Applied Arts in British Exile From 1933 : Changing Visual and Material Culture [1 ed.] 9789004395107, 9789004395091

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Applied Arts in British Exile from 1933

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_001

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Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies Editorial Board Charmian Brinson (Imperial College London) Jana Barbora Buresova (IMLR, University of London) Rachel Dickson (BURU, a division of Ben Uri Gallery and Museum) Richard Dove (University of Greenwich) Anthony Grenville (Association of Jewish Refugees) Andrea Hammel (Aberystwyth University) Bea Lewkowicz (IMLR, University of London) Sarah MacDougall (BURU, a division of Ben Uri Gallery and Museum) Marian Malet (IMLR, University of London) Anna Nyburg (Imperial College London) Andrea Reiter (University of Southampton) J. M. Ritchie† Jennifer Taylor (IMLR, University of London)

VOLUME 19

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/ygae





Applied Arts in British Exile from 1933 Changing Visual and Material Culture Edited by

Marian Malet Rachel Dickson Sarah MacDougall Anna Nyburg

LEIDEN | BOSTON

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Cover illustration: 1. Entrance screen to MARS exhibition at New Burlington Galleries, 1938, designed by Peter Moro with Gordon Cullen. 2. Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road, London, 1936. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery. 3. Francis Reiss, Picture Post vom 18. 5. 1946 mit der Ankündigung des Bildberichts „THE MICROSCOPE FIGHTS FAMINE“. Sammlung Weinke, Hamburg. 4. Oskar Kokoschka, Frontispiece: William Shakespeare, King Lear, lithograph, 1963, Ganymed Original Editions. © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/2018, DACS. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Malet, Marian, editor. Title: Applied arts in British exile from 1933 : changing visual and material culture / edited by Marian Malet [and 3 others]. Description: Leiden ; Boston : Brill Rodopi, [2019] | Series: Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, ISSN 1388-3720 ; volume 19 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | English and German. Identifiers: LCCN 2019000998 (print) | LCCN 2019001256 (ebook) | ISBN 9789004395107 (Ebook) | ISBN 9789004395091 (pbk. : acid-free paper) Subjects: LCSH: Arts--Great Britain--History--20th century. | Expatriate artists--England. Classification: LCC NX343 (ebook) | LCC NX343 .A67 2019 (print) | DDC 709.41/0904--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019000998

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. issn 1388-3720 isbn 978-90-04-39509-1 (paperback) isbn 978-90-04-39510-7 (e-book) Copyright 2019 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands, except where stated otherwise. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi, Brill Sense, Hotei Publishing, mentis Verlag, Verlag Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink Verlag. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

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This volume is dedicated to Milein Cosman (1921–2017) and Wolf Suschitzky (1912–2016)

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Contents Contents

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Contents

Acknowledgments ix List of Illustrations  x List of Contributors xiV xvI



Introduction 1 Marian Malet, Rachel Dickson, Sarah MacDougall, Anna Nyburg

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New Homes in a Foreign Country. Bauen und Wohnen im britischen Exil der 1930er Jahre 6 Burcu Dogramaci

2 Peter Moro and the Men from Mars 27  Deirdre Fernand 3 Women Exile Photographers 49  John March 4 “Quite content to be called a good craftsman” – an Exploration of some of Wolf Suschitzky’s Extensive Contributions to the Field of Applied Photography between 1935 and 1955 67  Julia Winckler 5 Navigating Wolf Suschitzky’s Charing Cross Road 93  David Low 6 „It is the spaces between the notes that give the sound“. Von Hamburg, über London, New York nach Australien: Der Fotograf Francis Reiss 107  Wilfried Weinke 7 Drawing for Radio Times: the Contribution of Émigré Artists 132  Ines Schlenker 8 “The Craftsman’s Sympathy”: Bernhard Baer, Ganymed and Oskar Kokoschka’s King Lear 150  Sarah MacDougall

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Contents

9 Typographers in Exile 176  Pauline Paucker 10 Making Animation Matter: Peter Sachs Comes to Britain 191  Fran Lloyd 11 Textile in Exile: Refugee Textile Surface Designers in Britain 212  Anna Nyburg 12 “The Man from the Bauhaus”: the Lost Career of Werner ‘Jacky’ Jackson 229  Rachel Dickson

Index 249

Acknowledgments Acknowledgments

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Acknowledgments The editors wish to thank the Martin Miller and Hannah Norbert-Miller Trust for its generous financial support for the production of this volume, and the Ben Uri Research Unit for the Study of the Contribution of Jewish and Immigrant artists to the Visual Arts in Britain since 1900. We are grateful to our peer reviewer for her considered and helpful comments and suggestions as well as to Amanda Riddick for her expert preparation of the manuscript for publication. Finally, we should like to thank our editors at Brill, Wendel Scholma and Anita Opdam, for their encouragement and friendly collaboration.

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lIST OF iLLUSTRATIONS

List Of Illustrations

List of Illustrations 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5

Ernst L. Freud, Haus Marx, 1935–36, 14 Neville Drive, London N2, Ansicht des Wohnzimmers. Sammlung Volker M. Welter. Used with permission of the family of Harry Weinberger 13 Haus Sigmund Freud, 1938, Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, London. Umbau durch Ernst L. Freud. Sigmund Freud im Behandlungszimmer, um 1939. Courtesy of Freud Museum London 15 Fritz A. Ruhemann, Haus Leo Neumann, 1937–38, 2 South Parade, Bedford Park, Chiswick, London W4. Courtesy of Architectural Press Archive/RIBA Library Photographs Collection 17 Ernö Goldfinger, Haus Willow Road, 1937–39, 1–3 Willow Road, Hampstead, London NW3. Courtesy of Architectural Press Archive/RIBA Library Photographs Collection 19 Peter Moro, student card for Berlin universities’ sports ground, 1933. Private Collection. © Alice Moro 30 Entrance screen to MARS exhibition at New Burlington Galleries, designed by Peter Moro with Gordon Cullen, 1938. Architectural Press Archive/RIBA Collections 40 Davies and Moro, Harbour Meadow. Photograph by Deirdre Fernand, 2012 42 Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, London, seen from Victoria Embankment, 2008 / London County Council’s Architects’ Department. Christopher HopeFitch/RIBA Collections 43 Auditorium, Royal Festival Hall. Photograph by India Roper-Evans, 2017. Courtesy of Southbank Centre Archive 44 Buffet, Royal Festival Hall, showing detail of carpet’s net and ball motif, 1955. Photograph courtesy of Southbank Centre Archive 45  The Institutional Poles of Influence. © The Author 59  Scope of Magazine Contributions. © The Author 60  Portraiture Work. © The Author 62 Wolf Suschitzky, ‘Child with Lamb’, The Children’s Zoo, 1939. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky 74 Wolf Suschitzky, ‘Making Friends’, Photographing Children, 1940. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky 78 Wolf Suschitzky, ‘Open Air Class’, Photographing Children, 1940. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky 79 Wolf Suschitzky, cover of Photographing Animals, 1941. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky 81 Wolf Suschitzky, ‘Peter in the Playroom’, That Baby. The story of Peter and his new brother, 1946. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky 86

List of Illustrations

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4.6 Wolf Suschitzky, cover of All About Taking Baby, Focal Press, 1952. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky 89 5.1 Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road, London, 1936. © The Estate of Wolfgang ­Suschitzky. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery 96 5.2 Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road, London, 1936. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery 98 5.3 Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road, London, 1936. © The Estate of Wolfgang ­Suschitzky. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery 100 5.4 Wolf Suschitzky, Soho, London, 1934. © The Estate of Wolfgang Suschitzky. Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery 103 6.1 Francis Reiss, Picture Post vom 18. 5. 1946, mit der Ankündigung des Bildberichts „THE MICROSCOPE FIGHTS FAMINE“. Sammlung Weinke, Hamburg  118 6.2 Francis Reiss, Picture Post vom 2. 10. 1948. Die Jubiläumsausgabe erschien anlässlich des zehnjährigen Bestehens der Zeitschrift. Das rechte Foto stammt von Francis Reiss. Sammlung Weinke, Hamburg 120 6.3 Francis Reiss, fotografiert von June Orford, 2014. Privatbesitz 125 6.4 Francis Reiss, Cover des Katalogs On the Sheep’s Back. Sammlung Weinke, Hamburg 125 6.5 Francis Reiss mit seiner Partnerin June Orford während der Eröffnung der Ausstellung ‚On the Sheep’s Back‘, März 2014. Privatbesitz 125 6.6 Ein herausragendes Beispiel der Porträtkunst von Francis Reiss: Der walisische Dichter Dylan Thomas, 1946. © Getty Images 127 7.1 Milein Cosman, ‘Constant Lambert conducting’, Radio Times, 16 January 1947. © Radio Times/Immediate Media 135 7.2 Milein Cosman, ‘Sir John Barbirolli conducting at the Henry Wood Proms’, Radio Times, 27 August 1956. © Radio Times/Immediate Media 137 7.3 Milein Cosman, ‘Ronald Smith at the piano, Henry Wood Proms’, Radio Times, 27 July 1956. © Radio Times/Immediate Media 138 7.4 Susan Einzig, ‘Iron Curtain’, Radio Times, 4 February 1952. © Radio Times/ Immediate Media 141 7.5 Susan Einzig, ‘Ivanov’, Radio Times, 14 April 1958. © Radio Times/Immediate Media 142 7.6 Gerard Hoffnung, ‘Gerard Hoffnung tries to talk himself through’, Radio Times, 14 March 1952. © Radio Times/Immediate Media 145 8.1 Unknown photographer, Retrieving the Ganymed Presses, Berlin, 1949. © Ganymed Archive/Ann Baer 159 8.2 Oskar Kokoschka, Frontispiece: William Shakespeare, King Lear, lithograph, 1963, Ganymed Original Editions. © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/2018, DACS. Photograph by Honey Salvadori 165

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8.3 Oskar Kokoschka, copy of the text on page 62 in the Fell typeface, William Shakespeare, King Lear. © Ganymed Archive/Ann Baer. Photograph by Honey Salvadori 167 8.4 Oskar Kokoschka, Lear with the dying Cordelia, 1963, lithograph, William Shakespeare, King Lear, Ganymed Original Editions, 1963. © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka/2018, DACS. Photograph by Honey Salvadori 168 8.5 A page of text describing this edition in detail as published by Ganymed Original Editions Ltd. © Ganymed Archive/Ann Baer. Photograph by Honey Salvadori 173 8.6 Oskar Kokoschka telegram to Bernhard Baer, 14 November 1963, courtesy Victoria & Albert Museum Archive. © Fondation Oskar Kokoschka, Vevey 174 9.1 Jan Tschichold, designs for Sabon Type, mid-1960s. © The Tschichold Family 178 9.2 Hans Schmoller, corrected title page, 1963. © The Wiener Library and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY) 181 9.3 Berthold Wolpe, Hyperion type, 1932, available after 1950s; Albertus type, 1935; design for Stefan Zweig, ‘Der begrabene Leuchter’, 1988. © Estate of Berthold Wolpe 186 9.4 Elizabeth Friedlander, Elisabeth Antiqua type, undated foundry proofs between 1927 and 1933. Elizabeth Friedlander Collection © University College Cork 188 10.1 Peter Sachs, Berlin, black and white photograph with ink and pencil drawings, c. 1933. Private Collection London. © The Estate of Peter Sachs 194 10.2  Summer Travelling 1945, 2 min. black and white animation, Art Director Peter Sachs: Larkins Studio, London; MoI commission, film still, BFI. © BFI 202 10.3  The Big Four 1946, 2 min. black and white animation, Art Director Peter Sachs: Larkins Studio, London; MoI commission, film still, BFI. © BFI 203 10.4  T for Teacher 1947, 6 min. black and white animation, Art Director Peter Sachs: Larkins Studio, London; MoI commission, film still, Animation Nation, BBC Four, 2005. © BBC Four 204 10.5  River of Steel 1951, 10 min. colour animation, Director Peter Sachs, Art Director Oscar Dominquez: Larkins Studio, London; British Iron and Steel Federation commission, film still, Animation Nation, BBC Four, 2005. © BBC Four 205 10.6  Without Fear 1952, 15 min. colour animation, Art Director Peter Sachs: Larkins Studio, London; Marshall Plan commission, film still, Animation Nation, BBC Four, 2005. © BBC Four 206 11.1 Julius Frank, untitled design, 1960s. © Celia Frank. Photograph by Honey Salvadori 218 11.2 Tibor Reich, Lubiana design, 1958. Photograph © Sam Reich 222 11.3 Elsbeth Juda aged 101 years, 2012. Photograph by Christian Dinensen 224

List of Illustrations

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11.4 Francis and Dorothy Carr, 1964. Photograph from Willesden and Brent ­Chronicle 227 12.1 Werner Jackson, Woman Smoking, c. 1930s, silver gelatin print. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. © The Artist’s Estate 235 12.2 Werner Jackson, Hoi Me Miserum, pencil and watercolour, 24 February 1941. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. © The Artist’s Estate 237 12.3 Werner Jackson, Marionettes, 1940s. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. Photo © Hans Glave 241 12.4 Werner Jackson, Self-portrait, 1950s, silver gelatin print. Bauhaus-Archiv, Berlin. © The Artist’s Estate 244

Ongoing efforts are being made to seek formal permission from the estates of individuals currently untraced. The publisher thanks all who have granted permissions, and apologies go to those we have been unsuccessful in contacting.

