitt Rivers Museum in the mid-1960s.

Archive Case, First Floor