Elisabeth Model Collection

Elisabeth Lisa Model (née Dittmann) was born in Bayreuth in 1897 to Isidor Dittmann (1854-1929), and Therese Dittmann (née Fleischer; 1865-1942) into a family of artists. Isidor Dittmann owned a haberdashery. Elisabeth Model had four siblings, one of whom was her fraternal twin sister, Julia (Meyer). Elisabeth studied sculpture in Munich, Paris and Amsterdam. In the 1920s, a common friend introduced her to Herman Hesse and they subsequently became friends. After his death in 1962, she stayed in touch with his son Heiner Hesse and his wife Isa. While studying in Munich, she met her future husband Max Model (1895-1950), who worked at a well-known bank in Frankfurt and later in Mannheim. Elisabeth and Max Model got married on September 5, 1922 and moved to Amsterdam, where both became citizens. Max Model subsequently became the European manager of a major U.S. brokerage firm.

Following Kristallnacht, Elisabeth returned to Germany to help her mother leave the country for the Netherlands. In August of 1940, Max Model was falsely imprisoned by the Nazis, but with the United States not yet at war with Hitler's Germany, he was released that autumn. Early the following year, the Model family (after securing United States entry visas through Max Model's employer) circuitously made their way to Lisbon, Portugal, where they boarded a tramp steamer to New York. Among the fellow passengers were Marc Chagall and his wife. The Models were accompanied by Elisabeth's older (widowed) sister, Amalie, whose grown children had settled earlier in California. Other relatives who survived the Holocaust were Elisabeth's twin Julia, who had escaped with her husband and son to Great Britain, and her older brother Alfred, who had earlier settled in Denmark (and eventually escaped to Sweden). Her younger brother Julius, his wife and their two children, perished in the Holocaust. So, in effect, did Elisabeth's 77-year old mother, Therese Dittmann, who died of a heart attack in the Dutch transit camp of Westerbork.

After her arrival in New York, Elisabeth Model began to design costume jewelry for Hattie Carnegie and other designers and later resumed work as a professional artist and teacher. Over the next fifty years she would receive numerous awards and prizes. Her drawings and multimedia sculptures can be found in many private and museum collections such as the Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art, the Corcoran Museum in Washington, D.C., the Athenaeum in Hartford, Connecticut, The Newark Museum in Newark, New Jersey, and the Leo Baeck Institute New York. She was also a co-founder and long-time vice-president of the Federation of Modern Painters and Sculptors in New York. In September 1950, Elisabeth's husband Max passed away. Elisabeth Model died in November 1993. Survivors include her two sons and their families.