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Notes on Contributors

Notes On Contributors

Notes on Contributors  Rachel Dickson is Senior Research Manager, Ben Uri Research Unit for the Study of the Contribution of Jewish and Immigrant artists to the Visual Arts in Britain since 1900. A Committee member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, her focus is on Jewish émigré artists arriving in Britain from the late 1800s and 1933–45.  Burcu Dogramaci is Professor of 20th Century and Contemporary Art in the Department of Art History at the University of Munich. Her research focuses on exile and migration, photography, architecture, sculpture, and fashion. In 2016 she received an ERC Consolidator Grant for her project “Relocating Modernism: Global Metropolises, Modern Art and Exile”.  Deirdre Fernand spent more than 20 years at The Sunday Times as a feature writer and commissioning editor before joining Newsweek Europe as associate editor. She studied at the University of Exeter (BA English) and the Courtauld Institute (MA History of Art), specialising in Germany.   Fran Lloyd is Professor of Art History and Co-Director of Kingston University’s Visual and Material Culture Research Centre. She has published widely on Germanspeaking émigré artists and their artistic networks in Britain, including Kurt Schwitters, Ernst Eisenmayer and Kurt Weiler, and the Latvian-born, Estonian sculptor Dora Gordine.   David Low is a photographic historian focusing on migration and exile. His research at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London, examined photographers in exile in 1930s Britain (at MA level) and photography in Armenian lives (PhD). He is currently Visiting Scholar at the AGBU Nubar Library, Paris, working on his book, Picturing the Ottoman Armenian World.  Sarah MacDougall is Head of Ben Uri Research Unit for the Study of the Contribution of Jewish and Immigrant artists to the Visual Arts in Britain since 1900. She is a Committee member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies.

Notes on Contributors

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John March is an independent researcher based in Yorkshire. His present research focus is on individual women exile photographers.  Anna Nyburg is an Honorary Lecturer at Imperial College London. Her PhD subject was refugee art publishers in Britain and she has published two books on this topic as well as on refugee designers. A Committee member of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, she co-produced a film about refugee designers in 2017.  Pauline Paucker studied at the Birmingham School of Art with a special interest in the history of book design and illustration. She has written and lectured on German-Jewish graphic artists and on women artists in exile. Her current interest is in typography and the letter and in type and propaganda.  Ines Schlenker is an independent art historian with a special interest in National Socialist, degenerate and émigré art. Her most recent work is Milein Cosman: Capturing Time (to be published in 2019).  Wilfried Weinke is a historian who has published in the field of the German-Jewish history of Hamburg, on photographic history and on exile literature, most recently Ich werde vielleicht später einmal Einfluß zu gewinnen suchen … : der Schriftsteller und Journalist Heinz Liepman (1905–1966) – Eine biographische Rekonstruktion (2017) and „Wo man Bücher verbrennt...“ Verbrannte Bücher, verbannte und ermordete Autoren Hamburgs (2017).  Julia Winckler is a photographer, art education consultant and Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton (UK). Her interdisciplinary research focuses on archival traces, memory and migration narratives. She has exhibited widely, including at the Austrian Cultural Forum and the Brunei Gallery in London. Recent publications include an introduction to Wolf Suschitzky’s third monograph, Seven Decades of Photography (2014).

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Notes On Contributors

Introduction Introduction

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Introduction Marian Malet, Rachel Dickson, Sarah MacDougall, Anna Nyburg It is fifteen years since the Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies produced Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945. Politics and Cultural Identity (volume 6, 2004) – its first Yearbook devoted entirely to the visual arts – marking the arrival of more than 300 émigrés in Britain across the fields of fine art and design. It therefore seems timely to revisit the subject, this time with a particular focus on the Applied Arts and its émigré practitioners and their collective impact on British visual culture. In addition, 2018 marks the 80th anniversary of both the Anschluss and the terror unleashed by Kristallnacht, after which so many Central European Jews fled their homeland. Britain responded with the Kindertransport initiative, whereby 10,000 Jewish children and adolescents were able to enter Britain, a number of whom – among them Susan Einzig, whose work as an illustrator is discussed below – subsequently embarked upon significant careers within the creative industries. As a further cultural reference point, the notorious ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition created by the National Socialists was held in the Haus der Kunst in Munich in 1937, before touring more widely in the greater Reich. The following year the counter-exhibition ‘Twentieth Century German Art’ was mounted at the New Burlington Galleries in London in response, bringing many German, Austrian and Czech artists – hitherto largely unknown and unfashionable – to the attention of the British public. Research into the arts in the field of Exile Studies has blossomed considerably since the turn of the 21st century and our knowledge continues to be greatly expanded, particularly as family and other archives come to light and as estate holders of these artists and designers reach a watershed moment, making critical decisions regarding the future of the legacies for which they have been hitherto responsible. It is a particularly exciting moment for researchers, as many private resources, including oral testimonies, are becoming available for the first time. This volume includes both established names and those whose reputations are only now being researched and rehabilitated, suggesting that there remains much more to be discovered. The essays presented here – ranging across architecture, animation, photography, illustration, typography, graphic design, puppetry and textiles – do not claim to be exhaustive, but instead serve as examples – or introductions – to what diverse and fruitful work is currently being produced in this field. Similar enquiries have also been carried out in UK museums – with both the

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_002

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Introduction

Victoria & Albert Museum and the Jewish Museum in London focusing on émigré designers during 2017–18. Within the same period, Ben Uri has foregrounded German and Austrian émigré graphic artists from its own collection within exhibitions at both the gallery and the German Embassy in London. A central theme underlying the diverse texts presented in this volume is the cultural transfer which began to take place from 1933 onwards, after the arrival in Britain of many representatives of Continental Modernism. This was facilitated by both older, distinguished practitioners with established reputations in Europe, as well as others, younger and in the early stages of their careers. Women are also brought to prominence, particularly in the fields of photography and illustration, highlighting their important and often hitherto neglected contributions. Furthermore, this volume also underlines the importance of formal and informal networks for the émigrés in Britain, a subject foregrounded and explored as early as the Munich conference and associated publication Netzwerke des Exils (2011).1 After considering the concept of home from a psychological viewpoint, Burcu Dogramaci explores the not unproblematic professional situation of being an architect in exile, using several case studies of homes built or adapted by recent arrivals in Britain for other émigrés, including Sigmund Freud, who settled in London in 1942. She analyses which elements were transferred from Germany, and which new concepts were assimilated from the British environment, considering how this contributed to advancing the idea of an architectural ‘Modern Movement’ in the very different, far more conservative tradition prevalent in Britain. Deirdre Fernand takes as her subject the freshly-minted young architect Peter Moro who, after being turned away by Walter Gropius, found a place in Lubetkin’s Tecton practice and was later invited to join the progressive international MARS group of architects. His major work on the Royal Festival Hall can be said to have set the émigrés’ seal on the new look of postwar Britain. Photography is a second area in which the émigrés are strongly represented in this volume – and one in which women particularly made their mark. Focusing on women photographers in exile, John March continues an exploration begun in Yearbook Vol. 18, highlighting an important cohort of 21 female photographers, often overlooked in favour of their generally better known male counterparts. Analysing the biographical and career trajectories of these women across different generations and spheres of photographic practice, he also considers the role played by institutions. This is examined via both their preand post-exile experience, including training in Berlin and Vienna and the 1 Burcu Dogramaci and Karen Wimmer (eds.), Netzwerke des Exils: Kűnstlerische Verflechtungen, Austausche und Patronage nach 1933 (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 2011).

Introduction

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influence of the Bauhaus, and in postwar Britain. The latter highlights the ground-breaking photo magazine Picture Post, as both a place of employment and an outlet for photographic work, and the Warburg Institute, as a place of work allied with scholarship and photographic expression. Threading through the narrative is an examination of the networks of friendship and kinship and of mutually supportive relationships which developed within this significant émigrée cohort. The experiences of two important male photographers are explored through three chapters focusing on two different aspects of the early career of Wolf Suschitzky, by Julia Winckler and David Low respectively, and the work of Francis Reiss for Picture Post by Wilfried Weinke. Wolf Suschitzky is perhaps best known as a cameraman to the fans of films such as The Italian Job (1969) and Get Carter (1971). He is probably less familiar as a photographer with a social conscience, who held up a mirror to British social inequalities in the first half of the twentieth century. Fewer still will know his earlier work, the focus of Julia Winckler’s chapter, “Quite content to be a good craftsman”, which explores Suschitzky’s extensive contributions to the field of applied photography between 1935 and 1955, through an analysis of his photographic manuals, also exposing the importance of networks in exile which enabled him to further his career. Better known, however, is a series of freelance photos from Suschitzky’s first five years in Britain, taken in and around Charing Cross Road in London: the burly bowler-hatted man standing outside a bookshop, utterly absorbed in a book, for instance, has been very frequently reproduced. David Low’s “Navigating Wolf Suschitzky’s Charing Cross Roadˮ takes the history of street photography as a frame, which leads him to examine the series as a work of social observation which in turn might provide observations on the photographer himself.  Picture Post was in many senses a refugee magazine, from its editor, the Hungarian exile Stefan Lorant, to its many contributing photographers who had fled National Socialism. One name likely to be new to many readers, however, is that of Francis Reiss, whose family was forced to leave Hamburg to find asylum in England when he was only nine years old; at the age of seventeen, he was taken on as a photographer by Picture Post. In his essay Weinke presents a stirring account of Reiss’s life story and career, which takes him to the USA then back again to England, on to Malta and finally, to Australia. In this way, Reiss is now recognised as a member of the important group of émigré photo-journalists who brought fresh European approaches to British journalism. While Picture Post made its impact through photographic images, the émigré contribution also enriched the world of illustration, as Ines Schlenker explores in her examination of contributors to the listings magazine Radio Times during the 1940s and 1950s. As the ‘mouthpiece’ of the BBC, present in many

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Introduction

postwar households, it became the most influential and best-selling showcase for black-and-white illustrations in Britain, providing important commissions and opportunities for a small group of émigré draughtsmen and women, including Val Biro, Milein Cosman, Gerard Hoffnung, Fritz Wegner and Susan Einzig, the latter having come to Britain on one of the final Kindertransports in 1939. In the same way that Radio Times brought illustrations by émigrés into the very heart of Britain, émigré typographers Jan Tschichold, Hans Schmoller, Berthold Wolpe, Imre Reiner and Elizabeth Friedlander, as Pauline Paucker recounts, brought their skills to books read by the entire nation. Considered the most influential typographer in Europe, Tschichold was persuaded to come to Britain to revamp the look of Penguin books, as Allen Lane saw no reason why mass-produced books should not be well designed. The job was completed in less than three years and Tschichold returned to Switzerland, leaving another, equally exacting, émigré Hans Schmoller, in charge. Berthold Wolpe is particularly celebrated for his type designs, especially Albertus, and for his book jackets for Faber and Faber, whilst Elizabeth Friedlander, a woman in a largely male profession, but with a solid reputation from Germany, was able to make a good living in Britain. She particularly enjoyed her war work, faking material in Gothic script for the Black Propaganda Unit in Bush House. All these highlyskilled practitioners brought their admirable continental training and a more precise way of working to both type design and printing in Britain. In “The Craftsman’s Sympathy” Sarah MacDougall further explores the graphic contribution to the Applied Arts in the field of fine art publishing via the career of the hitherto overlooked German-Jewish émigré, Bernhard Baer, as director of the Ganymed Press in London, and, from 1961 onwards, of Ganymed Original Editions. This chapter focuses on his collaboration in 1962–63 with the Austrian Expressionist Oskar Kokoschka, whom he commissioned to create original lithographs for a limited edition of Shakespeare’s King Lear, and their further partnership with Viennese-born gallerist Harry Fischer and Marlborough Fine Art in London. In “Making Animation Matter: Peter Sachs Comes to Britain” Fran Lloyd provides the first in-depth study of the German-born film animator and art director Peter Sachs’ contribution to animation in Britain. She explores Sachs’ early career in Holland, working on the experimental animated advertisements produced by George Pal’s studio and in Germany in the experimental animation studios of Weimar Berlin. Her essay uncovers the circumstances that facilitated his career, the particularities of the powerful and innovative modernist animations he produced for government agencies and advertising companies through the Larkins Studio in London from 1943 to 1955, and his contribution to professional training and education.

Introduction

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In recent years there have been several admirable publications on the subject of refugees engaged in textile-related activities, including The Ambassador Magazine: Promoting Post-War British Textiles and Fashion published by the Victoria & Albert Museum, and also exhibitions showcasing their work, such as the ‘Tibor Reich’ exhibition at the Whitworth Gallery, Manchester (2016). What has been lacking is an attempt to draw the contribution of these refugees together and to compare their experiences in one study. In “Textile in Exile: Refugee Textile Surface Designers in Britain” Anna Nyburg takes a first step to redress this situation. It is gratifying to learn that more than one of the companies she describes is still trading successfully today. Many of the above narratives are linked by a common level of achievement and success in the new host nation, however in “The Man from the Bauhausˮ, Rachel Dickson’s account of the exile experience of Bauhaus-trained émigré Werner ‘Jacky’ Jackson presents an altogether bleaker example. Jackson pursued a number of creative careers in exile, as photographer, puppeteer, graphic designer and toymaker, in an attempt to restore something of his prewar reputation, while occupying the uncertain position of a refugee. His story illustrates the difficulties faced by skilled émigrés, who were often unable to fulfil the careers for which they had been trained in a long-abandoned homeland.

