Martha Nierenberg

Martha Nierenberg (1924 – 2020) founded, with her husband Ted, Dansk Designs. 
Martha née Weiss de Csepel Nierenberg was born in Budapest on March 12, 1924 into one of Hungary’s wealthiest families. She was the daughter of Alfonz Weiss de Csepel, who on the death of his father, headed the Manfred Weiss Works and its foundation. Her mother, Erzsbet Herzog Weiss de Csepel, was a medical doctor who had studied psychiatry in Vienna with Anna Freud.
Her maternal grandfather the banker Baron Mór Lipót Herzog (1869 – 1934) was one of Europe’s leading art and antiquities collectors. Her paternal grandfather, Manfred Weiss de Csepel, had founded the Manfred Weiss Steel and Metal Works, Hungary’s largest machine factory, employing 40,000 people. 
Martha had two brothers (John, 1936–2017) and a sister (Mary Radcliffe). Jewish by birth, Martha attended a Calvinist school, to focus on science and math, then enrolled in a science college in Budapest.
She evaded capture during the Second World War by fleeing via Austria to Portugal in 1944. After more than a year there, she emigrated with her mother to the United States on 27 December 1946.
A scientist who spoke six languages, Martha received a Master of Science degree in biochemistry from Radcliffe College and conducted research at MIT and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research in Manhattan.
She met Theodore David Nierenberg (1923 – 2009) , owner of a metal finishing company, at the Broadway premiere of Guys and Dolls in 1950. They married in 1951, moved to Great Neck, on Long Island, and had four children – Lisa, Karin Weisburgh, Peter and Al. The family lived in Armonk from 1963 to 2013. In 1954, she and Nierenberg founded the Dansk Designs housewares company.
She died on June 27, 2020 in Rye, New York.
== Claims for restitution of art ==
In 1995 Nierenberg commenced a decades-long Holocaust art restitution battle with the Republic of Hungary that would count as one of the highest-value cases ever pursued by a single family. Among the 44 paintings Hungary has refused to return are four works by El Greco, and others by Zurbarán, Velázquez, Corot, Courbet, and Lucas Cranach the Elder. Nierenberg's trustee, her granddaughter Robin Bunevich, estimated the collection to be worth $100 million.
in 2010, Nierenber's nephew, David, with funding from the billionaire philanthropist Ronald S. Lauder, filed suit in United States District Court for the District of Columbia. In June 2017, Judge Tatel found the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act did not prevent the survivors of a Holocaust victim from suing to recover art stolen by Nazi plunderers, over the partial dissent of Senior Judge A. Raymond Randolph. In 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case.
==In the media==
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== References ==
== External links ==
* Martha Nierenberg, Holocaust survivor who sought to reclaim looted family art collection, dies at 96
* Martha Nierenberg, Entrepreneur Who Sought Art’s Return, Dies at 96
* Martha Nierenberg, entrepreneur who sought art's return, dies
* Martha Nierenberg Helped Found Dansk Designs Tableware Firm
* Martha Nierenberg, Holocaust survivor and American tabletop
Category:1924 births
Category:2020 deaths
Category:American scientists
Category:Master's degrees
Category:Biochemistry
Category:Radcliffe College alumni
Category:American entrepreneurs