Maria Kusche
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Maria Kusche (1928–2012) was a Spanish art historian of German descent, a specialist on painters at the royal court of Philip II of Spain, in particular Sofonisba Anguissola, Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, and Alonso Sánchez Coello.
Maria Kusche was born in 1928 in Málaga, to German parents who had emigrated and met in Málaga. Her father, Ernesto (born Ernst) Kusche (1878–1965), was a business leader and co-founder of Baquera, Kusche & Martin S.A. (Bakumar) which at one point was viewed as the biggest terrestrial and maritime transport and customs company in Spain.[1] A street near Málaga Airport (Calle Ernesto Kusche) still bears his name. Her mother, born Elisabeth Strandes (1892–1967), was a daughter of merchant and Hamburg Senator Justus Strandes.
Kusche studied art history at Complutense University of Madrid with professors Francisco Javier Sánchez Cantón and José Manuel Pita Andrade and went on in Germany at University of Freiburg, University of Marburg, and eventually University of Bonn where she completed her Doctorate work on 16th-century court painter Juan Pantoja de la Cruz, supervised by Herbert von Einem.[2]
In 1963 she married Winfried Zettelmeyer, a development economist, and subsequently followed him to live in various African and Latin American countries. They had two sons, Jeromin (born 1964) and Florian (born 1968), who both also became social science scholars.[3][4]