Conclusion

The individuals in this volume can be seen to have made a significant impact across the breadth of the Applied Arts in Britain from 1933 onwards, as perhaps only newcomers can, by introducing and pioneering new practices, both technical and aesthetic, and enriching the visual landscape by showcasing outstanding examples of their good ‘craftsmanship’ in their new homeland. And their legacy to Britain is still very much alive; indeed, over time their contribution has become so familiar and such an integral part of British visual culture that it is often ‘invisible’. It is therefore intended that this volume should reveal and bring due credit to these many, formerly ‘invisible’ artists and designers, restoring their rightful reputations within the cultural history of twentiethcentury Britain.  Editorial note: the terms ‘refugee’, ‘exile’, and ‘émigré’ are used interchangeably in this volume. The editors acknowledge that these remain problematical and loaded, but an exploration of these terms is outside the scope of the present volume.

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Dogramaci

Chapter 1

New Homes in a Foreign Country. Bauen und Wohnen im britischen Exil der 1930er Jahre Burcu Dogramaci Some of the architects who had emigrated to England found their first clients among other emigrants. Conversions and new buildings of the 1930s are evidence of this close working relationship, which originated in a common experience of exile. Mention may be made of the London houses for the Marx couple (1935–36) and the house of Sigmund Freud (1938), both of which were designed by Ernst L. Freud, but also Fritz A. Ruhemann’s bungalow for the emigrant Leo Neumann (1937–38) or the houses that exiled architects such as Ernö Goldfinger (Willow Road, 1937–39) or Berthold Lubetkin (Hillfield, 1933– 35) designed for themselves. This contribution deals with important questions about the history of architecture understood as exile history (and vice versa) by means of some case studies: how homes and therefore also home countries were designed and imagined in a foreign land? What kind of specific ideas and concepts could be realised by close cooperation between the emigrants? Which concepts were imported from the countries of origin; in which way were climate, culture and taste assimilated in material, facade, floor plan and equipment? And finally: to what extent were these houses, built for and by emigrants, representative of particularly innovative attitudes that could help shape the Modern Movement in Britain?

1

Heim als Heimat in der Fremde?

Wenn Künstlerinnen und Künstler aus politischen, wirtschaftlichen oder privaten Gründen ihre Heimat dauerhaft verlassen müssen, so hat dies unweigerlich Folgen für ihre Arbeit. Denn der veränderte Mikro- und Makrokosmos, die durch Migrationserfahrung geprägte psychische und physische Konstitution, die anderen kunstästhetischen Parameter, neue Institutionen und Kollegen, Sammler oder Auftraggeber sind nicht unwichtig für ein künstlerisches Schaffen. Das Moment des Fremdseins kann als Differenz zwischen Einreisenden und neuer Heimat eine Rolle spielen für den Schaffensprozess. Ohne die daraus resultierenden Komplikationen und Schwierigkeiten für die Kontinuität künstlerischer Produktion zu relativieren, kann ein erzwungener Heimatwechsel durchaus auch eine Inspirationsquelle für eine andere, neue Sicht auf

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_003

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die Dinge sein. So schreibt Nikolaus Pevsner 1956 im Vorwort zu seinem Buch The Englishness of English Art, in dem er die nationalen Eigenschaften der englischen Kunst untersucht: Warum ich, der ich weder in England geboren noch erzogen wurde, der ich England als Achtundzwanzigjähriger zum ersten Mal betrat und noch nicht länger als fünfundzwanzig Jahre in diesem Lande lebte, warum ich mich zum Richter über das Englische in der englischen Kunst berufen fühlen konnte. Fünfundzwanzig Jahre sind, zugegeben, keine lange Zeit, um ein Land verstehen zu lernen. Andererseits könnten meine Lebensumstände auch als besonders nützlich für diese Aufgabe angesehen werden. Denn die Tatsache, mit frischen Augen ein Land zu einem bestimmten Zeitpunkt betreten zu haben und sich dann langsam dort niederzulassen, um ein Teil von ihm zu werden, kann durchaus einen Vorteil darstellen.1 Der Zustand der Fremdheit als Gegensatz zum Vertrauten, Bekanntem, Bewährtem wird zumindest in der Anfangszeit eines Heimatwechsels zu den Grunderfahrungen eines Migranten gehören. „Fremdheit ist keine Eigenschaft, auch kein objektives Verhältnis zweier Personen oder Gruppen, sondern die Definition einer Beziehung“2, schreibt der Soziologe Alois Hahn. Wird dieses Erklärungsmodell aus der Soziologie für die Migrationsgeschichte adaptiert, so beschreibt Fremdheit die Beziehung zwischen dem Migranten und der neuen Heimat. Wie fremd vermag sich ein Mensch empfinden, der gezwungen ist, seine Heimat zu verlassen oder aus freien Stücken geht, um in einem anderen Land zu leben? Wird das Maß an Fremdheit vom jeweiligen Zielland determiniert? Wenn Fremdheit semantisch als „Interpretament der Andersheit“3 definiert werden kann, so könnten auch die kulturelle Differenz wie auch die Gründe des Heimatwechsels von Bedeutung für die Selbstwahrnehmung der Migranten sein. Zu berücksichtigen sind dabei das Herkunfts- und Zielland, das Alter der Migranten, das Jahr der Migration sowie die historischen Umstände. Ein Maler wie Felix Nussbaum, der auf der Flucht vor nationalsozialistischer Verfolgung im Jahr 1937 ins belgische Exil ging, dürfte andere Erfah­rungen in seine Arbeit eingebracht haben als der Architekt Richard Neu1 Nikolaus Pevsner, Das Englische in der englischen Kunst (1956) (München: Prestel, 1974), 7. 2 Alois Hahn, „Die soziale Konstruktion des Fremden“, in Walter M. Sprondel (Hg.), Die Objekti­ vität der Ordnungen und ihre kommunikative Konstruktion. Für Thomas Luckmann (Frank­ furt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1994), 140–166 (140). 3 Dies in Bezug auf Harald Weinrich, Wege der Sprachkultur (Stuttgart: DVA, 1985), 197.

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tra, der in den 1920er Jahren aus wirtschaftlichen Gründen an die Westküste der USA auswanderte. Im Folgenden sollen Architekten und damit eine spezifische Berufsgruppe in den Blick genommen werden, die in den 1930er Jahren nach England kamen, darunter auch einige Exilanten, die auf der Flucht vor den Nationalsozialisten ihre Heimat verlassen mussten. Im Gegensatz zu freien Malern oder Bildhauern arbeiteten die exilierten Architekten – nach Großbritannien gelangten zwischen 70 und 80 von ihnen4 – fast ausschließlich in einem Auftragsverhältnis; ihre Arbeit war nicht zweckfrei. Sie mussten mit Bauherren und Behörden, mit Bauunternehmen und Handwerkern zusammenarbeiten und waren deshalb schon von Anbeginn in das Regelwerk der Staaten und Kommunen, in denen sie tätig waren, involviert. Sie mussten eine gewisse Anpassungsfähigkeit an die Wünsche und Bedürfnisse ihrer Auftraggeber zeigen wie auch an die Regularien von Bauvorschriften. Die Ankunft in Großbritannien war für viele emigrierte Architekten eher ernüchternd. Die englische Baukunst orientierte sich in den dreißiger Jahren noch weitgehend an lokalen Bautraditionen. Bis 1933 war die architektonische Moderne des europäischen Kontinents in England kaum rezipiert worden.5 Es ist kennzeichnend, dass Großbritannien weder 1927 bei den Gründungstreffen der CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne) noch bei anderen bedeutenden Ereignissen wie der Stuttgarter Weißenhof-Ausstellung im gleichen Jahr vertreten war.6 Und im Jahr 1932 heißt es in Henry-Russell Hitchcocks und Philip Johnsons kanonischer New Yorker Ausstellung Modern Architecture: „In […] England really modern architecture has only begun to appear.“7 Und 1937 musste der Immigrant Berthold Lubetkin, der mit seinem Büro Tecton zum wichtigen Protagonisten der britischen Architekturavant­ garde werden sollte, feststellen: „The whole architectural scene is fundamentally different from that of other countries […], there is little or no interest in 4 Andreas Schätzke, Deutsche Architekten in Großbritannien. Planen und Bauen im Exil 1933–1934/ German Architects in Great Britain. Planning and Building in Exile 1933–1945 (Stuttgart und London: Edition Axel Menges, 2013), 24. 5 Vgl. Charlotte Benton, „Continuity and Change. The Work of Exiled Architects in Britain“, 1933–1939, in Bernd Nicolai (Hg.), Architektur und Exil. Kulturtransfer und architektonische Emigration von 1930 bis 1950 (Trier: Porta Alba, 2003), 75–86. 6 Dennis Sharp, „Gropius und Korn. Zwei erfolgreiche Architekten im Exil“, in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933–1945, Ausst.-Kat. Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Berlin (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1986), 203–208 (203). 7 Philip Johnson und Henry-Russell Hitchcock, „Extent of modern architecture“, in Modern Architecture. International Exhibition, Ausst.-Kat. Museum of Modern Art, New York 1932 (New York: Arno Press, Reprint 1969), 21–24 (24).

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progress.“8 Ohne zu sehr zu pauschalisieren, ließe sich von einer Skepsis, mitunter Feindlichkeit, gegenüber modernistischen Tendenzen sprechen. Die eingewanderten Architekten wurden zudem von Einheimischen als Konkurrenz empfunden, was sich in den Auflagen zur Ausübung des Berufes durch den englischen Architektenverband Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) artikuliert; so sollten nur diejenigen zugewanderten Architekten eine Arbeitserlaubnis erlangen, die besondere Qualifikationen aufwiesen und ökonomisch unabhängig waren. Dies bedeutete, dass die Emigranten entweder äußerst wohlhabend sein mussten oder aber eine Partnerschaft mit einem britischen Büro einzugehen hatten.9 Waren diese Hürden genommen, so galt es, einen Einstieg in die Baupraxis zu erhalten und sich einen Namen zu machen. Einige der nach England emigrierten Architekten fanden erste Auftraggeber unter anderen Emigranten. Umbauten und Neubauten der 1930er Jahre sprechen von dieser engen Arbeitsbeziehung, die aus einer gemeinsamen Exilerfahrung entstand. Zu nennen sind die Londoner Häuser für das Ehepaar Marx (1935–36) und das Haus für Sigmund Freud (1938), die beide von Ernst L. Freud entworfen wurden, aber auch Fritz A. Ruhemanns Bungalow für den Emigranten Leo Neumann (1937–38) oder die Wohnhäuser, die migrierte Architekten wie Ernö Goldfinger (Willow Road, 1937–39) oder Berthold Lubetkin (Hillfield, 1933– 35/36) für sich selbst entwarfen. Dieser Beitrag wird Architekturgeschichte als Exilgeschichte (und vice versa) begreifen und auf der Basis einiger Bauten fragen, wie Heime und damit auch Heimaten in der Fremde entworfen und imaginiert wurden. Die Verbindung zwischen den Begriffen „Heim“ und „Heimat“ ist bereits durch die Wortherkunft bedingt und findet sich in dieser Verwandtschaft auch im englischen „home“, das in sich eine Doppelbedeutung von Behausung und Heimat vereint. Dem deutschen Begriff „Heimat“, der in seinen multiplen Konnotationen kaum gradlinig in andere Sprachen übersetzbar ist, kann einen konkreten Ort oder eine Herkunft meinen, kann Sprache, Dialekt, Religion oder Kultur oder eben nur ein Sehnsuchtstopos sein.10 Welche besonderen Ideen und Vorstellungen konnten sich gerade in der engen Zusammenarbeit zwischen Emi­ granten verwirklichen, die eine Erfahrung der Heimatlosigkeit oder des Heimat­wechsels teilten? Welche Konzepte wurden aus den Herkunftsländern importiert, welche Assimilationen an Klima, Kultur und Geschmack fanden in 8 9 10

Berthold Lubetkin, „Modern Architecture in England“, in American Architect and Architecture 2 (1937), 29–42, (29). Vgl. Christian Wolsdorff, „Deutsche Architekten im Exil. Erwartungen – Hoffnungen – Reak­tionen“, in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933–1945, op. cit., 105–110 (107). Siehe dazu ausführlich Burcu Dogramaci, Heimat. Eine künstlerische Spurensuche (Köln: Böhlau, 2016).

