College Record 2013

not quite have the strength to complete her thesis, but the University thoughtfully
awarded her a Certificate of Graduate Attainment in March 2011. For this most
capable and formidable (but kindly) of scholars, it was in a sense also a recognition
of a lifetime’s studies, ranging across Europe and over two millennia of the classical
tradition.
Nigel Ramsay (MCR 2005–)
David Price (GS 2003–) and Megan Price (GS 2000–07,
MCR 2007–), who were foremost in caring for Gertrud
Seidmann in her last years, write:
This was a life lived amongst rare gems. Gertrud (whose Hebrew name was Gavrila
bat Lotan) was a true antiquarian and scholar; when she died peacefully at home in
the early hours of Friday, 15 February, at the age of 93, she was the oldest full-time
student at Wolfson and possibly at Oxford. She was cremated by her own wish on
Tuesday, 5 March, at Oxford Crematorium.
Her father Ludwig Seidmann was Roumanian, her mother Frederika Menkes
Austrian, and she lived and was educated in Vienna. She and her father escaped the
Nazis in time, but her beloved mother and extended family died in the Holocaust.
Gertrud never spoke of these heart-breaking events, but she appears to have turned
her back on God without ever losing her attachment to her Jewish culture and
identity.
Nigel Ramsay has described her careers in teaching and the study of gemstones.
Her exchanges with stall-holders as she trawled the Portobello Road have become
the stuff of legend, but despite her eclectic taste, she always focused totally on the
job in hand and became a widely consulted expert on gemstones ranging from
Late Antique ‘originals’ to Neoclassical gems, fobs, finger-rings and cameos. Her
expertise was recognized by election to the Society of Antiquaries in 1986, and a
Festschrift (Classicism to Neoclassicism: Essays dedicated to Gertrud Seidmann) in 1999.
In her mid-80s she embarked on an Oxford MPhil, a biographical study of the
31