BING, Gertrud 1892-1964. Scholar. Born in Germany, in 1922 she joined the Kulturwissenschaftliche Bibliothek Warburg in Hamburg, as a librarian and personal assistant to its founder Aby Warburg. In 1933 after Warburg’s death, Bing accompanied the Warburg Library in its move to England. She became Assistant Director in 1944 when the library was incorporated into the University of London as the Warburg Institute, and a British citizen in 1945. In 1955 Bing became the Director of the Institute and Professor of the History of the Classical Tradition, the raison d’être of the Institute, until her retirement in 1959. Short, dark and bespectacled, she edited many scholarly works. ‘Her home in Dulwich, where she lived for nearly thirty years [until her death in 1964], with a garden which she had herself planted and cultivated, was a meeting place for friends and scholars from all over the world.’
Hilary Rosser