Berta Zuckerkandl (also Berta Zuckerkandl-Szeps, born Bertha Szeps)

Berta Zuckerkandl was a Viennese art critic, journalist, and proprietor of literary salons in Vienna (1888–1938) and Paris (late 1930s). She championed the art of Gustav Klimt and Oskar Kokoschka and the architecture of Otto Wagner and Josef Hoffmann by providing crucial support for these modern Austrian artists at a time of political, cultural, and social change. Zuckerkandl, was also one of the first writers in Austria before the First World War to turn public attention to the subject of Cubism and the work of Pablo Picasso.

In 1886, Berta married the renowned Hungarian-born anatomist Emil Zuckerkandl, whose colleagues from the University of Vienna later frequented her literary salon beginning in 1889. Held at the couple’s villa in Döbling, these gatherings included the art critic Hermann Bahr as well as the composers Johann Strauss and Gustav Mahler among other members of the Viennese Secession movement and the Jung Wien (Young Vienna) writers.

Zuckerkandl took up a post as art critic for the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung writing her own column and later published in Bühne, Neue Wiener Journal, Volkszeitung, Wiener Tag, and other journals. In February 1914, she reviewed Austria’s first comprehensive exhibition of Picasso’s work, which had come to the Viennese Galerie H. O. Miethke through Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and via Heinrich Thannhauser’s Moderne Galerie in Munich. Zuckerkandl anticipated resistance from the Viennese public toward the artist’s Cubist experimentation, which radically reconceptualized pictorial space. One way she mitigated this was by comparing Picasso’s work to Arnold Schönberg’s similarly complex musical arrangements, which were already well known. Critical of what she perceived as a too systematic and doctrinaire approach to painting, Zuckerkandl discussed Cubism’s contributions to modern art again in an essay entitled “Die neue Kunst,” published in the magazine Der Anbruch in 1917.

As a society figure and the host of salons in Vienna and Paris, Zuckerkandl promoted cultural and political exchange between Austria and France from the last decade of the nineteenth century to the onset of the Second World War. During the First World War, she served as an informal cultural attaché for a progressive branch of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in Bern, Switzerland. A wide-reaching network of international relations and close familial connections to Austrian and French politicians facilitated her position.

After the First World War, Zuckerkandl and her husband moved to a residence at Oppolzergasse in Vienna where Berta would again host her literary salon. She promoted various theater projects by such impresarios as Max Reinhardt and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Other members of her salon included writers Arthur Schnitzler and Stefan Zweig, as well as the physician and politician Julius Tandler. In late 1922, Zuckerkandl left the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung and began to work for the Neue Wiener Journal. She also committed herself to translating French theater plays into German in the spirit of bettering relations between Austria and France. In recognition of her dedication, she received the Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Order of the Legion of Honor) by the French government.

With the establishment of the fascist Federal State of Austria in 1934, Zuckerkandl withdrew from her political engagements and, following the annexation of Austria in March 1938, moved to Paris. There, she established a new salon and began to work in support of Austria’s liberation. Her Parisian social circle included the Austrian émigrés Alma and Franz Werfel, who had been regulars at her Vienna salon. A year after she arrived in the French capital, she also published her memoir in English, French, and German.

When German forces invaded and occupied France in May 1940—imposing Nazi rule on much of the French population—Zuckerkandl escaped to Algiers, where she reunited with her son Fritz who also had fled the country. With the liberation of Algeria in late 1942, Zuckerkandl returned to reporting on current events for an Austrian radio broadcast established by the Allies. Her health was failing when she relocated to Paris in September 1945 and she died there only a month later.