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Lilly

FROM BRESLAU TO SÃO PAULO

Lilly was born in Breslau, Germany, in 1897 and immigrated to São Paulo in 1925 with her husband Max Lowenstein and their two children; in 1926, she was hired by the School of Medicine of São Paulo.

Lilly was the daughter of Martha Koblinski Ebstein and Georg Ebstein, German Jews. She was born on April 7, 1897, in Breslau, Germany. The Ebstein moved to Berlin where Lilly studied at the Lette-Verein School, an exclusive women’s school, from October 1911 to April 1914.

Lilly married Max Lowenstein in 1919 and the couple had two children who were born in 1920 and in 1922 in Dusseldorf. The end of the First World War in Germany marked the end of the Empire and the beginning of the Republic, a period that became known as the Weimar Republic, until the rise of Nazism in 1933. They were years of intense effervescence in politics, culture, the arts and science, but a period of political instability, economic crisis, unemployment and hyperinflation.

In 1923, Max and Lilly decided to leave Germany and thought about immigrating to other countries before deciding on Brazil, where they arrived in the beginning of 1925. From the port of Santos, they continued to São Paulo, where they settled in Pinheiros neighborhood.

A year later, on January 1, 1926, Lilly was hired by the School of Medicine and Surgery of São Paulo, the school of higher education in Medicine in the State, and began work as an illustrator and photomicrographer until becoming chief of the Illustration and Photography Department of the School of Medicine (USP, as of 1934) in 1932. Lilly got her Brazilian citizenship in 1935. After a 30-year career, she retired in 1956.

Lilly Ebstein Lowenstein (1897-1966) led a life between science and art, drawing and taking photographs in the fields of Medicine and Zoology. In her work, Lilly combined her technical knowledge of photography and drawing, the study of the sciences and a remarkable talent for aesthetics. She was born in Germany and studied at the Lette-Verein School in Berlin from 1911 to 1914. In 1925, she immigrated with her husband and two children to São Paulo. In 1926, she became an illustrator and photomicrographer at the Illustration and Photography Department at the School of Medicine (USP, as of 1934), which she headed for thirty years after 1932. Lilly collaborated at Instituto Biológico de Defesa Agrícola e Animal (the Biological Institute for the Defense of Agriculture and Animals), from 1930 to 1935, namely in the Avian Pathology Department. A life with art dedicated to the research and dissemination of science.