Alice Hallgarten

Alice Hallgarten Franchetti (born Alice Hallgarten) was an American philanthropist and pedagogue who was influential for her social projects and collaborative work with Maria Montessori at the Villa Montesca.

Her parents, J. Adolph Hallgarten and Julia Nordheimer, were both well-to-do German Ashkenazi Jews that financed the construction of railways, lent money to large industrial groups, and were founding partners of the Hallgarten & Co. bank of New York.^[1] Critics such as Maria Luciana Buseghin argue that Alice's efforts were due to a unique combination of personality traits and experiences. Her family was deeply involved in philanthropic efforts, as Busghin argues in Alice Hallgarten Franchetti: A Woman Beyond Barriers, which was common in the Jewish community due to the tradition of charity or tzedakah (59-53).^[2] However, while her parents were of Jewish origin, Alice did not openly practice the religion.^[3] Buseghin argues that "many initiatives undertaken by Alice Hallgarten strongly echo those of her uncle Charles"^[4] who Alice referred to as her "second father" ^[5]

After the death of her father in 1885, Alice spent her childhood in Frankfurt, Germany where she was raised by her Uncle Charles. She had two siblings, a sister named Eleanore born in 1890 and a brother Walter, who died of tuberculosis in Schwarzwald at 38 years old in 1908. The year after her brother's death, Alice's mother would succumb to the same disease. After having spent the majority of her childhood in Germany, Alice moved to Rome, where she started providing aid and assistance services in the Quartiere San Lorenzo. It was here at the neighborhood pharmacy where Alice met her future husband Leopoldo Franchetti, who she would later marry in Rome on June 9, 1900.^[6]