Hilde Goldschmidt was born into a wealthy Jewish business family in Leipzig. Her artistic talents were encouraged from an early age. After completing her schooling in 1914, Goldschmidt enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig and attended the book design course offered by Hugo Steiner-Prag. She began painting around 1918, and received private lessons from Richard Bossert. The following year, she joined the ballet school of the Leipzig Opera and also made set designs. In 1920 she was accepted to the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts. In the summer semester, she entered the master class of Oskar Kokoschka. Goldschmidt left the Academy in 1923, and went to New York, Paris, Vienna, the South of France and Italy, before settling in Munich in 1932.
A skiing accident in Kitzbühel in 1933 meant she had to spend seven months in hospital there. The political situation in Germany had changed in the meantime, so she remained in Kitzbühel after regaining her health, and bought a house there in 1935. The Nazis annexed Austria in 1938, and Goldschmidt was forced into emigration. She and her mother, went to London, where they were taken in by Goldschmidt’s brother, Fritz. In order to make a living, Goldschmidt took a job in a workshop for leather and furs. She was corresponding with Oskar Kokoschka at this time. He, too, had sought refuge in England. When her brother’s house was destroyed by the bombing raids on London, she and her mother moved to the Lake District in north-west England. After her mother’s death, Goldschmidt returned to Kitzbühel in 1950.
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