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Material, Fassade, Grundriss und Ausstattung statt? Und zuletzt: Inwieweit standen diese von und für Emigranten errichteten Häuser für eine besonders innovative Haltung, die das Modern Movement in Großbritannien mitgestalten konnte? 2

Emigranten bauen für Emigranten

Der Architekt Ernst L. Freud war bereits in den 1920er Jahren in Berlin mit Wohnhäusern für das Bildungsbürgertum in Erscheinung getreten. Die Machtübernahme der Nationalsozialisten nach 1933 traf den Architekten doppelt. Zum einen drohten ihm aufgrund seiner Herkunft aus einer jüdischen Familie private und berufliche Repressalien, zum anderen emigrierten schon früh zahlreiche jüdische Auftraggeber. Auch dies entzog ihm seine Existenzgrundlage als Architekt. So entschloss sich Freud sehr früh, neue Pfade im Ausland zu betreten. Auf einer Erkundungsreise nach London eruierte er Wege, seine Pro­fession fortzuführen, suchte Kontakte zu potentiellen zukünftigen Auftraggebern und bereits bekannten Klienten. Im Londoner Exil wurde der Existenzkampf härter als erwartetet – Freud konkurrierte in wirtschaftlich schwierigen Zeiten nicht nur mit einheimischen Architekten, sondern musste sich auch innerhalb der englischen Architekturlandschaft, die von einem Antimodernismus und Konservatismus geprägt war, durchsetzen. In einem Brief äußerte Ernst L. Freud sein Erstaunen, „wie ausgesprochen wenige moderne Bauten man findet und daß insgesamt der Gedanke der modernen Architektur noch nicht begonnen hat, sich auf das Erscheinungsbild englischer Städte auszuwirken.“11 Besonders die Kontakte zu anderen Emigranten vermittelten dem Architekten wichtige Aufträge, darunter Personen, für die Freud bereits in Berlin gearbeitet hatte, jedoch auch neue Bauherren aus dem Kreis der Londoner Emigranten. Vor allem den bereits 1933 und kurz danach emigrierten Personen war es noch möglich gewesen, Besitztümer, Möbel, Finanzen zu retten, sodass sie sich in ihrem Exilland als Auftraggeber und Mäzene betätigen konnten.12 Eine Auftragsvergabe an einen Architekten aus dem deutschsprachigen Raum erleichterte womöglich die Kommunikation, überdies bestand unter Umständen durch eine frühere Zusammenarbeit bereits ein Vertrauensverhältnis. Und zuletzt könnte auch die gemeinsam erlebte Erfahrung der Emigration 11 12

Ernst L. Freud, 1934, zit. n. Schätzke, op. cit., 28, Anm. 57. Vgl. Volker M. Welter, Ernst L. Freud, Architect. The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2012), 122.

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verbunden haben; in den für Emigranten verwirklichten Häusern oder Erweiterungen bestehender Gebäude kulminierte das Alte und Neue, wenn mitgebrachte Einrichtungsgegenstände oder Kunstwerke, vertraute Grundrisse und neue Architekturen eine Koexistenz eingingen. Vielleicht erhoffte sich das emigrierte Klientel ein Verständnis für seine Bedürfnisse nach Kontinuität und/oder Akkulturation. Für exilierte Architekten war die Möglichkeit des Bauens elementar, um beruflich in ihrem Exilland „anzukommen“, denn im Gegensatz zu Malern, Fotografen oder Bildhauern konnten sie keine Werke mitbringen, sondern nur auf Fotografien oder Zeitungs- oder Zeitschriftenartikel verweisen. Ein Architekt, der nicht baute, musste unsichtbar bleiben, es sei denn, er konnte sich zumindest in der Theoriebildung hervortun und publizieren. Für Ernst L. Freud ging es also um eine ermöglichte Sichtbarkeit. Unter den Emigranten, die ihn mit Bauaufträgen betrauten, waren auch emigrierte Psychoanalytiker und damit Kollegen seines Vaters Sigmund Freud.13 Den ersten Neubau verwirklichte Freud indes 1935–36 für Adolf und Heide Marx, die (Schwieger-)Eltern des Kunsthistorikers Wolfgang Herrmann und seiner Frau Annie Herrmann (geb. Marx), für die Freud bereits in Berlin und später in England tätig war. Adolf Marx war in Berlin Bankier gewesen; gemeinsam mit seiner Frau besaß er eine Kollektion expressionistischer Kunst, die sie bei ihrer Ausreise 1932 mitnahmen. Nur durch die Auswanderung vor Machtübernahme der Nationalsozialisten gelang es Adolf und Heide Marx, ihre umfangreiche Kunstsammlung unbeschadet ins Ausland zu verbringen. Andere Sammler, die nach 1933 das nationalsozialistische Deutschland verließen, konnten oft nur Teile ihrer Kunstsammlung mitnehmen, oder aber diese wurde in Gänze zerschlagen, geraubt und verkauft.14 Im Haus Marx (14 Neville Drive, London, N. 2) zeigte sich Freud als Repräsentant einer moderaten Moderne vor allem in der Entwicklung der Fassade und der Fensterbänder, die das Erdgeschoss und hier vor allem die Garten13

14

Eine Parallele lässt sich zu dem Architekten Felix Augenfeld ziehen, der in Wien für viele Psychoanalytiker tätig war und unter anderem auch für die Familie Freud, darunter auch Sigmund Freud selbst, entwarf. Die amerikanische Analytikerin Muriel Gardiner ver­­mit­telte Augenfeld dann 1938 ein amerikanisches Affidavit und verhalf ihm damit zur Emigration. Für Gardiner hatte Augenfeld in Wien eine Wohnung umgebaut. Vgl. Ruth Hanisch, „Die unsichtbare Raumkunst des Felix Augenfeld“, in Visionäre & Vertriebene. Österreichische Spuren in der modernen amerikanischen Architektur, hg. v. Matthias Boeckl, Ausst.-Kat. Kunsthalle Wien (Berlin: Ernst, 1995), 227–247. Zur Geschichte jüdischer Sammlungen im Zeichen des Nationalsozialismus siehe Melissa Müller und Monika Tatzkow, Verlorene Bilder, verlorene Leben. Jüdische Sammler und was aus ihren Kunstwerken wurde (München: Sandmann, 2014 (2. Aufl.)). Hier findet die Sammlung Marx keine Erwähnung, da es sich um einen erfolgreichen Transfer ins Ausland vor 1933 handelte.

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seite prägten. Im Obergeschoss strukturierten drei in jeweils drei Segmente unterteilte Fenster die Fassade. Im Erdgeschoss befanden sich Wohn- und Esszimmer der Marx mit Blick in den Garten und ausgerichtet auf den Naherholungsbereich Hampstead Heath. Eine Innenansicht vom Haus Marx in London (Abb. 1.1) Hampstead vermittelt den Eindruck eines bildungsbürgerlichen Sammlerhaushaltes mit gediegenen Möbeln und modernen Gemälden an den Wänden, wie es auch im Berlin der 1910er Jahre hätte existieren können. Die vielen Sitzgelegenheiten deuten auf ein reges Sozialleben. Heide und Adolf Marx wohnten mit ihrer Sammlung expressionistischer Kunst – darunter auch Landschaften, die in einen Dialog mit dem Garten treten konnten, der durch die großzügigen Fenster sichtbar war. Da das Ehepaar Marx mit den gesammelten Bildern lebte, war das von Freud entworfene Haus nicht nur ein Wohnhaus sondern auch ein Gehäuse für die Kunst ihrer Besitzer. Volker M. Welter deutet das Haus für das Sammlerpaar Marx als eine Akkulturation Freuds an die eher konservative Architektur auf der britischen Insel, was er vor allem am Ziegeldach belegt – Freuds Berliner Häuser wiesen Flachdächer auf.15 Ob es indes eine Entscheidung des Architekten war, sich an die Konventionen in England anzupassen oder aber eine Konzession an den Geschmack seiner bereits etwas älteren Auftraggeber, lässt sich nicht genau sagen. Bereits in Deutschland war Ernst L. Freud neben Neubauten auch auf Umbauten bestehender Häuser spezialisiert, was ihn als begabten Mittler zwischen dem Baubestand und den Wünschen seiner Auftraggeber ausweist. Deutlich tritt die Empathie des Architekten für die Wünsche seiner Auftraggeber im Umbau des Londoner Hauses seines Vaters Sigmund Freud hervor. Der Psychoanalytiker verließ Wien im Juni 1938 und emigrierte über Paris nach Großbritannien: ein Akt, der wie bei vielen anderen Emigranten der NS-Zeit mit großen organisatorischen Schwierigkeiten und Entbehrungen verbunden war. Denn unter den Besitztümern befanden sich nicht selten auch Objekte, die entweder einen hohen privaten und/oder einen ökonomischen Wert hatten und rasch die Steuerfluchtgrenze überschreiten konnten. Auch Sigmund Freud musste einen hohen Aufwand betreiben, um sein Hab und Gut ins Ausland zu bringen, ein Besitz, der eine große Privatsammlung inkludierte. Seit den 1890er Jahren bis zu seinem Tod 1939 sammelte Freud vor allem Antiken – Fund- und 15

Vgl. Welter, Ernst L. Freud, Architect, op. cit., 125. Zum Haus Marx siehe auch Volker M. Welter, „Ernst L. Freud – Domestic Architect“, in Shulamith Behr und Marian Malet (Hg.), Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945. Politics and Cultural Identity. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 6 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005), 201–237. Zu Freuds Berliner Wohnhäuser siehe Dietrich Worbs, „Ernst Ludwig Freud in Berlin“, in Bauwelt 88/42 (1997), 2398–2403.

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Abbildung 1.1 Ernst L. Freud, Haus Marx, 1935–36, 14 Neville Drive, London N2, Ansicht des Wohnzimmers. Sammlung Volker M. Welter

Schmuckstücke, Kopien, Repliken –, ethnologische Artefakte, daneben aber auch Bücher, Kupferstiche, Gemälde mit unterschiedlichen Schwerpunkten. Freud bezeichnete das Sammeln neben dem Rauchen und dem Reisen als seine dritte Obsession.16 Die Antiken bewahrte Freud in seinen beiden Wiener Arbeitsräumen auf, in denen er schrieb und seine Psychoanalysen vornahm, so dass die Sammlungsstücke als integraler Bestandteil seines beruflichen Lebens bezeichnet werden können.17 Die Korrespondenz zwischen Sammeln und Psychoanalyse ist bereits an anderer Stelle erörtert worden.18 Aus Perspektive der Exilforschung ist ein anderer Umstand von Bedeutung: der Transfer und die Rekonstruktion als Eigenarten der Emi­gration. Während Freud Teile seiner umfangreichen Bibliothek in Wien zurücklassen musste, gelang es ihm, den größten Teil seiner Antikensammlung ins 16 17 18

Vgl. Max Schur, Sigmund Freud. Leben und Sterben (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1982), 296. Vgl. John Forrester, „Freudsches Sammeln“, in „Meine … alten und dreckigen Götter“. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, Ausst.-Kat. Sigmund Freud-Museum Wien (Frankfurt/M.: Stroemfeld, 1998), 21–35 (21). Ganz allgemein sprach Freud von einer Relation zwischen Archäologie und Techniken der Psychoanalyse, denn bei Ausgrabungen und der Psychotherapie sei man gezwungen, Schichten bloßzulegen. Vgl. Muriel Gardiner (Hg.), Der Wolfsmann vom Wolfsmann. Mit der Krankengeschichte des Wolfsmannes von Sigmund Freud, dem Nachtrag von Ruth Mack Brunswick und einem Vorwort von Anna Freud (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1972), 174.

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Londoner Exil mitzunehmen. Bei der Flucht bemühte sich Freuds Familie, die Ordnung der Sammlung zu bewahren. Auch in London sollten die Stücke ihren Platz in jenem Bereich des Wohnhauses finden, der für die Arbeit vorgesehen waren.19 Der Vorsatz, Freuds Sammlung und Einrichtung ins Exil zu übertragen, ist daran erkennbar, dass dem Fotografen Edmund Engelman im April 1938 die Anweisung gegeben wurde, den Zustand der Wiener Wohnung vor der Emigration zu dokumentieren.20 Engelman nahm nicht nur Wand für Wand auf, sondern richtete seine Kamera auch auf Freuds Schreibtisch, auf dem dieser eine Fülle an kleinen Statuen aufgestellt hatte, die ihn als stumme Zeugen oder Wächter beim Schreiben begleiteten. Darunter befinden sich auch viele Bronzen ägyptischer Gottheiten, die in einzelnen Schriften eine Rolle spielen. Ungeduldig schreibt Sigmund Freud am 14. Mai 1938 an Minna Bernays: „In the fateful first days of next week, the commission on which the fate of the collection depends is supposed to come. The shippe is lurkint in the background.“21 In London fanden die Statuetten erneut ihren Platz auf dem Schreibtisch Freuds, und auf Fotografien lassen sich viele der Wiener Objekte wiederfinden. Zudem befanden sich im Londoner Arbeitszimmer (Abb. 1.2) wie auch in Wien zahlreiche Vitrinen, die ebenso wie die Regale von Antiken bevölkert waren. Die Anordnung der Sammlung im Freud’schen Haus in 20 Maresfield Gardens in London-Hampstead folgte dem Konzept einer Annäherung an das originale Ordnungssystem. Derlei Versuche einer Rückbeziehung auf Bestehendes findet sich wiederholt in der Exilgeschichte: seien es Ateliers oder Werkstätten, die von Künstlern in der Fremde nach dem Vorbild ihrer Arbeitsräume in der Heimat eingerichtet werden, oder aber Innenarchitekturen, die dem Leitbild der ursprünglichen Heimstätte folgen. Es ist zu vermuten, dass auf diese Weise, und dies mag auch für Freud gelten, der im fortgeschrittenen Alter ins Exil gezwungen wurde: „Mit dem Sammeln von antiken Stücken schuf Freud sich eine außergewöhnliche Umgebung, die auch die Emigration in ein anderes Land überstand.“22 Im Londoner Wohnhaus in Maresfield Gardens hatten Martha und Paul Fichtl noch vor Freuds Einzug alles vorbereitet und versucht, seine vertraute Umgebung wiederherzustellen. Ein wichtiger Autor dieser 19 20 21

22

Vgl. Peter Gay, Freud. Eine Biographie für unsere Zeit (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1989), 714–715. Die Fotografien von Freuds Haus in Wien sind reproduziert in Edmund Engelman, La Maison de Freud, Berggasse 19, Vienne (Paris: Seuil, 1979). Zit. n. Peter Gay, „Introduction“, in Sigmund Freud and Art. His personal collection of Antiquities, hg. v. Lynn Gamwell und Richard Wells (New York: Abrams, 1989), 15–19 (15). Siehe dazu auch Diana Fuss, „Freud’s Ear“, in dies., The Sense of an Interior. Four Writers and the Rooms that Shaped Them (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 71–106. Vgl. Erica Davies, „’Eine Welt wie im Traum’. Freuds Antikensammlung“, in „Meine … alten und dreckigen Götter“. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, op. cit., 95–102 (96).

