Focusing on the commune of Bessans, Goldstern created one of the first-ever ethnographic monographs about a community, writing about life and economy in a European mountain village.

Her investigations markedly departed from typical scholarly opinion at the time, the latter portraying the culture of the Alps as idealized and unchanging.

Her first and last articles published in the Viennese journal of ethnography Wiener Zeitschrift für Volkskunde focused on toys.

[8] However, with the takeover of Austria by Nazi Germany in 1938, Jewish people were officially excluded from public life and subjected to antisemitic racial laws.

[3] In 2004–2005, the Vienna Museum of Ethnology displayed Goldstern's collection of Swiss folk art objects in an exhibition titled "Ur-Ethnographie.