Hedwig Fechheimer
Hedwig Jenny Fechheimer née Brühl also known as Hedwig Simon was a German art historian and Egyptologist. She wrote two books on Egyptian sculpture Die Plastik der Aegypter and Kleinplastik der Ägypter. She committed suicide in 1942 to avoid being sent to a concentration camp by the Nazi government.
Early life and education
Brühl was born in Berlin to merchant Isidor and Bertha Brühl and grew up in Leipzig and trained to become a teacher in Breslau from 1892 to 1893. An older sister died young and a younger brother Ernst became a chemist. She joined the University of Berlin to study art history and philosophy, but only as a guest student and it was not until 1908 that women were allowed to graduate from universities. She is considered to belong to the so-called Berlin School of Egyptologists which included Adolf Erman. She was able to attend the lectures of Erman through the influence of her friend Emilie Cohen, the wife of Ludwig Borchardt, known for finding the Nefertiti Bust. The Berlin school chose to study Egyptian text and linguistics rather than to accumulate artefacts like the British and French Egyptologists. They produced the Wörterbuch der Altägyptische Sprache and founded the Zeitschrift für Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde in 1863.Career
She wrote a few articles in Kunst und Künstler published by Bruno Cassirer. In her first book Die Plastik der Aegypter she examined cubism in Egyptian art. By 1923 it sold 26,000 copies. She was a friend of Carl Einstein but held contrarian views on Egyptian art. She argued against teleology in art history.Fechheimer was a member of the commission on Egyptian artefacts at the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin and in this position she supported a return of the bust of Nefertiti to Egypt.