Friday, September 8, 2000 Haaretz

Daphna Lewy

Treasures from a dying culture

In Europe between the two world wars, there were still small, remote communities without electricity and modern conveniences. Although the Jewish anthropologist who documented them never won recognition in her lifetime, her findings are now attracting well-deserved attention.

Eugenie Goldstern could be described as a wandering Jew. This is not just because she was born in Odessa, immigrated to Vienna, and was finally expelled to Poland, but also because she spoke a number of languages fluently, read literature, engaged in philosophical debates about social ideas, and traveled far and wide to study remote villages in Europe and in the Middle East. A daring and innovative anthropologist, whose findings are from a time when Europe was beginning to be rife with nationalism and racism, Goldstern did not succeed in making a place for herself in the academic world despite her achievements; however, many years after her death, her work is earning renewed esteem.

The collection of objects that she found, which was gathering dust in museum storerooms, as well as the photographs she took in the field, are again on display in Austria. Her research has been translated into French, and a biography of her has been written in Austria by Albert Ottenbacher (Mandelbaum-Verlag).

Goldstern was born in Odessa, the youngest of 14 children. Even as a child, she loved folktales and folklore - perhaps thanks to her nursemaid, a country woman whose stories captured her imagination, or perhaps because of her life in the cosmopolitan port city which absorbed scents, songs, recitations and images from distant places.

The Goldstern home was „modern Jewish"; religion did not play a central role and the main language was German. The children learned foreign languages and literature, sciences and music, and even when they studied Torah and Talmud, it was from historical, cultural and philological perspectives and not necessarily from a religious point of view.

With this background, she became an independent and enthusiastic researcher who was not discouraged even when her research took her to distant places and to people whose way of life required difficult adjustment on her part.

Next part: In search of roots