Life and work
She was born to a prominent Jewish family in Riga, Governorate of Livonia, Livonia, a province of the Russian Empire. She married Harald von Rathlef, a lieutenant in the Czarist Regiment of the Alexander Hussars, in 1908 in Riga. The couple had four children. The family fled to Germany on December 28, 1918, in an effort to escape from revolutionary Russia. The family settled near Weimar, Weimar, Germany, where she studied under Walter Gropius at the Bauhaus until 1921. She divorced her husband in 1922 and supported her children with the income from her sculptures, graphics and illustrations. In 1925 she became a major proponent of Anna Anderson's claim to be Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. She befriended the claimant and wrote a series of articles about her. In the same year she converted to Roman Catholicism. She was involved in artistic circles and social causes in Berlin, but was forced to resign from the Society of Berlin Women Artists when Adolf Hitler rose to power. Alarmed by the political developments in Nazi Germany, she hoped to leave the country. Before she could make definite plans, she died in Berlin on 1 May 1933 of a burst Vermiform appendix, appendix.Kurth, p. 275 In Falk Harnack's 1956 film, ''The Story of Anastasia'', she was portrayed by German actress Käthe Braun.References
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Rathlef, Harriet von 1887 births 1933 deaths German women artists Bauhaus alumni Converts to Roman Catholicism from Judaism German children's writers German Roman Catholics Artists from Riga White Russian emigrants to Germany German women children's writers Baltic-German people Emigrants from the Russian Empire to Germany