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Abbildung 1.2 Haus Sigmund Freud, 1938, Maresfield Gardens, Hampstead, London. Umbau durch Ernst L. Freud. Sigmund Freud im Behandlungszimmer, um 1939

Rekonstruktion war jedoch vor allem Freuds eigener Sohn, der Architekt Ernst L. Freud, der bereits 1933 nach London emigriert war. Das Londoner Haus aus den 1920er Jahren und dessen Raumordnung zeigte im Vergleich zum Wiener Haus von Sigmund Freud allerdings eine veränderte Ausgangslage; so waren Studien- und Behandlungszimmer nicht mehr in zwei Räumen untergebracht, sondern fielen in eins. Deshalb lässt sich nicht von einer unveränderten Rekonstruktion sprechen. Es galt vielmehr, die migrierten Möbel wie den Schreibtisch und -stuhl sowie die Couch in eine neue Dramaturgie zu bringen, jedoch den wesentlichen Charakter dieser für Freud zentralen Versatzstücke seiner Arbeit zu erhalten. Freud schuf eine „neutrale“ Matrix, indem er die Wände einheitlich hell streichen ließ.23 Damit markierte er das Zuhause in London im 23

Vgl. Welter, Ernst L. Freud, Architect, op. cit., 153.

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Gegensatz zum dunklen Habitus des Hauses in der Wiener Berggasse als neu. Gleichzeitig konnten auf diese Weise die mitgebrachten Gegenstände wie in einem White Cube zur Geltung kommen und Kontinuität und Vertrautheit herstellen. Einen ähnlichen Ansatz der Zusammenführung vertrauter „geliebter Objekte“24 und eines neuen Hauses hatte Freud bereits im Haus Marx verwirklicht, indem er auch dort helle Wände ohne Muster als neutrales „Framing“ für Möbel und Kunstwerke gestalten ließ.25 Martha Freud wie auch die Tochter Anna Freud beließen die Arbeitsräume nach Freuds Tod – der Psychoanalytiker starb kaum mehr als ein Jahr nach seiner Ankunft in London – weitestgehend im ursprünglichen Zustand. Diese Konservierung einer Rekonstruktion mündete in der wahrhaftigen Musealisierung; 1986 wurde in Freuds Wohnhaus das Londoner Freud Museum eröffnet und damit die Erinnerung an die Wiener Existenz Freuds endgültig für die Nachwelt erhalten. Die Exilgeschichte der Familie Freud ist jedoch nicht nur ein Sinnbild für die vielfältigen Bemühungen Heimat zu erhalten oder die Anmutung von Heimat in einen anderen Kontext zu übertragen – so wie es Sigmund Freud aktiv versuchte und sein Sohn Ernst L. Freud auch in seinen anderen Auftragsarbeiten für Emigranten umsetzte. Wobei bei letzterem Beispiel auch eine Transformation des Ursprünglichen, eine Anpassung an den neuen Kontext sowohl in der Ästhetik der äußeren Hülle als auch in der Dramaturgie von Grundrissen erkennbar ist. Ernst L. Freud war jedoch nicht der einzige emigrierte Architekt in London, der für andere Emigranten tätig war. Fritz A. Ruhemanns Bungalow für den Emigranten Leo Neumann (2 South Parade, Bedford Park, Chiswick, London W4, 1937–38), den er mit seinem Architekturbüro Dugdale & Ruhemann realisierte, ist als Junggesellenunterkunft konzipiert (Abb. 1.3).26 Architektur für Alleinstehende war eine recht junge Bauaufgabe, die erst seit 1900 an Bedeutung zu gewinnen begann und sich vor allem im Typus des „Ledigenwohnheims“ etablierte. In der Weimarer Republik standen Bauten für Unverheiratete im Blickfeld der architektonischen Moderne; Bruno Taut und Hans Scharoun errichteten Ledigenheime, und auch die Deutsche Bauausstellung von 1931 widmete sich dem Thema. Damit reagierten die Architekten auf den familiären 24

25 26

„Was sind persönliche Objekte? Man könnte sie auch als Lieblingsdinge bezeichnen, als geschätzte oder umhegte und gepflegte Besitztümer. Es handelt sich um Objekte, die einer Person besonders teuer sind, die sie liebt, an denen sie hängt und mit denen sie sich verbunden fühlt.“ Tilmann Habermas, Geliebte Objekte. Symbole und Instrumente der Identitätsbildung (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1999), 9. Vgl. Welter, Ernst L. Freud, Architect, op. cit., 153. Zu dem Bau siehe Alan Powers, Modern. The Modern Movement in Britain (London: Merrell, 2005), 208–209. Zu Ruhemann selbst existiert kaum Literatur. Kurze biografische Informationen finden sich bei Charlotte Benton, A Different World. Émigré Architects in Britain 1928–1958, exh. cat. RIBA Heinz Gallery, London 1995, 207–208.

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Abbildung 1.3 Fritz A. Ruhemann, Haus Leo Neumann, 1937–38, 2 South Parade, Bedford Park, Chiswick, London W4

Wandel nach 1918 und die Etablierung einer neuen urbanen Lebens- und Arbeitsform. Ihre Entwürfe antworteten auf die steigende Zahl alleinstehender Großstädter/innen, die als Angestellte oder „intellektuelle Nomaden“27 tätig waren (auch dies ein „Produkt“ der Nachkriegszeit) und entwarfen Unterkünfte, die auf ihre spezifischen Bedürfnisse zugeschnitten sein sollten.28 Charakteristisch für die Wohneinheiten waren zweckmäßige Einbauten, Küchenschränke (die das Zubereiten kleiner Mahlzeiten zuließen) und Gemeinschaftsbereiche wie etwa ein Restaurant.29 Mitten in der Weltwirtschaftskrise wurde 1931 bei der Deutschen Bauausstellung in Berlin über Die Wohnung unserer Zeit nachgedacht, wo neben dem Typus des Boardinghouses auch Häuser für Alleinstehende, Kinderlose oder Kleinfamilien präsentiert wurden, die von unterschiedlichen ökonomischen Voraussetzungen der zukünftigen Bewohner ausgingen. Marcel Breuers Haus für einen Sportsmann etwa ging 27 28 29

Dieser Terminus ist Oswald Spenglers kulturkritischer Abhandlung Der Untergang des Abendlandes (Berlin, 1922) entlehnt, hier in der Neuauflage (München: dtv, 1995), 661. Siehe dazu Markus Eisen, Vom Ledigenheim zum Boardinghouse. Bautypologie und Gesellschaftstheorie bis zum Ende der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2012), vor allem 174–178, 185–191. Ebd., 243.

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von einer Wohnfläche von 245 Quadratmetern und 380 Quadratmetern Terrasse für nur eine Person aus.30 Doch jenseits dieser unverhältnismäßigen Größenverhältnisse in Zeiten ökonomischer Krisen weist Breuers Entwurf bereits voraus auf die Grundidee von Ruhemanns Bungalow für Leo Neumann aus dem Jahr 1937–38. Denn anders als im Boardinghouse ging es nicht darum, Alleinstehende in einem Mehrparteienhaus unterzubringen und ihnen den Komfort von geteilten Gemeinschaftseinrichtungen zu bieten. Vielmehr ging Ruhemann (wie zuvor schon Breuer, der sich übrigens ein eigenes Junggesellenhaus im amerikanischen Exil bauen sollte) von einem autonomen Leben in einer abgeschlossenen Bebauung aus, die sämtliche Versorgungseinheiten umfassen sollte. Dabei folgte Ruhemann den Parametern von Funktionalität und Flexibilität, die das Bauen für Alleinstehende auch in der Weimarer Republik bestimmt hatte: Der Auftraggeber, Leo Neumann, war wie der Architekt ein deutscher Emigrant, der sich einen Bungalow errichten ließ. Dieser bestand aus drei Zimmern, die sich zu einem großen Raum verbinden ließen. Flexibilität war das Leitthema des Baus, das sich nicht nur in der Raumstruktur zeigte, sondern sich auch in Einbaumöbeln und der Einrichtung äußerte. Denn in die Wohnzimmereinrichtung war ein Bett in der Wand integriert, das in zusammengeklapptem Zustand nicht sichtbar war. Damit bot der Bungalow trotz der begrenzten Zahl an Wohnräumen beispielsweise Platz für Besuch und war somit an verschiedene Lebenssituationen anzupassen. 3

Bauen für sich selbst im britischen Exil

Das Bauen für sich selbst kann verschiedene Motivationen haben: Gerade im Kontext Exil kann das eigene Haus ein Rückzugsort sein und damit ein Ort der Kontemplation oder auch der kreativen Arbeit. Als ein möglicher Ort der Moderne ist das städtische Apartment oder das Wohnhaus auch eine Basis, um sich auf Zeit inmitten eines bewegten Umfelds zurück zu ziehen. Gerade das urbane Wohnen bot Architekten die Möglichkeit, auch unter den Bedingungen von Raumknappheit, einen Privatraum zu erschaffen, der nur durch Mauern, Fenster und Türen vom öffentlichen Raum getrennt war. Wohnen in der Stadt ist damit auch stets eine Aushandlung zwischen Privatheit und Öffentlichkeit.31 Gerade im Zeichen von Exil und Migration trägt das Bauen noch 30 31

Vgl. Joachim Driller, Marcel Breuer. Die Wohnhäuser 1923–1973 (Stuttgart: DVA, 1998), 44– 46; vgl. auch Eisen, Vom Ledigenheim zum Boardinghouse, op. cit., 279. Siehe dazu auch Moritz Föllmer, „Das Appartment“, in Alexa Geisthövel, Habbo Knoch (Hg.): Orte der Moderne. Erfahrungswelten des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt/M. und New York: Campus Verlag, 2005), 325–334 (326).

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Abbildung 1.4 Ernö Goldfinger, Haus Willow Road, 1937–39, 1–3 Willow Road, Hampstead, London NW3

viele andere Konnotationen in sich. So kann das eigene Haus ein wichtiger Ausweis für die ästhetische oder baupraktische Überzeugung sein und damit weitere Aufträge nach sich ziehen. Wenn Architekt und Bauherr in einer Person zusammenfallen, können Überzeugungen vermutlich freier artikuliert werden. Gerade unter den schwierigen Bedingungen der Exilierung, die mit gewissen beruflichen Restriktionen, der Aneignung neuer Regelwerke für Architekten, Schwierigkeiten der Zulassung und der Anpassung an andere ästhetische Vorlieben verbunden ist, mag der Entwurf eines eigenen Hauses einen wichtigen Freiraum geboten haben – bisweilen auch als „gebaute Utopie“.32 Architektenhäuser können – und darin ähneln sie auch den Künstlerhäusern – sowohl als Bauten der Repräsentation und Selbstdarstellung wie auch als Porträt ihrer Erbauer und deren ästhetischen Überzeugungen lesbar sein.33 Ernö Goldfinger entwarf für sich und seine Familie ein Haus in Hampstead (Abb. 1.4). In diesem Londoner Viertel lebten nicht nur viele Emigranten und Künstler, sondern es wurden in den 1930er Jahren auch moderne Bauten wie etwa die von Wells Coates entworfenen Isokon Flats (1934) errichtet. Gold­ 32 33

Vgl. Jean-Louis André, Architekten und ihre Häuser (München: Knesebeck, 2000), 7. Zu Künstlerhäusern siehe die ergiebige Publikation Im Tempel des Ich. Das Künstlerhaus als Gesamtkunstwerk Europa und Amerika 1800–1948, hg. v. Margot Th. Brandlhuber und Michael Buhrs, Ausst.-Kat. Museum Villa Stuck, München (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013).

