Barbara Zeisl Schoenberg
Barbara Zeisl Schoenberg was born in New York on May 17, 1940, the daughter of Austrian-American Jewish refugee from Nazi Austria composer Eric Zeisl and his wife Dr. Gertrud S Zeisl. She is portrayed by actress Frances Fisher in Woman in Gold, the 2015 film about her son E. Randol Schoenberg, who represented Maria Altmann in her claim against the Government of Austria to recover five family-owned paintings by the artist Gustav Klimt stolen by the Nazis during World War II.
Zeisl Schoenberg received her PhD in German Language and Literature from University of California, Los Angeles and taught at Pomona College. She has published articles on the Viennese fin de siècle and exile studies, and is a translator of German books and poetry.
She is married to Ronald R. Schoenberg, and is the mother of attorney E. Randol Schoenberg, UCLA geneticist Marlena Fejzo, UCLA statistics professor Rick Paik Schoenberg, and Los Angeles County Public Defender Melanie Schoenberg Rescorla.
