Erna Rosenstein

Who was Erna Rosenstein?

Erna Rosenstein was a surrealist painter and poet. She was the daughter of an Austrian judge, born into a Jewish family in the town of Lemberg, Austria-Hungary, now Львів in Ukraine. She died of arterial sclerosis.

In 1918 they moved to Kraków. In November 1918 Poland regained its independence as the Second Polish Republic. Her father wanted her to take up in the family business of law. She however studied at Wiener Frauen Akademie and Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.

She was a Communist and belonged to a group of artists known as the Kraków Group, which she had met at the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków. Her works were evoked by her experiences as a Jew in Nazi-occupied Poland. She and her parents went to Warsaw, but they were murdered by a Polish bandit, while they were trying to find a safe place. She was severely wounded, but survived.

After the war she was confronted with the reality of Communism. Having idyllized it earlier, she ran into conflict with it. Her brother, the Austrian professor Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan went on to became a Boston University professor and economist. Paul N. Rosenstein-Rodan coined the term "underdeveloped countries".