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finger konnte sein Haus auch verwirklichen, da seine Frau aus einer wohlhabenden Familie stammte und damit die notwendigen finanziellen Ressourcen zur Verfügung standen.34 Sie erwarben ein Grundstück mit Blick über Hampstead Heath, auf dem vier kleine historische Cottages standen, die für den Neubau abgerissen wurden. Die Idee des Reihenhauses nahm Goldfinger jedoch auf und entwarf drei Terrassenhäuser in Stahlbetonskelettbauweise. Das mittlere Townhouse wurde von Goldfinger und seiner Familie bezogen, die anderen vermietet oder verkauft. Goldfingers Entwurf rief den Widerstand der Hampstead Heath and Old Hampstead Protection Society hervor, die sich gegen die modernistische Bauprinzipien wandte und um die Einheit der historischen Bebauung – meist aus der georgeanischen Ära stammend – fürchtete.35 Diese Abwehrreaktionen sind insofern von Interesse, als sie verdeutlichen, dass die architektonische Moderne in England ganz wesentlich auch durch die Präsenz von Emigranten durchgesetzt wurde – eben oft unter Widerständen von Einheimischen. Gerade in der Gestalt des Architektenhauses konnten sich also neue Prinzipien manifestieren und auch einen Anteil an der Stärkung modernistischer Positionen haben. Goldfinger war im Übrigen Mitglied der MARS Group (Modern Architectural Research Group), einem avantgardistischen Zusammenschluss englischer Architekten, zu dem aber auch Emigranten wie Serge Chermayeff gehörten oder mit ihnen kooperierten wie etwa Walter Gropius und László Moholy-Nagy. Ungewohnt war für die konservative Nach­ barschaft sicherlich die Fassadengestaltung des Baus, der mit großzügigen Fensterbändern die Waagerechte betonte. Zudem entschied sich Goldfinger für ein Flachdach. Der Bau war nach vorn dreistöckig, nach hinten vierstöckig; das Erdgeschoss/Untergeschoss zur Gartenseite enthielt ein Gartenzimmer und das Badezimmer des Dienstmädchens. Darüber befanden sich die Küche und zwei Dienstbotenzimmer. Im ersten Geschoss waren Wohn- und Esszimmer zu finden, womit sich Goldfinger an die georgianische Bautradition anpasste (ebenso wie in dem Gartenzimmer auf der Rückseite als direkten Zugang zum Garten). Im Gegensatz dazu zeigte sich der Architekt jedoch in der flexiblen Behandlung des Grundrisses progressiv; denn aus den Zimmer des ersten Stocks (Vorderseite) war durch mobile Wände ein großes Zimmer zu machen36 – entsprechend der Bedürfnisse der Besitzer. Für gesellschaftliche Anlässe, aber auch für Ausstellungen,37 die das Paar Goldfinger hier ausrichtete, konnte 34 35 36 37

Vgl. Nigel Warburton, Ernö Goldfinger. The Life of an Architect (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 100–101. Ebd., 81–83. Miranda H. Newton, Architects’ London Houses. The Homes of Thirty Architects in the 1930s (London und Oxford: Butterworth, 1992), 2–7 (3). 1942 wurde in der Willow Road die Ausstellung Aid to Russia mit 70 Arbeiten zeitgenössischer Künstlerinnen und Künstler ausgerichtet und täglich für mehrere Stunden der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich.

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also aus einer Privatwohnung ein (halb)öffentlicher Ort mit entsprechendem repräsentativen Grundriss werden. Innovativ waren nicht nur Grundriss und Fassadengestaltung, sondern auch das photobolische Screen,38 das Goldfinger zu seinem Markenzeichen machte; eine Binnenkonstruktion innerhalb der Fenster und ein innerer Rahmen aus Beton teilt das obere Drittel der Fenster ab, sodass das Licht sich feiner und großflächiger in der Tiefe des Raumes verteilen konnte. Goldfingers eigenes Haus in Hampstead wurde zwar durchaus in dem Bewusstsein lokaler Bautraditionen errichtet, brach jedoch mit tradierten Vorstellungen vom Wohnen in England, indem es in der äußeren kubischen Gestalt, der breiten Fensterfront sowie den Piloti an der Straßenseite in Anlehnung an Le Corbusier einen Anschluss an die kontinentale Moderne postulierte.39 Vor allem jedoch fiel der flexible Grundriss aus dem Rahmen, indem er eine variable Nutzung ermöglichte; auch die Einbauschränke und -regale, die schwere und voluminöse Möbel obsolet werden ließen, können als ein Novum gelten. Welche Bedeutung das Gebäude für Goldfingers Schaffen hatte, zeigt sich daran, dass er es in der Folge auch in seinen theoretischen und kuratorischen Beiträgen immer wieder abbildete. So waren Fotografien oder Zeichnungen seiner Wohnung, beispielsweise die Küche, in eigenen architekturtheoretischen Beiträgen, aber auch in Goldfingers didaktischen Ausstellungen wie Planning Your Kitchen (1944) zu sehen.40 Seine Vorstellungen idealer Raumgestaltungen machte Goldfinger unter anderem an seinem eigenen Haus deutlich. Damit kann Goldfingers Reihenhaus als gebaute Programmatik gedeutet werden – frei nach dem Motto: Zeige mir, wie du baust, und ich sage dir, wie du denkst. 4

Modern Exile

Einige der in diesem Text vorgestellten Bauten entstanden im Londoner Stadtteil Hampstead – nicht nur ein Künstlerviertel, sondern auch das „Zentrum der deutschsprachigen Emigration in London“,41 mit dem Namen wie Oskar Kokoschka, Elias Canetti oder Walter Gropius verbunden sind. Hampstead war eine „Arrival City“ – eine Ankunftsstadt für Emigranten in der Großstadt, 38 39 40 41

Vgl. Warburton, op. cit., 83. In der Literatur wird sogar von einem „Machine Age House“ gesprochen. Siehe Newton, op. cit., 3. Vgl. Tim Benton, The Modernist Home (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2006), 92. Eine gezeichnete Ansicht seines Hauses publizierte Goldfinger beispielsweise in der April Ausgabe 1940 der Zeitschrift Architectural Review. Steffen Pross, „In London treffen wir uns wieder“. Vier Spaziergänge durch ein vergessenes Kapitel deutscher Kulturgeschichte nach 1933 (Berlin: Eichborn, 2000), 8.

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wie sie Doug Saunders in seinem gleichnamigen Buch beschreibt, allerdings mit Blick auf die Gegenwart.42 Wie unter einem Brennglas lässt sich jedoch im historischen Hampstead etwas beobachten, das die Vergangenheit mit der Gegenwart verbindet. Emigranten suchen häufig die Nähe anderer Emigranten, da sie ihnen sozialen Anschluss, aber auch Hilfe und Unterstützung bieten konnten. Netzwerke waren und sind wichtige Voraussetzung zum beruflichen „Überleben“ in der Fremde. Denn diese verschafften den ankommenden Emigranten neue Aufträge, sodass diese erste Bauerfahrungen im Exil sammeln und auf diese Weise für ihre Arbeit werben konnten. Ihre Bauten wiederum führten zu einer Aufwertung des Viertels: neue ästhetische Parameter hielten Einzug, und neue Nachbarschaften konnten auf diese Weise entstehen. Der Architekturhistoriker Nikolaus Pevsner exponierte im Jahr 1939 Ernö Goldfingers Haus in der Willow Road in Hampstead als Beispiel eines dezidiert „British Modern Movement“ und verwies darauf, dass die ausländischen Architekten in London mit Vorliebe Backstein verbauten: „Obviously, brick must have something extremely appealing and convincing for the English atmosphere, if it could attract these foreign architects working in London.“43 Pevsner bezog sich dabei auf Architekten wie Berthold Lubetkin, Ernst L. Freud – und eben Ernö Goldfinger. Das Material Backstein ist aus Perspektive des Architekturhistorikers ein Verbindungsstück zwischen den Erfahrungsräumen der Architekten in ihren Herkunfts- und ihrem Exilland. Denn Backstein wurde in England nicht nur in historischen Bauten verwendet, sondern auch noch in den 1930er Jahren und darüber hinaus, beispielsweise in den um 1931/32 errichteten Bahnhöfen der Piccadilly Line der Londoner Underground wie der Wood Green Underground Station oder Arnos Grove Underground Station.44 Das Material war also im Londoner Stadtbild präsent und motivierte viele der eingereisten Architekten sicherlich, auch ihre eigenen Entwürfe in Backstein zu realisieren. Dennoch gab es auch Ausnahmen; besonders Berthold Lubetkin, ein aus Tbilisi (Georgien) stammender Architekt, der über Berlin, Warschau und Paris im Jahr 1931 nach London kam, war in England ein Repräsentant einer „weißen Moderne“. Sein Penguin Pool im Londoner Zoo (1933–34) oder das Mehrfamilienhaus Highpoint I (1933–35) gelten als einige der ersten avantgardistischen 42 43

44

Doug Saunders, Arrival City. How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World (London: Pantheon, 2011). Nikolaus Pevsner, „The Modern Movement in Britain“ (1939), in: Twentieth Century Architecture, hg. v. Susannah Charlton, Elain Harwood und Alan Powers, vol. 8: British Modern. Architecture and Design in the 1930s (London: The Twentieth Century Society, 2007), 17–38 (37). Ebd.

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Bauten auf der britischen Insel. Neben diesen, in London errichteten Gebäuden, ist Berthold Lubetkins Ferienhaus Hillfield (Bungalow A, 1933–36) in Dagnall, Buckinghamshire, bislang weitaus weniger beachtet worden.45 Es findet in der Lubetkin-Rezeption nur am Rande Erwähnung, was sicherlich mit dem Umstand zu erklären ist, dass Lubetkin einige sichtbare Bauaufgaben als Pionier der architektonischen Avantgarde in England bewältigte. Das Sommer- und Ferienhaus lag etwa 30 Meilen nördlich von London in einem dicht begrünten Landstrich nahe der Stadt Luton. In dem weißen Bungalow ist die Funktionalität und Reduktion des Wohnens besonders betont. Von außen hat Lubetkins Datscha die Anmutung eines flachen Kubus, wobei die Außenwände von Fensterreihen durchbrochen sind und damit eine Verbindung zwischen Innenraum und grüner Umgebung herstellen. Ein „shadow gap“ zwischen Haus und Boden betont den filigranen Charakter der Architektur und verleiht dem Bau etwas Schwebendes.46 Damit formulierte Lubetkin einen Gegenentwurf zu den ländlichen Häusern aus Backstein, die ansonsten in Dagnall zu finden waren. Wie ungewöhnlich der Bungalow in seiner Zeit empfunden wurde, zeigen die zahlreichen Besprechungen in zeitgenössischen Architekturzeitschriften wie Architecture & Building, Architects’ Journal, Homes and Gardens sowie L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui.47 Abschließend lässt sich in Anbetracht der in diesem Beitrag untersuchten Bauten die These formulieren, dass mit den nach England emigrierten Architekten auch innovative Konzepte und Ansätze „einwanderten“. Diese fanden vor allem Entfaltung in Architekturen, die von den Baumeistern für andere Emigranten oder für sich selbst formuliert wurden. Das heißt nicht, dass es in ihrem Exilland keine Wertschätzung für modernistische Tendenzen gegeben hat. Englische Bauherren wie der Industrielle Sigmund Gestetner gaben ausgesprochen avantgardistische Bauten in Auftrag;48 dennoch lässt sich kaum behaupten, dass die architektonische Moderne bereits auf breite Akzeptanz gestoßen war, als die große Emigrationswelle nach England in den 1930er Jahren begann. Somit lässt sich das Bauen emigrierter Architekten in England, und hier vor allem in der Hauptstadt London, als Teil eines größeren 45

46 47 48

So wird das Haus in folgenden Büchern zu Lubetkin nicht erwähnt: John Allan, Berthold Lubetkin. Bauhaus Architecture (London: Merrell, 2002); Peter Coe and Malcolm Reading, Lubetkin and Tecton. Architecture and Social Commitment (London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1981). Siehe dazu Alan Powers, Modern. The Modern Movement in Britain, op. cit., 174; siehe auch John Allan, Berthold Lubetkin, op. cit., 58. Architect & Building News, 5 February 1937, 174–179; Architects’ Journal, 18 February, 1937, 299–303; Architectural Review, 81 (1937), 60–64; Homes and Gardens, April 1937, 398. L’Architecture d’aujourd’hui, Januar 1938, 45–48; Building Design, 21 October 1938. Gestetner gab beispielsweise Lubetkins Highpoint I in Auftrag.

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Transferprozesses lesen, der jedoch keine „Einbahnstraße“ war. Adaptionen von Materialien und Grundrissen verweisen auf eine Auseinandersetzung mit der lokalen Baukultur. Kontakte zu einheimischen Architekten und zu Zusammenschlüssen wie der MARS Group, der damit verbundene Austausch von Ideen und Überzeugungen, boten den emigrierten Architekten – neben ihrer Bautätigkeit – die Möglichkeit einer beruflichen „Ankunft“ in ihrem Exilland.

Works Cited

John Allan, Berthold Lubetkin. Bauhaus Architecture (London: Merrell, 2002). Jean-Louis André, Architekten und ihre Häuser (München: Knesebeck, 2000). Charlotte Benton, A Different World. Émigré Architects in Britain 1928–1958, exh. cat. RIBA Heinz Gallery, London 1995. Charlotte Benton, „Continuity and Change. The Work of Exiled Architects in Britain 1933–1939“, in Bernd Nicolai (Hg.), Architektur und Exil. Kulturtransfer und architektonische Emigration von 1930 bis 1950 (Trier: Porta Alba, 2003). Tim Benton, The Modernist Home (London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 2006). Margot Th. Brandlhuber und Michael Buhrs (Hg.), Im Tempel des Ich. Das Künstlerhaus als Gesamtkunstwerk Europa und Amerika 1800–1948, Ausst.-Kat. Museum Villa Stuck, München (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013). Peter Coe and Malcolm Reading, Lubetkin and Tecton. Architecture and Social Com­ mitment (London: The Arts Council of Great Britain, 1981). Erica, „‚Eine Welt wie im Traum‘. Freuds Antikensammlung“, in „Meine ... alten und dreckigen Götter“. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, Ausst.-Kat. Sigmund FreudMuseum Wien (Frankfurt/M.: Stroemfeld, 1998). Burcu Dogramaci, Heimat. Eine künstlerische Spurensuche (Köln: Böhlau, 2016). Joachim Driller, Marcel Breuer. Die Wohnhäuser 1923–1973 (Stuttgart: DVA, 1998). Markus Eisen, Vom Ledigenheim zum Boardinghouse. Bautypologie und Gesellschafts­ theorie bis zum Ende der Weimarer Republik (Berlin: Gebr. Mann, 2012). Edmund Engelman, La Maison de Freud, Berggasse 19, Vienne (Paris: Seuil, 1979). Moritz Föllmer, „Das Appartment“, in Alexa Geisthövel, Habbo Knoch (Hg.): Orte der Moderne. Erfahrungswelten des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts (Frankfurt/M. und New York: Campus Verlag, 2005). John Forrester, „Freudsches Sammeln“, in „Meine ... alten und dreckigen Götter“. Aus Sigmund Freuds Sammlung, Ausst.-Kat. Sigmund Freud-Museum Wien (Frank­ furt/M.: Stroemfeld, 1998). Diana Fuss, „Freud’s Ear“, in dies., The Sense of an Interior. Four Writers and the Rooms that Shaped Them (London and New York: Routledge, 2004).

