Charlotte Dunwiddie papers, 1907-1995

Charlotte (Liselotte, Carlotta) Dunwiddie (1907-1995) was born Elizabeth Charlotte Eugenia Natalie Klein in Strasbourg to Walter Karl Klein and Else Klein (née Mayer, 1885-1942). After her parents' divorce, she was adopted by her stepfather, Adolf Hanau (1878-1942), and studied art in Berlin. She married her first husband, Richard Arthur Wolff (1890-1939), in 1929, left Berlin shortly after his death, and continued to study art in Paris and Madrid. She was briefly married to Donald McClean, moved to Buenos Aires, married D. Stanley Dunwiddie (1908-1951), and lived with him in Lima, Peru, until his sudden death in 1951. She moved to New York, continued her career in sculpture, and became the first woman president of the National Sculpture Society. Adolf Hanau was imprisoned for a month in Sachsenhausen following Kristallnacht and perished at Auschwitz in November 1942. Else Klein died in the Jewish hospital in Berlin in June 1942 and her mother, Babette Mayer, perished at Theresienstadt in December 1942.

Funding Note: The cataloging of this collection has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

The Smithsonian Institution Archives of American Art transferred the Charlotte Dunwiddie papers to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 1997.