Gertrud Bing (7 June 1892 â 3 July 1964) was a German art historian and director of the Warburg Institute.
Gertrud Bing was born in Hamburg on 7 June 1892, to Moritz Bing, a merchant, and Emma Jonas. Bing originally trained as a school teacher, and taught for eighteen months during the early 1910s.
In 1916, Bing enrolled at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and studied philosophy, German literature, and psychology. Bing returned to teaching in 1918, before resuming her studies at the University of Hamburg in 1919. Bing gained her PhD in 1921. Supervised by Ernst Cassirer, Bing's doctoral dissertation focused on the works of Gotthold Ephraim Lessing and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz.
In 1922, Bing began working as a librarian at the â³Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburgâ³, founded by Aby Warburg.
In December 1933, the â³Kulturwissenschaftlichen Bibliothek Warburgâ³ was moved to London when the Nazis rose to power, becoming the Warburg Institute. With her partner, Fritz Saxl, the new institute's first director, she settled in Dulwich. Saxl died in 1948, and was succeeded as director by Henri Frankfort.
After the death of Frankfort in 1954, Bing in 1955 became director of the institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition. She held these posts until her retirement in 1959. Gertrud Bing died in 1964 in London, following a brief illness.