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Muriel Gardiner (Hg.), Der Wolfsmann vom Wolfsmann. Mit der Krankengeschichte des Wolfsmannes von Sigmund Freud, dem Nachtrag von Ruth Mack Brunswick und einem Vorwort von Anna Freud (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1972). Peter Gay, Freud. Eine Biographie für unsere Zeit (Frankfurt/M.: Fischer, 1989). Peter Gay, „Introduction“, in Lynn Gamwell und Richard Wells (Hg.), Sigmund Freud and Art. His personal collection of Antiquities (New York: Abrams, 1989). Alois Hahn, „Die soziale Konstruktion des Fremden“, in Walter M. Sprondel (Hg.), Die Objektivität der Ordnungen und ihre kommunikative Konstruktion. Für Thomas Luckmann (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1994). Ruth Hanisch, „Die unsichtbare Raumkunst des Felix Augenfeld“, in Matthias Boeckl (Hg.), Visionäre & Vertriebene. Österreichische Spuren in der modernen amerikanischen Architektur, Ausst.-Kat. Kunsthalle Wien (Berlin: Ernst, 1995). Philip Johnson und Henry-Russell Hitchcock, „Extent of modern architecture“, in Modern Architecture. International Exhibition, Ausst.-Kat. Museum of Modern Art, New York 1932 (New York: Arno Press, Reprint 1969). Berthold Lubetkin, „Modern Architecture in England“, in American Architect and Architecture 2 (1937). Melissa Müller und Monika Tatzkow, Verlorene Bilder, verlorene Leben. Jüdische Samm­ ler und was aus ihren Kunstwerken wurde (München: Sandmann, 2014, 2. Aufl.). Miranda H. Newton, Architects’ London Houses. The Homes of Thirty Architects in the 1930s (London und Oxford: Butterworth, 1992). Nikolaus Pevsner, „The Modern Movement in Britain“ (1939), in Susannah Charlton, Elain Harwood und Alan Powers (Hg.), Twentieth Century Architecture, vol. 8: British Modern. Architecture and Design in the 1930s (London: The Twentieth Century Society, 2007). Nikolaus Pevsner, Das Englische in der englischen Kunst (1956) (München: Prestel, 1974). Alan Powers, Modern. The Modern Movement in Britain (London: Merrell, 2005). Steffen Pross, „In London treffen wir uns wieder“. Vier Spaziergänge durch ein vergessenes Kapitel deutscher Kulturgeschichte nach 1933 (Berlin: Eichborn, 2000). Doug Saunders, Arrival City. How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World (London: Pantheon, 2011). Andreas Schätzke, Deutsche Architekten in Großbritannien. Planen und Bauen im Exil 1933–1934/German Architects in Great Britain. Planning and Building in Exile 1933– 1945 (Stuttgart und London: Edition Axel Menges, 2013). Max Schur, Sigmund Freud. Leben und Sterben (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1982). Dennis Sharp, „Gropius und Korn. Zwei erfolgreiche Architekten im Exil“, in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933–1945, Ausst.-Kat. Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Berlin (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1986). Oswald Spengler, Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1922) (München: dtv, 1995).

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Nigel Warburton, Ernö Goldfinger. The Life of an Architect (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). Harald Weinrich, Wege der Sprachkultur (Stuttgart: DVA, 1985). Volker M. Welter, „Ernst L. Freud – Domestic Architect“, in Shulamith Behr und Marian Malet (Hg.), Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945. Politics and Cultural Identity. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 6 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2005). Volker M. Welter, Ernst L. Freud, Architect. The Case of the Modern Bourgeois Home (New York/Oxford: Berghahn, 2012). Christian Wolsdorff, „Deutsche Architekten im Exil. Erwartungen – Hoffnungen – Reaktionen“, in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933–1945, Ausst.-Kat. Neue Gesell­ schaft für Bildende Kunst Berlin (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1986). Dietrich Worbs, „Ernst Ludwig Freud in Berlin“, in Bauwelt 88/42 (1997).

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Chapter 2

Peter Moro and the Men from Mars  Deirdre Fernand The German-born architect Peter Moro (1911–1998) was one of a number of émigrés to Britain who transformed its postwar landscape. A member of the influential Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS), created in 1933 and disbanded in 1957, he helped to promote the Modernist idiom in Britain, notably as one of the chief architects of London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1951. Arriving in 1936, he worked for the architect Berthold Lubetkin, himself a refugee from Russia. Through him Moro joined MARS, which proved the starting point for an outstanding career. Yet Lubetkin was openly dismissive of the group, criticising what he regarded as its lack of intellectual rigour. This essay seeks to examine Lubetkin’s view within the context of Thirties’ Modernism and its political backdrop. It will argue that MARS, whose members included Walter Gropius, László Moholy-Nagy, Ernö Goldfinger and Serge Chermayeff, played a pivotal role for displaced intellectuals. A forum for cultural exchange, ideas and networking, MARS was of lasting significance to those forging new identities in their adopted homeland.

When the young architect Peter Moro arrived in Britain in the summer of 1936, he had only a small suitcase and ten Reichsmark in his pocket. Besides this meagre sum, he had a letter of introduction to Walter Gropius, the most important German émigré architect then living and working in London. Moro had fled Nazi Germany, having suffered racial discrimination. He had been dismissed from his architectural studies at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin because his grandmother was Jewish. A stranger in London, and just 25 years old, he had pinned all his hopes for a new life in Britain on a job in the office of his distinguished compatriot Gropius. But when Moro presented himself, the older man sent him away. There was no vacancy and besides, he added, he had too many foreigners on his staff.1 That disappointment was merely the first of many in his adopted homeland. But, as we shall see, Moro was soon to turn adversity into achievement. Born in Heidelberg in 1911, Moro experienced many of the upheavals – social, political and economic – of the 20th century. A victim of Nazi discrimination, he sought refuge in Britain only to be interned as an enemy alien after the outbreak of war. After a friend introduced him to Lubetkin, he was taken on as 1 Peter Moro, ‘A Sense of Proportion: Memoirs of an Architect’, unpublished manuscript, 1990, The Peter Moro Archive, RIBA BAL, MoP/10, 38.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_004

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an assistant where he was an engaged witness to an architectural revolution in which formalism and functionalism were hotly debated. He joined the Modern Architectural Research Group (MARS) which aimed to promote the Modern Movement in Britain and took part in its exhibition, ‛New Architecture’, in 1938, a key moment in the history of Modernism in this country. At the same time he was planning and executing one of the country’s earliest Modernist houses, Harbour Meadow, in Sussex. He became a tutor at Regent Street Polytechnic, mentoring many of the future generation of architects who would collaborate with him on London’s Royal Festival Hall (RFH). He is perhaps best known for his work on this concert hall, which led to further auditoria commissions: the Nottingham Playhouse, the Gulbenkian Centre in Hull and the Theatre Royal, Plymouth. He narrowly missed designing the National Theatre, beaten to the commission by Sir Denys Lasdun. As the above body of work demonstrates, Moro was a successful practitioner who did not find time to commit many of his ideas to print. He did, however, leave behind an unpublished memoir, ‛A Sense of Proportion’, now in the archives of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) which affords valuable insights into his career. This essay will briefly outline the background to his immigration before considering the rich architectural culture of Britain in the 1930s. It is important to acknowledge that from 1933 with the rise of the Nazi regime, this country tended to be seen as a haven of democracy, where fascism played little part. Those seeking refuge included artists and architects, both Jews and non-Jews. If that freedom situated Britain in the cross-currents of Modernism and its discourse, then the members of MARS, both native and foreign-born, were placed firmly in that locus of cultural exchange. 1

The Flight from Germany

Moro was one of an estimated 100 architects who sought refuge in Britain after the rise to power of the National Socialists in Germany in 1933. As the historian Charlotte Benton has pointed out in her study, A Different World: Émigré Architects in Britain 1928–1958, the first wave of emigrants began in 1928 with Michael Rosenauer and ended with the outbreak of war in 1939.2 By that time Erich Mendelsohn, Walter Gropius, Marcel Breuer, Bruno Ahrends, Eugen Kaufmann, Walter Segal and Arthur Korn, among others, had all come to Britain from Germany, while Ernö Goldfinger, originally from Hungary and 2 Charlotte Benton, A Different World: Emigré Architects in Britain, 1928–1958, exh. cat. (London: RIBA, 1995), 230.

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Berthold Lubetkin, originally from Russia, had arrived via France. That decade of migration transformed both architectural discourse and the landscape of Britain. Thus the critic Henry- Russell Hitchcock could write in 1937: “Today it is not altogether an exaggeration to say that England leads the world in modern architectural activity.”3 The racial and cultural policies of the Third Reich have been well documented as causal factors in the migration of thousands of people from central Europe from the beginning of the 1930s. Modernist tendencies in the arts were outlawed and the exhibition ‛Degenerate Art’ was held in Munich in 1937 which put the reviled artworks on display. All artists, including architects, whose work did not conform to the National Socialist ideology were guilty of ‘Kulturbolschewismus’ (cultural Bolshevism) and consequently at risk.4 A combination of attacks on Modernism and the marginalisation of leading Modernists, therefore, prompted both Jewish and ‘Aryan’ architects, such as Gropius, to emigrate. In 1934 Peter Moro was studying architecture at the Technische Hochschule (Technical University) in Berlin Charlottenburg when he received a letter from his father telling him he been asked by the college to provide evidence of his son’s ‘racial purity’. He was not sure whether his son was aware that he had a Jewish grandmother. Moro knew nothing of his ancestry other than that his father had been born in Ljubljana, a Slovene of Italian ancestry, and his mother in Vienna. His father, a doctor, had come to Germany to take up the chair of paediatrics at Heidelberg University. As his memoirs record: As we all, including my grandparents, were Catholics it had never occurred to my parents to mention it. However, under the new Nazi laws all this became vitally important.5 Realising that the racial purity form he had filled in earlier now contained a falsehood, Moro made the mistake of asking a fellow student for his advice. He was denounced. He received a letter from the Rector accusing him of making a false statement signed under oath. Moro recounts how he was made to stand “trial” in the Senate chamber in front of the Rector, two members of the SA (‘Sturmabteilung’) and his professors. Having explained he had had no 3 Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Modern Architecture in England (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1937, reprinted New York: Arno Press, 1969), 25, cited in Benton, op. cit., 73. 4 Jutta Vinzent, “The Political, Social and Cultural Patterns of Migration”, in Jennifer Powell and Jutta Vinzent, Visual Journeys: Art in Exile in Britain (Chichester: George Bell Institute, 2008), 18. 5 Moro, op. cit., 26.

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Figure 2.1 Peter Moro, student card for Berlin universities’ sports ground, 1933

knowledge that his grandmother was born Jewish, Moro was told to leave the room while they considered his fate. Summoned back, he was told by the Rector that he must leave his studies immediately. Because of my father’s eminence the Senate had decided that it would be left open to me to apply for a place elsewhere in Germany […]. I decided there and then that a country like that was not worth living in and the sooner I could get out the better.6 Finishing his studies in Zurich, Switzerland, Moro returned to Heidelberg in 1936 to begin the difficult process of emigration. As Benton records, émigrés had to have the offer of a job, for which a work permit was needed or a guarantor. Meanwhile taxes on Jewish businesses, currency controls and the ‘Reichsfluchtsteuer’, the leaving tax, meant that many left with next to nothing, hence Moro’s ten Reichsmark.7 It was hardly any easier for the luminaries of Modernism, many of whom were associated with the Bauhaus school and functionalism, whose avant-garde reputations preceded their departure from Germany. Many were able to establish themselves in independent practice only by teaming up with British partners. In this way Marcel Breuer teamed up with F. R. S. Yorke, Walter Gropius with Maxwell Fry and Erich Mendelsohn with Serge Chermayeff. Other architects, such as Moro, were admitted to work as architectural assistants. Via a family contact, he had been given an introduction to Gropius. 6 Ibid, 27. Moro’s father Ernst was a well-known paediatrician after whom the ‘Moro’ startle reflex in babies is named. 7 Benton, op. cit., 45.

