Prof. Dr. Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt

Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt was born on February 10, 1853 in Mainz and his parents were Salomon Benedikt Goldschmidt and Josephine Edle von Portheim. 1875-1878 he was an assistant at the Freiberg Mining Academy after studying to become a metallurgical engineer. 1880 he received his doctorate in mechanical rock analysis under Heinrich Rosenbusch in Heidelberg. In the years 1882-1887, Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt studied in Vienna and from 1887 was a freelance scientist in Heidelberg, living at Sophienstra&szlig 3. In 1888 he completed his doctorate under Heinrich Rosenbusch in Heidelberg on "Projection and graphic crystallographic refraction" and in the same year founded the Institute of Mineralogy and Crystallography. The couple undertook extensive travels to North America, Japan, China, Ceylon, India and Egypt, from which they brought back artifacts and ethnological objects from all over the world. Victor and Leontine Goldschmidt established the Josefine and Eduard von Portheim Foundation for Science and Art (named after Victor Goldschmidt's mother and Leontine Goldschmidt's father), to which they contributed their extensive private collections of European and non-European art and ethnographic objects. From 1913 to 1923, Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt's 18 volume atlas of crystallographic forms was published. In 1917, he was appointed a privy court councillor and in 1923, the Naturhistorisch-Medizinischer Verein Heidelberg appointed Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt an honorary member. The increasing anti-Semitism with the rise of the National Socialists prompted the baptized couple to celebrate Victor's 80th birthday in Austria. On May 8, 1933, Victor Mordechai Goldschmidt died in Salzburg due to illness. After Leontine Goldschmidt learned of her imminent deportation, she chose suicide on August 25, 1942 at the age of 79