The New Reitz

The new light blue subscript tells us nothing about the original namesake of the street. Instead, the sticker gives the impression that the street was named after the Jewish-American Rosetta Reitz (Fig. 1), born in 1924. Who was she and what did she do to deserve this honor?

Over the course of her life, Rosetta worked on all kinds of things. She predominantly dedicated herself to feminism, which she did in several different ways. On the one hand, she wrote texts in the ‘70s that gave information about women from a woman’s point of the view. As such, she accomplished a change of perspective on menopause: she emphasized that it was not only a medical process, but also a very personal one.

Rosetta was even more passionate about the music industry, especially the world of jazz. With her own music label, Rosetta Records, she released long-forgotten music, mostly from relatively unknown female jazz artists. Through this, she stimulated the emancipation of women in the jazz scene, as well as that of black artists in the entire music industry.

Reitz proved to be an important feminist, but she was active in other areas as well. She taught at university and wrote a cookbook about mushrooms. Music and books were her passions, passions which were also reflected in her own bookstore. Here too she played with the limits of social norms and values. For example, she put up a nude mannequin with a male face (or even a demon’s face?) in the shop window to promote a book (Fig. 2). This rebellious display led to a trial, which Rosetta won.

Rosetta Reitz passed away in 2008 at the age of 84. Although she never acquired great fame as an author, as a Jewish woman in America she did make great contributions to the emancipation of predominantly black female jazz artists. Still, it is noteworthy that this ‘new’ Reitz has nothing to do with the name that is hidden under the sticker. Who was the Reitz after whom this street was originally named?