Career
Born in Vienna, then capital of the Austria-Hungary, Austro-Hungarian empire, Austria, Winternitz served in World War I. He then practiced law in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s. Winternitz emigrated to the United States in 1938, after the Anschluss. In 1941, He started work at the Metropolitan as a lecturer. He became "Keeper" of the instruments the following year, and was named Curator in 1949 when Musical Instruments was made a curatorial department. At the Metropolitan Museum of Art#Musical instruments, Department of Musical Instruments, Winternitz was responsible for saving the musical instruments collection from a plan to turn them over to a Music Library proposed by Juilliard. He was also a musical instruments researcher, credited as the "father of the field of musical iconography". In 1973 Winternitz was named curator emeritus at the museum. He continued to teach at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York until his death.In his will, he left his archives consisting of documents, working materials of his writings, and photographs, to the Research Center for Music Iconography of the Graduate Center, City University of New York. The center also owns a manuscript of his unpublished memoires ''The luggage of an immigrant''. His complete publications are available here https://gc-cuny.academia.edu/EmanuelWinternitz.References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Winternitz, Emanuel 1898 births 1983 deaths People associated with the Metropolitan Museum of Art Austrian musicologists Music historians Lawyers from Vienna Jewish emigrants from Austria to the United States after the Anschluss 20th-century musicologists