Hannelore Künzl (1940–2000)

Hannelore Künzl, née Worringen, was born in Cologne, Germany. She initially studied musicology and archeology at the University of Cologne, then from 1965 she studied art history, Semitic studies, and Jewish studies, in which she received her doctorate in 1970. After Künzl had completed her habilitation (post-doctoral qualification required to teach at the university level) in 1979, she received an appointment the following year as a lecturer at the newly-founded Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg (Heidelberg College for Jewish Studies). She was named Professor of Jewish Art in 1985. Prof. Künzl became the first woman to hold a chair in Jewish Studies in the Federal Republic of Germany. She was the author, among other works, of Neo-Islamic Stylistic Elements in Synagogue Construction in the 19th and Early 20th Centuries (1984), Jewish Art from Biblical Times to the Present (1992), and Jewish Funerary Art from Antiquity to the Present (1999).