Hilde Zaloscer

Prof. Dr. Hilde (Hildegard) Zaloscer (Zaloszer) (15 June 1903 – 20 December 1999) was an art historian, Egyptologist, Coptologist, essayist, novelist and a prominent expert of Coptic history and art.

Zaloscer was born in Tuzla, Bosnia Herzegovina (then Austria-Hungary), the eldest daughter of the affluent Jewish lawyer and state-official Dr. Jacob and his wife Bertha (née Kallach). Since her father was a state official and a known Austrian monarchist, the family had to flee to Vienna when the Austrian monarchy collapsed, at the end of the First World War (1918). Her family settled in Vienna, where she finished her secondary education and studied art history and prehistory at the Vienna University (Ph.D. 1926, her dissertation being „Die frühmittelalterliche Dreistreifenornamentik der Mittelmeerrandgebiete mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Denkmäler am Balkan“).

From 1927 to 1936, Zaloscer was the editor of the art magazine Belvedere, and corresponded with Thomas Mann. Due to the rise of anti-Semitism in Vienna she emigrated to Egypt in 1936.

Between 1946 and 1968, Zaloscer was a professor of art history at the University of Alexandria where she became a prominent and world-renowned expert on Coptic art.

After the Six Day War (1967), she was expelled from Egypt since she was Jewish. She lived temporarily in Vienna from 1968 to 1970 and, in the following two years, Zaloscer was a professor at the Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, before returning to Vienna.

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