Hattula Moholy-Nagy, 91, died peacefully at her home in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on November 26th, 2024, after battling cancer for a year. She was born in Berlin, Germany, on October 11th, 1933, to László Moholy-Nagy and Sibyl Moholy-Nagy. The family immigrated to London in 1935, where her sister, Claudia, was born. The family came to the United States in 1937 and settled in Chicago. In 1949, after the untimely death of her father, the family moved to San Francisco and finally to New York City in 1951.
Hattula graduated from James Russell Lowell High School in San Francisco in 1950 and earned a B.A. in History from the University of Michigan and an M.A. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. She did archaeological fieldwork in several locations throughout the Southwest United States, Casas Grandes in northern Mexico, and Tikal in Guatemala. She specialized in obsidian fragments and, throughout her career, published many peer-reviewed articles detailing their uses in Mayan daily life.
In 1965, she married Hans-Ruedi, an architect, and moved with him to his hometown of Zurich, Switzerland, where their two sons, Andreas and Daniel Hug, were born. From 1971 through 1978, she taught evening courses in the Seminar for Ethnology at the University of Zurich.
In 1979, she and Hans-Ruedi divorced. Hattula and the boys settled in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where she earned her PhD in Anthropology at the University of Michigan in 1994.
In 1987, she married Roger G. Schneggenburger. They greatly enjoyed each other’s company until Roger’s death from Alzheimer’s disease in 2023.
She is survived by her sons, Andreas L. Hug (Kristen Hug) of Ann Arbor and Daniel C. Hug (Natalia Hug) of Cologne, Germany, three grandsons, Cahill, Sebastian, and Nikolai Hug, and six step-children (Marie, David, Elizabeth, Andrew, Monica, and Julia), along with relatives in the United States, Germany, and Hungary.
