Emma Wilhelmine Margarete Milch - Bormann

Emma Wilhelmine Margarete MILCH-BORMANN (née Bormann), born on July 29^th, 1887 in Döbling, Lower Austria/Austria-Hungary [Vienna/Austria] (entitled residency ("heimatberechtigt") for Vienna, citizenship 1938: Austria) as the daughter of ancient historian Prof. Dr. Eugen Ludwig Bormann (1842-1917, since 1885 professor of Ancient History and Classical Philology at the University of Vienna) and Auguste Bormann, née Rohrdantz (1850-1938), and in 1938 was a lecturer in artistic drawing with a special focus on reproductive processes at the Philosophical School at the University of Vienna.

She was persecuted under National Socialism as an employee of the University of Vienna, as her husband was considered Jewish, and was forced to take leave from the University of Vienna in 1939.

Emma Bormann lived in Vienna 19, Döblinger Hauptstraße 15 until 1900, then in Klosterneuburg and attended the Protestant advanced training school in Vienna in 1901, the grammar school of the Verein für erweiterte Frauenbildung in 1902, received private tuition from Rudolf Egger in 1904-1906 and passed the entrance examination for the Obergymnasium in 1905. In 1906 she took acting lessons in Vienna, went to Pomerania in 1907, but finally passed her school-leaving examination (Matura) as an external student in Klagenfurt/Carinthia in 1911, followed by a study trip to Italy, South Tyrol and Munich. From 1912 to 1917, she studied archaeology, prehistory and German language and literature at the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Vienna and took part in the 4th Vienna University Tour to Sicily and Tunisia in 1913 (her etchings from that time are now in the archives of the University of Vienna). 1913/14 Attended the gymnastics teacher training course, which she completed with distinction. From August 1, 1913 to 1915, she worked as a nurse at the Eiselsberg Clinic. Finally, on June 15, 1917, she received her doctorate in prehistory under Prof. Hoernes and Prof. Reisch with a dissertation on "The chronology of the younger Stone Age in Lower Austria" and also successfully passed the gymnastics teaching examination. Parallel to her studies, from 1912 to 1916 she attended the Vienna Graphic Arts Teaching and Research Institute under Ludwig Michalek, worked at the Krahuletz Museum in Eggenburg and taught at a Viennese girls' grammar school in 1917.
After completing her doctorate in Vienna, she went to Munich and enrolled at the Munich School of Arts and Crafts in 1917/18 for a semester on the graphic techniques course.
In 1918 she became a teacher of etching, lithography and woodcut at the private Praetorius training workshops for graphic techniques in Munich. She returned to Vienna in 1920 and exhibited her woodcuts at the Künstlerhaus in Vienna. From 1920 to 1923, she continued her training at the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna under Alfred Cossmann.
In September 1924, in Klosterneuburg, she married Dr. Eugen Milch (1889-1958), the best friend of her brother, who had died young, and her fellow student and artist, whom she had already known from her university trip in 1913 and who had received his doctorate from the University of Vienna in 1915. Before their marriage he had resigned from the Jewish Community in 1924 - he lived in Vienna's 3^rd district, Blütengasse 7 at the time. In 1925 and 1929, their daughters Uta Schreck (1925-2007) and Dr. Jorun Johns (born 1929) were born in Vienna.
From 1926, Emma Milch-Bormann was a lecturer in "Artistic Drawing with Special Reference to Reproductive Processes" at the University of Vienna.

Due to her “Jewish mixed marriage”, she was forced to take a leave of absence from the University of Vienna in 1939 and after being informed that her name was on “black lists of the National Socialists”, she followed her husband to China, who had already traveled to China in 1937 for a position at a hospital of a private mission in Pakhoi and thus escaped persecution by the National Socialists from 1938. Emma Bormann-Milch arrived in Hong Kong with her two daughters on August 25, 1939 and stayed there for some time before traveling on to Pakhoi, where the family lived until the Japanese invasion in 1942. They then made an adventurous escape via Canton to Shanghai. While her husband traveled on to another position in a missionary hospital - the couple only had sporadic contact after 1944 and Egon Milch died in Hong Kong on March 20, 1958 - Emma Bormann stayed in Shanghai with their daughters. However, she also traveled to Suzhou and Beijing. In 1948/49, she moved to Hong Kong. She later returned to Europe via Japan, Hawaii and the USA, which she visited until 1953. From 1953, Emma Bormann lived in Tokyo, from where she traveled within Japan and to Asia. From 1957, Emma Bormann lived alternately with her two daughters in Tokyo and Riverside (California, USA). She visited Vienna for the last time in 1973.

In 1968, she received a gold doctorate from the University of Vienna from the Austrian ambassador to Japan.

Bormann's artistic works consist of oil paintings, etchings, woodcuts and linocuts, often showing city views from above or lively scenes in theaters, concert halls and opera houses. The cityscapes and landscapes from Austria, Germany, France, England, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Turkey, China, Japan and the USA reflect her many travels, and in the work “Sketch for a Mural” also important historical moments, in this case the entry of Adolf Hitler on the Vienna Ringstrasse on March 15 in Vienna, seen from the parliament, which was very positively reviewed at its presentation in a Klosterneuburg exhibition in the Völkischer Beobachter. Her works can be found today in art collections such as the Albertina and the Belvedere in Vienna, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Library of Congress in Washington, the Art Institute in Chicago, the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne and the British Museum in London.

Emma Bormann, married Milch, died on December 28, 1974 in Riverside, CA/USA and is buried at Olivewood Cemetery in Riverside.

Archive of the University of Vienna, enrollment forms (“Nationale”) 1912-1917, final examination file and registry (“Rigorosenakt und -protokoll”) PH RA 4328, personnel rooster of the University of Vienna 1937/38, 90; Austrian State Archives OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/VVSt/VA 33153, OeStA/AdR/E-uReang/FLD 14850; Ursula MÜKSCH, Clementine Alberdingk und Emma Bormann, Freundinnen für ein Künstlerleben. Zwei Klosterneuburger Malerinnen und Grafikerinnen, Mitglieder im Verein heimischer Künstler Klosterneuburgs, ein kurzer Abriss der Geschichte des Vereins und ihre Biografien und Exlibris. in: Österreichisches Jahrbuch für Exlibris und Gebrauchsgrafik, 2011–2012, 60–92; Andrea JOHNS, The Art of Emma Bormann. Ariadne Press, Riverside 2016; Arpad WEIXELGÄRTNER, Graphische Arbeiten von Emma Bormann, in: Gesellschaft für Vervielfältigende Kunst (Hg.), Die Graphischen Künste, vol. 45, No. 2-3, Vienna 1922; Erwin MEHL, Eugen Bormann. Erinnerungen an einen bedeutenden Erforscher des römischen Altertums, in: Römisches Österreich 7, 1979, 35–74; Otto H. URBAN, "Er war der Mann zwischen den Fronten". Oswald Menghin und das Urgeschichtliche Institut der Universität Wien während der Nazizeit, Archaeologia Austriaca 80, 1996 (1997) 1–24; Anneliese RIEGER, Emma Bormann-Milch, Malerin und Grafikerin, in: Biografia.at; Gerd KAMINSKI, Ein Name, der mit großen Schriftzeichen zu schreiben ist: Emma Bormann, in OAG-Notitzen 01/2009; Katharina REBAY-SALISBURY, Frauen in Österreichs Urgeschichtsforschung, ArchA 97/98, 2013/2014, 59–76; www.ancestry.de; www.genteam.at; information by courtesy of Dr. Gudrun Wlach, Vienna 12/2024.

Herbert Posch