Daniela Hammer-Tugendhat (born 2 August 1946) is an Austrian art historian. She was born in Caracas, Venezuela to a family of wealthy, Jewish textile manufacturers from Brno, who had fled the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia during World War II. When the war ended, the family unsuccessfully attempted to reclaim their property in Czechoslovakia and settled in St. Gallen, Switzerland in 1950. Influenced by her mother's love of art, Hammer-Tugendhat studied art history and archeology at the University of Bern and the University of Vienna. After completing her PhD in 1975, she taught at the University of Applied Arts Vienna until her retirement in 2012.

From the early 1980s, Hammer-Tugendhat focused on representations of gender in art and analysis of the underlying socio-political meanings women represented in artworks. She gave lectures for the working group on women's history at the University of Vienna in the 1980s and attempted with other academics to launch a graduate-level women's studies program there in 1994. She also led an initiative "Förderung der Frauenforschung und ihrer Verankerung in der Lehre" ("Promotion of Women's Research and Its Anchorage in Teaching") in 1991, which successfully established coordination offices between Austrian universities to link women's studies researchers and created positions for women in the Austrian Ministry of Education, Science and Research. In recognition of her work as a pioneer in the history of feminist art, she was awarded the Gabriele Possanner State Prize of 2009.

Early Life

Marie-Daniela Tugendhat was born on 2 August 1946 in Caracas, Venezuela to Grete (née Löw-Beer) and Fritz Tugendhat. Fritz's family were co-owners of the textile firms Feldhendler et Co. and Max Kohn. Although he had wanted to study medicine, Fritz went into the family business and was a fabric designer. Grete's family were industrialists involved in cement, sugar refining, and textile manufacture. The Löw-Beer family had roots in Moravia dating back to the 17th century and their businesses were located in Brno and Svitávka. Grete studied economics in Vienna, but left university in 1922 to marry the industrialist Hans Weiss. She and Hans lived in Germany and had a daughter before they divorced in 1928. While in Germany, Grete became interested in modern art and architecture, particularly the housing on the Weissenhof Estate and a house in Berlin designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, where her friend Eduard Fuchs resided. The year she and Weiss divorced, she married Fritz, a childhood friend. Her parents gave the young couple a lot in Brno, and they commissioned Mies van der Rohe to build their home, Villa Tugendhat. After two years of work, the house was completed in 1930 and the family began occupancy in December, nine months after their oldest son was born. At the time, the children were Hanna Weiss from Grete's first marriage and Fritz and Grete's son, Ernst. While the family was still living in the home, a younger son, Herbert was born. Eight years later, fearing persecution because they were Jewish and the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia was imminent, the family fled to St. Gallen, Switzerland, where they lived for three years,[Note 1] while Fritz managed a textile factory in nearby Kirchberg.

Fearing that Hitler's troops would invade Switzerland, in 1941 the family fled to Caracas, Venezuela, where Fritz had been hired to run the Lanex textile company owned by a group of Corsican financiers. The couple's daughters Ruth, and the youngest, Daniela, were born in Caracas. Hanna and Ernst left Venezuela in 1945 to attend university, respectively at Montreal's McGill University and California's Stanford University. The rest of the family lived in Venezuela for almost a decade, but when the war ended, Grete wanted to return home because of better opportunities for her children's education. Before moving back to St. Gallen in 1950, the couple unsuccessfully attempted to reclaim their property in Czechoslovakia, but the Villa Tugendhat and other properties had been nationalized by first the Nazis and then by the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Returning to work at the factory near St. Gallen, the couple decided to become Swiss citizens. Fritz died around 1957 from stomach cancer. Daniela and her mother were very close. Grete shared and encouraged her daughter's interest in art. Daniela began studying art history and classical archeology at the University of Bern in 1964. She transferred to the University of Vienna in 1968 to continue her studies. In 1969 and 1970, Czech architects invited Grete to attend conferences and talk about the house. Tugendhat accompanied her mother there and became interested in the history of the house. She began to question her mother about it, but Grete died in a car accident at the end of 1970. That year, Tagendhat married Ivo Hammer, an Austrian art historian, restorer, and conservationist, with whom she had two children, Matthias and Lukas. Hammer-Tugendhat completed her doctorate in 1975 under the supervision of Otto Pächt. Her thesis focused on principles of design used by the Dutch painter, Hieronymus Bosch. Rather than simply commenting on chronicled changes in Bosch's style and influences over his career, the thesis explored the socio-political aspects of his subjects, examining the historic social details and perceptions that his images depicted.