Reingbald, Berta Mikhailovna

Born in Odessa, in the family of electrical engineer Moses (Mikhail) Abramovich Rheinbald, a native of Simferopol , a graduate of the locksmith department of the Jewish Craft School of the Trud Society and the Dresden Polytechnic ^{[1] [2]} . Mother - Gitl Sherman, a native of Odessa. The family lived in house No. 7 (later No. 9) along Assumption Street .

She studied at the Odessa Conservatory with Bronislava Dronseyko-Mironovich and Esfiri Chernetskaya-Geshelin . Occasionally, she performed piano concerts in Odessa, but she gained most fame for her teaching at the Stolyarsky School of Music and at the same time at the Odessa Conservatory (professor since 1933 , head of the special piano department since 1938 ). She was the main mentor of Emil Gilels . Among the students of Rheingbald at different times were also Oscar Feltsman , Isidore Zack , Berta Maranz , Lyudmila Waverko , Maria Greenberg , Zara Levina , Berta Kozel , Tatyana Goldfarb , Henrietta Mirvis , Vera Khoroshina , Lyudmila Finkelshtein (in the marriage of Sosin and others), famous musicians. For her teaching activities she was awarded the Order of the Red Banner of Labor (1937).

During the Great Patriotic War, she was evacuated in Tashkent and taught at the Leningrad Conservatory evacuated there ^[3] . She had typhus. After graduating from the Tomsk Artillery School, son Alik was sent to the front and was heavily shell-shocked. After the liberation of Odessa, she immediately went there, despite invitations to the Leningrad Conservatory and the Moscow Gnesins Institute. She was appointed director of the Stolyarsky music school.

She committed suicide by jumping from a staircase of the fourth floor in the city administration building ^[4] , largely due to unsuccessful attempts to obtain housing.

In 1974, Emil Gilels gave a special concert in Odessa on the 30th anniversary of her death.

She participated in the organization of the Moldavian Conservatory in Chisinau (1940). She was a deputy of the Odessa City Council of three convocations and a deputy of the Odessa Regional Council (1939).

• Order of the Red Banner of Labor (06/03/1937).

The first husband B. M. Reingbald was a doctor.

• Son - Alex (Alik) Rubinstein (1922, Odessa - 1993, Los Angeles ), cellist, graduate of the Moscow Polytechnic Institute Gnesins in the class of S. Kozolupov ; performed in the State Symphony Orchestra of Cinematography and in the Eddie Rosner Orchestra, in 1978 he emigrated to the United States ^[5] .
• Husband (since 1935) - music teacher Vitold Platonovich Portugalov ^[6] .
• B. M. Rheingbald had three sisters: Antonina (1895), Sophia, Henrietta. Sophia (1901-1993), dancer and dance teacher at the Stolyarsky music school ^[7] , was married to the famous Odessa infectious disease specialist Alexander Abramovich Grinfeld; The last twenty years of her life she lived in California . Brother - Naum Movshovich (Mikhailovich) Rheingbald (1899—), violinist (last years of his life in Moscow - a wandering musician), repressed (1935) ^[8] .
• Uncle - Wolf Abramovich Rheingbald (also Wolf and Vladimir Abramovich; 1861-1941), an artist, a graduate of the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, taught drawing and calligraphy at the Odessa Jewish private school of the first category I. Gefen, a Jewish girl’s school, a two-year state Jewish school, then in his own school of drawing and drawing on Tiraspolskaya Street, 10 and Kondratenko Square, 2 (among his students I. M. Gurvich and I. S. Nazaryan-Nazarov ). Participant in the exhibitions of the Association of South Russian Artists (TURX, 1890), Odessa Drawing School (1900), the Society named after K.K. Kostandi in Odessa. Berta Reingbald, her brother and sisters were brought up in an uncle's family after a serious illness of his father.

• A. Rosenboim. Madame Lubka
• L. Averbukh. Find and save talent
• Y. Kovalensky. The tragedy of Bertha Rheingbald
• L. Grossman. The path to immortality