Daughter of Samuel and Babette Mendl, sister of Anna (Fried), Heinrich Mendl, Sofie (Deutsch), Emma Mendl, and Fritz Mendl.

Ernestine married Jakob Carl Figdor c. 1876, and had three children by him, of whom the third was Richard Figdor, pupil of Heinrich Schenker’s from May 1919 to May/June 1921.

Ernestine Figdor was involved in matters concerning Sofie Deutsch's estate after the latter's death on January 5, 1917, to which the Figdor family was a claimant and contested Sofie Deutsch’s generous bequests to Schenker.

Ernestine Figdor and Schenker

No correspondence is known to survive between Mrs. Figdor and Schenker, but she is mentioned in a letter from Schenker to Siegfried Türkel (OC 1 B/34r, February 24, 1918), and her name appears frequently in Schenker's diary in 1917. The claims of the Figdor family, which she represented through her attorney in court, on the will of Sofie Deutsch continued to at least 1923 (cf. Schenker’s diary for November 21, 1923), thereby hampering Schenker’s access to the full funding bequeathed to him by Mrs. Deutsch.

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