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Portraits of Bryn Mawr College Presidents Main Menu

Refugee scholars

In the context of American colleges and universities in the 1930s, administrators and faculty alike tended to harbor racist and anti-Semitic beliefs, and American institutions often acted as complicit bystanders in the rise of the Nazi regime. Marion Park was unusual for her outspoken approach and willingness to fund Jewish refugee professors and students, and for doing so despite the financial challenges of the Great Depression. Among the refugee scholars Park brought to Bryn Mawr was celebrated mathematician Emmy Noether, who taught for one year before suddenly dying in 1935.

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Marion E. Park

Marion E. Park (1875- 1960) (President, 1922 - 1942)
Fritz Janschka, 1992
After Charles Sydney Hopkinson
Oil on canvas, 164.465 x 113.665 cm
2010.25.1

Most students are acquainted with Marion Park as the namesake for the science center built during her presidency in 1938. Given the ambitious building program that characterized her tenure, this may be fitting. Park (AB 1898, PhD 1918) was a distinguished scholar of Classics and the first alumna to become President of the College. Beyond physically expanding the campus, she also initiated curricular cooperation with Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania. During the rise of Fascism and anti-Semitism leading up to World War II, Park supported protests against Nazism and welcomed European Jewish refugee scholars as professors. Park did not extend the same humanity to Black applicants to the College: under her administration, students like Enid Cook, the first Black woman to graduate from Bryn Mawr, were discouraged from applying and only admitted to the College on the condition that they remain non-residents.

Originally painted by Charles Sydney Hopkinson, Park’s portrait was re-painted by Bryn Mawr College artist-in-residence Fritz Janschka fifty years after her death due to its deteriorated condition. Hopkinson depicted Park as a standing figure, her hands folded together softly as if in reflection. Her portrait was meant to hang beside Sargent’s painting of Thomas, and the contrast between poses would have distinguished Park from her predecessor. When Janschka, a master of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism, depicts her, he intensifies this contrast, outlining the figure in a severe red border and enlivening the background with an exhilarating clash of colors. Although quite different in style from Sargent's portrait of Thomas, Janschka's abrasive use of paint imparts a similarly strong physical presence to his subject, animating the intensity of her gaze.
Visit http://blackatbrynmawr.blogs.brynmawr.edu for more information on the history of Black students at Bryn Mawr.

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Refugees at Bryn Mawr College 1940-41. June 1940.