Gertrud Bing

Who was Gertrud Bing?

Gertrud Bing was a scholar and Director of the Warburg Institute. She was educated at the Lyceum in Hamburg from 1909 to 1913, and received her abitur from the Heinrich-Hertz Realgymnasium in 1916. After this, she studied at the universities of Munich and Hamburg. Her doctoral dissertation, written under the supervision of Ernst Cassirer, concerned Lessing and Leibniz. In 1922 she began working as a librarian at the Kulturwissenschaflichen Bibliothek Warburg, which was later moved to London when the Nazis rose to power, becoming the Warburg Institute Director. With her partner, Fritz Saxl, the new Institute's first Director, she settled in Dulwich. Saxl died in 1948, and was succeeded as Director by Henri Frankfort. At his death in 1954, Bing became Director of the Institute, and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition. She held these posts until her death in 1964.