Anna Spitzmüller (September 6, 1903 – September 25, 2001) was an Austrian art historian, curator, and educator. She taught art history to generations of American college students through the Austro-American Institute of Education. Early life Spitzmüller was born September 6, 1903, in the Moravian town of Znaim (now Znojmo, Czech Republic), the daughter of an old Austro-Hungarian military family. Her mother also came from an aristocratic background, and her ancestral home still stands in Znojmo. Her father was Amadeo Spitzmüller von Tonalwehr (18711945), a high-ranking Imperial Army officer, and her "beloved uncle" was Alexander Spitzmüller, Freiherr von und zu Spitzmüller-Harmersbach (18621953), a well-known economist and banker who was the last imperial finance minister for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Her grandfather originally came from Bukovina, one of the furthest regions of Austro-Hungary. She spent her earliest years in Prague, then a time in Olmütz. She learned to speak Czech among other languages. Her father was then stationed permanently at the War Ministry in Vienna, where she remained for the rest of her life. She later described her upbringing as "completely free and open", with an active social life among Austria's cultural elite. Dinner conversations were learned and scholarly; her father was very educated, and her mother was very musical. She was privately tutored as a girl, and learned French and English from governesses. She then attended the Rahlgasse Mädchengymnasium, the first academic school for girls in Vienna. In 1920, impressed by an exhibition of tapestries at the Belvedere, she decided she wanted to be an art historian. In 1921, she enrolled at the University of Vienna to study with Josef Stryzgowski, controversial antagonist of the so-called Vienna School of Art History led by Max Dvořák and Julius von Schlosser. She received her degree in 1926 with her dissertation Die Brüder Strudel als Plastiker. Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Hofkunst Kaiser Leopold I ("The Strudel brothers as sculptors: A Contribution to the History of the Court Art of Emperor Leopold I"; Paul Strudel and Peter Strudel were the late 17th-century sculptors who created the oldest artists' academy in Central Europe). Career Her first project after finishing her degree was an inventory of the major monuments of Carinthia, the southernmost province of present-day Austria, for the Dehio Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler Österreichs. Lack of transportation meant she completed the inventory on foot. Returning to Vienna in the fall of 1926, she worked under the