Rosalia Spirer, also Etti-Rosa Spirer (16 April 1900 – 30 March 1990), was a Romanian-born Soviet Moldavian architect. Born in

Galați Galați (, , ; also known by other alternative names) is the capital city of Galați County in the historical region of Western Moldavia, in eastern Romania. Galați is a port town on the Danube River. It has been the only port for the most par ...

, in the Romanian Old Kingdom, Spirer was one of five children, four girls and a boy, in a Jewish family. Her father, Ludwig, was an estate manager while her mother, a housewife, instructed her in needlework. After completing high school, she studied architecture at the Bucharest Superior School of Architecture, graduating in 1925. In 1932, she moved to Bălți, in the

Bessarabia Bessarabia (; Gagauz: ''Besarabiya''; Romanian: ''Basarabia''; Ukrainian: ''Бессара́бія'') is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Be ...

province of what had become

Greater Romania The term Greater Romania ( ro, România Mare) usually refers to the borders of the Kingdom of Romania in the interwar period, achieved after the Great Union. It also refers to a pan-nationalist idea. As a concept, its main goal is the creation ...

. There, as the only trained architect, she oversaw architectural planning, including expansion of the prefecture building. During the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, she worked on a farm in the

Saratov region Saratov Oblast (russian: Сара́товская о́бласть, ''Saratovskaya oblast'') is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast), located in the Volga Federal District. Its administrative center is the city of Saratov. As of the 2010 Cens ...

, although she spoke no Russian. In 1944, she returned to Bessarabia, much of which was now part of the

Moldavian SSR The Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic ( ro, Republica Sovietică Socialistă Moldovenească, Moldovan Cyrillic: ) was one of the 15 republics of the Soviet Union which existed from 1940 to 1991. The republic was formed on 2 August 1940 ...

within the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

. There, she worked in the republic's capital of

Chișinău Chișinău ( , , ), also known as Kishinev (russian: Кишинёв, r=Kishinjóv ), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the Republic of Moldova. The city is Moldova's main industrial and commercial center, and is located in the ...

renovating the Zhdanov Library, now the Municipal Library (1946), the Ministry of Finance building (1948), and the Sfatul Țării Palace (1950). She went on to design multi-storey residential buildings. Spirer remained in good health until the end. She died on 30 March 1990, at age 89.

Literature

* Berkovich, Gary. Reclaiming a History. Jewish Architects in Imperial Russia and the USSR. Volume 3. Socialist Realism: 1933–1955. Weimar und Rostock: Grunberg Verlag. 2022. P. 107. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spirer, Rosalia 1900 births 1990 deaths People from Galați Romanian Jews Romanian architects Romanian women architects Moldavian Jews Moldovan architects Moldovan women architects 20th-century Romanian women artists