Lotte (Charlotte) Meitner

Geburt 1899 Quelle GenTeam https://www.genteam.at/index.php?option=com_gesamt

Birth: Österreich, Niederösterre...Kultusgemeinde, 1784-1911 Wien (alle Bezirke) Geburtsbücher Geburtsbuch V 1899 (299/336)
https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/3:1:33S7-LB2W-49W?i=298&wc=...

Jewish Resignations 1868-1914
No. 7655
Last Name Graf
First Name Charlotte
Birth Name
Zahl 152
Zahl_Z
Age 24
Austrittsdatum 08.02.1923
Date of Birth 17.11.1899
Place of Birth Wien
District
Country
Stand ledig
Profession
W-Bezirk 9
W-Strasse Garnisong.
Nr. 6
zu relig.

Probate: https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/19973805:1904
Name Lotte Graf
[Lotte Meitner]
Death Date 13 Apr 1973
Death Place London
Probate Date 25 Jun 1973
Probate Registry London

https://artistscollectingsociety.org/members/lotte-meitner-graf/
The pictures of C.S. Forester by Lotte Meitner-Graf

Who was Lotte Meitner-Graf?

Lotte Graf was a well known portrait photographer. Born in 1898 she grew up in Vienna, where she married Walter Meitner (1891-1961). Walter was the youngest brother of Liese Meitner (1878-1968), a fact not without significance, as will be seen. Lotte Meitner-Graf started a photography studio in Vienna around 1920, and worked from that city until 1938. Her clients were artists, musicians and scientists. Her studio in 1934 was located at Wollzeile 24, in the centre of Vienna. The building was owned by Frau Adele von Mises (1858-1937), daughter of a family of wealthy jews from Austrian Galicia (now in Ukraine), who settled in Vienna in 1876. The original building has not survived. At present the Wollzeile 24 address houses the Austrian-Israeli Chamber of Commerce.

The portraits of the African American contralto singer Marian Anderson (1897-1993), taken in Lotte’s Vienna studio in 1934 are typical of her style of composition and illumination. They also resemble the pictures of blues singer Bessie Smith, taken in the 1930’s by the American Carl van Vechten (1880-1964). Portraits typically show the head (mostly without shoulders), before a dark background, the subject often looking slightly away from the camera lens. The grey tones in the black&white portraits are superb. Lotte travelled extensively to Germany, where Lise Meitner worked as a nuclear physisist at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Chemie in Berlin. The many pictures she took of the succesful female scientist seem to indicate a certain admiration for her sister-in-law. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institut at that time was one of the most renown European research institutions, and an important scientific basic of Germany’s up-coming war machine. Many other scientist in and around the Institute, such as Otto Hahn and Max Planck took the opportunity of Lotte’s visits to have their portraits taken. That her name probably opened many doors to celebrities, is just another way of putting it.

Marian Anderson (left) and Liese Meitner (right), pictures taken in Vienna by Lotte Meitner-Graf

When the Germans invaded and annexed Austria 1938, she and her family the Meitners, being jews in fact became German nationals, subject to Nazi-racial law and therefore were banned from their jobs. Lise Meitner ended up at the Nobel Institute in Stockholm and later moved to Cambridge, England in 1960. Lotte Meitner-Graf settled as a portrait photographer in England. In the late 1940’s her studio was located at 23 (some sources say 25) Old Bond Street, W1 London.

There her clientele ranged from politicians and authors to celebreties in the world of classical music (Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein and Herbert von Karajan), actors (Helene Weigel) and of course scientists (James Frank, Fred Hoyle, John Dyer-Bennet, Max Planck). Albert Schweitzer (1954) and Dorothy Hodgkin (1964) each had their picture taken on accasion of receiving the Nobel Prize. Lotte Meitner-Graf died in London at the end of April 1973.