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The contact had been assured by an associate of Gropius that there was a job waiting in the London office for Moro on arrival in Britain. As his memoir relates, Gropius sent him away with no job and little grace, merely saying “that he had no recollection of this whatsoever, that there was no vacancy in his office and besides that he had too many foreigners as it was.”8 2

Launched by Lubetkin

After that disappointment, Moro was fortunate enough to find work in Berthold Lubetkin’s practice, Tecton, where one of his fellow students from architectural school in Zurich was already employed. The importance of this opportunity cannot be overestimated: Moro had won a place in the most highprofile architectural practice in Britain. Lubetkin, an émigré from Russia of Georgian-Jewish descent, had arrived in London in 1931 via Paris, having left his homeland when modern architecture was being suppressed under the Communist regime. The following year he formed Tecton with six graduates from the Architectural Association.9 He had studied in Russia, Poland and Germany and his avant-garde connections were impeccable. As the historian Anthony Jackson has written, Lubetkin produced the most significant buildings in England during the 1930s, including the Penguin Pool at London Zoo (1934), and dominated the Modernist discourse. Moro now found himself on a salary of £2 10s a week which allowed him to rent a furnished room in Bloomsbury. And, as his memoirs record, he was to begin a lifelong friendship with Lubetkin.10 Within days of arrival in Britain, Moro was working on Highpoint Two (1936–1938), a companion block to the ultra-functionalist Highpoint One, (1933–1935). Although both blocks of this housing complex in north London were hailed as landmarks in the development of British Modernism, they did not win equal favour. While Highpoint One was lauded by many for its purity and functionalism, Highpoint Two was criticised for its deviation from pure functionalism and the inclusion of decoration. Particular scorn was reserved for the caryatids that supported the overhang of the entrance canopy.11 The controversy over Highpoint Two served to highlight the debates over the direction of British Modernism in what the historiography of modern 8 9 10 11

Moro, op. cit., 38. John Allan, Berthold Lubetkin (London: Merrell, 2002), 17. Moro, op. cit., 153. John Allan’s obituary of Berthold Lubetkin, Architectural Review, December 1990, 10.

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architecture has called the “battle of the styles”.12 This term has come to denote a whole range of discussions within the larger architectural discourse: differences not only between the traditional and modern approaches but also within Modernism itself. Moro, a young man still finding his way at Tecton, witnessed such debates. While a thorough examination of the term “Modernism” as applied to the visual arts lies outside the scope of this essay, it is worth considering here what it has come to mean in the historiography of architecture. Its use as a historical term, divorced from meaning the contemporary, is relatively recent, dating from the 1950s. In the introduction to his study of Modernism, the historian Christopher Wilk reminds us that its polemicists, such as Walter Gropius or Sigfried Giedion, would have referred to the “New Architecture” or the “Modern Movement”. In Germany, ‘Neues Bauen’ (New Building or New Architecture) was current from the 1920s onwards.13 Meanwhile, in other countries such as the United States, other terms were being used. With the Museum of Modern Art’s ‛Modern Architecture’ exhibition in 1932 came the nomenclature ‘The International Style’, the name of the accompanying publication by HenryRussell Hitchcock and the architect Philip Johnson.14 Historians such as Wilk talk of Modernism as being concerned with “formal innovation, a self-conscious desire to create something new and a tendency towards abstraction”.15 It is therefore helpful to see Modernism not so much as a style but a spectrum of preoccupations or a loose connection of ideas. Stressing the importance of its cosmopolitanism, he further argues that Modernism was never restricted to one country, but prevailed in many locations: All of these sites were stages for an espousal of the new and, often, an equally vociferous rejection of history and tradition; a utopian desire to create a better world, to reinvent the world from scratch; an almost messianic belief in the power and potential of the machine and industrial technology; a rejection of applied ornament and decoration; an embrace of abstraction; and a belief in the unity of all the arts.16 12 13 14 15 16

Alan Powers, “A Zebra at Villa Savoye: interpreting the Modern House”, in The Modern House Revisited (London: Twentieth Century Society, 1996), 26. Christopher Wilk, “Introduction: What Was Modernism?”, in Modernism, Designing a New World, C. Wilk (ed.), exh. cat., Victoria & Albert Museum (London: V & A Publications, 2006), 17. Anthony Jackson, “The Politics of Architecture: English Architecture. 1929–1951”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 24, no. 1 (California: University of California Press, March 1965), 102. Wilk, op. cit., 12. Ibid., 14.

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These different factions within Modernism were all to reveal themselves throughout the 1930s: at the heart of the battle of styles was the tension between those who favoured a rationalist, functionalist approach, as promoted by Le Corbusier and Gropius among others, and those who promoted more formal concerns above and beyond the immediately functional, such as Lubetkin. These binary oppositions of formalism and functionalism were to dominate much of the architectural discourse throughout the decade. Interpreted as polarities, however, these perceived differences between styles and architects – in themselves highly subjective, partisan and inflammatory – were perhaps not so antithetical as they appeared. Architects shared a great deal of common ground; aesthetics were never wholly abandoned in favour of the purely rational building. As the architect and historian Walter Behrendt wrote of Le Corbusier: “For all his radicalism he is not so far from those adversaries whom he antagonises most.”17 Lubetkin was a member of the MARS group and it was this body that provided the springboard for Moro’s career in Britain. MARS was a collection of architects and architectural critics regarded as representing the avant-garde in architecture. Formed in 1933 as a local branch of CIAM (Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne), an international body that promoted Modernism between 1928 and 1959, it aimed to undertake architectural research and to engage in propaganda, promoting Modernism in Britain. Its distinguished members included Wells Coates, Ernö Goldfinger, Walter Gropius, Ove Arup, László Moholy-Nagy, Serge Chermayeff, Godfrey Samuel, and Maxwell Fry, and the architectural writers John Betjeman, Philip Morton Shand and J. M. Richards, the editor of the influential journal, Architectural Review.18 Lubetkin, however, often and openly criticised MARS for its lack of ideological underpinning.19 He soon distanced himself from the organisation, founding his own, Architects’ and Technicians’ Organisation (ATO) in February 1935.20 MARS had always intended to mount a public exhibition in London and, after lengthy discussions, plans were made for a show at the New Burlington Galleries to open in January 1938. Knowing that relations between MARS and 17 18 19 20

Walter Curt Behrendt, Modern Building (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1937), 162, cited in Jackson, op. cit., 102. Louise Campbell, “The MARS Group, 1933–1939”, in Transactions, issue no. 8, vol. 4, no. 2 (London: RIBA, 1985), 70. Berthold Lubetkin, “Modern Architecture in England”, February 1937, reprinted in Malcolm Reading and Peter Coe, Lubetkin & Tecton: An Architectural Study (London: Triangle Publishing, 1992), 137. Campbell, op. cit., 72.

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Lubetkin were strained, Moholy-Nagy visited Lubetkin’s office in late 1937 to persuade him to take part, but to no avail. As Moholy-Nagy was leaving, Moro seized his chance and begged him to be permitted to participate.21 It was to be a minor role, but of lasting significance to the ambitious young architect. 3

MARs and Thirties’ Modernism

That MARS has come to dominate the discourse of Modernism in the 1930s is a tribute to its high-profile membership and the impact of its 1938 exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries. Later it would publish a plan for the redevelopment of London in 1942.22 Moreover its distinguished émigré contingent, many of them prominent academicians and theorists such as Walter Gropius and Moholy-Nagy, who had both taught at the Bauhaus in Dessau, brought an international outlook coupled with a pluralism of ideology and experience. Looking back at its role during the 1930s, the architectural historian John Summerson concluded that MARS “provided a focus, a point of illumination, in a cultural scene which was confused and overcast. It was sufficiently exclusive to acquire and dispense prestige.”23 As Benton has argued, the émigré architects acted as catalysts for change. In Germany some had been members of The Ring, an association of Modernist architects which included Walter Gropius, Eugen Kaufmann and Ernst May, and some had also played a part in CIAM. Benton has written of their impact: Between 1933 and 1939 there was a perceptible shift in British architectural culture towards modernism [sic] : the all-powerful position of the traditionalists was challenged if not altogether undermined. This change was not, of course, brought about singlehandedly by the émigrés, but their presence and the example of their work undoubtedly reinforced the morale of British modernists.24 Membership of MARS was by invitation only. Many members were undeniably radical. Indeed, the tendency was so much towards functionalism and away 21 22 23 24

Moro, op. cit., 47. Arthur Korn and Felix J. Samuely, “A Master Plan for London”, Architectural Review, June 1942, 143–151. John Summerson, “The MARS Group and The Thirties”, in John Bold et al. (eds.), English Architecture, Public and Private: Essays for Kerry Downes (London: Hambledon Press, 1993), 309. Benton 1995, 73.

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from formalism that it could disbar distinguished architects such as Howard Robertson, who would design the Shell Centre on the South Bank in 1961, for the “crime” of having published The Principles of Architectural Composition, a book embracing various styles.25 Such entrenched views and subsequent internal conflicts would lead to the group’s eventual dissolution in 1957.26 Lubetkin, who was increasingly occupied with ATO from 1936 onwards, would later openly dismiss MARS as a “flat roofs’ club based on a gentleman’s agreement”.27 Artistic tensions within the group were, it can be argued, based on prejudice and fallacy. The 1938 exhibition, as we shall see, favoured no particular stylistic orthodoxy. MARS was only one of a number of professional bodies active in the visual arts. Many of its members, such as Maxwell Fry, also belonged to other overlapping organisations, such as the Design and Industries Association (DIA), founded in 1915, which could trace its origins back to the Arts and Crafts movement. Its members included the designer Misha Black, the art historian Nikolaus Pevsner and the writer John Gloag. Wells Coates had founded The Twentieth Century Group in 1930 with Raymond McGrath, Serge Chermayeff, the businessman and patron Jack Pritchard and Howard Robertson, while Unit One, established in 1933 by Paul Nash, comprised both artists – Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Ben Nicholson and Edward Burra – and architects – Wells Coates and Colin Lucas.28 Other groups banded together to affirm more political than professional affiliations. The Artists’ International Association (AIA) was a group of British artists set up in 1933. Its members, including Roland Penrose, Misha Black and Duncan Grant, aligned themselves with the Communist party. During the 1930s it affiliated itself with The English Group of ­Surrealists, the London Group and the New English Art Club.29 Meanwhile ­Lubetkin’s ATO group, which sought to align progressive architecture with social reform, mounted an exhibition of working-class housing in April 1936.30 The above list, by no means exhaustive, is evidence of the complexity of the artistic milieu in the 1930s. Much recent scholarship has focused on the success of such groups in disseminating new ideas at the expense of examining their 25 26 27 28 29 30

John Allan, “Rediscovering Lubetkin”, in Susannah Charlton, Elain Harwood and Alan Powers (eds.), British Modern, Architecture and Design in the 1930s (London: Twentieth Century Society, 2007), 93. Summerson, op. cit., 309. Lubetkin in conversation with John Allan, July 1974 cited in John Allan, Architecture and the Tradition of Progress (London: RIBA, 2002), 322. Campbell, op. cit., 70. Vinzent, op. cit., 18. Campbell, op. cit., 72.

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social functions. For émigrés such as Moro, MARS was a paradigm of integration and inclusion. We can see it as serving as a de facto welcoming committee for many émigrés, boosting morale for those who had faced disruption and dislocation. Moro’s letters to his parents in Germany during 1936–37 reveal his isolation and frequent despair. On 2 January 1937 he wrote: “There is nothing more horrible than an English Sunday and even worse an English Christmas.” He described spending Christmas alone walking the London streets before finally going into the office to sit at his drawing-board, “finding rescue in workˮ.31 Yet despite the inauspicious New Year, 1937 would prove to be a turning point. He was now part of a high-status group linked to a transnational discourse via CIAM and his fortunes were about to change. MARS’s avowedly cosmopolitan membership perhaps added to its appeal: not only was Moro among fellow émigrés from Germany, but also many of MARS’s leading members had international backgrounds with links to the Commonwealth. Wells Coates was born in Tokyo and educated in Canada, Maxwell Fry had connections in Canada through his Canadian-born father, Raymond McGrath was born in Sydney, while Berthold Lubetkin was Georgian and had worked in Paris and Berlin before settling in England. Serge Chermayeff was Russian; Amyas Connell and Basil Ward both came from New Zealand.32 The historian Anthony Jackson reminds us that it was MARS members who had encouraged their foreign colleagues to seek refuge in Britain from fascism, encouragement which led, as we have seen, to fruitful partnerships.33 4

Beiunski-Land

According to the architect Trevor Dannatt, a former pupil of Moro at Regent Street Polytechnic who served as the last secretary of MARS before its dissolution, the group acted as a professional and social network for the émigrés. “They were bright young men in London full of new ideas and with not a lot of work”, says Dannatt of the new arrivals. “In MARS Moro found compatible colleagues.” Meetings were usually held in central London at the RIBA or The Building Centre. Those bright young men were often homesick, longing to share memories of happier times in their mother tongue. Dannatt remembers working alongside the architect Frederick Marcus, who had left Germany in 1933. Marcus, but not Moro, would often take the underground to north London to meet his 31 32 33

Copy of letter of 2 January 1937, lent by Alice Moro, daughter of Peter Moro. Summerson, op. cit., 305. Jackson, op. cit., 102.

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fellow exiled Germans: “Marcus called Hampstead ‘beiunski-land’ because ‘bei uns’ (at home) is how the Germans began every sentence when they talked about home.” Dannatt believes that MARS was both similar and radically different from “beiunski-land”. While the group MARS provided a social network, its complexion was determinedly international. Dannatt adds: “It was not a cultural enclave for Germans to meet other Germans.”34 For exiles such as Moro, being part of a progressive international network could only have enhanced the appeal of MARS. Not only were the contacts helpful in the process of establishing and re-establishing themselves in enforced exile but membership also reinforced the idea of belonging to a collective of like-minded people. The sociology of displacement and disruption lies outside the scope of this essay but the contribution of academics such as Edward Said and Jean-Michel Palmier in the field of exile and cultural studies should be acknowledged.35 Said, most notably, has written widely about the deracinated, the territories of belonging and non-belonging and fragile states of being. Moro himself acknowledged the role of MARS in easing his transition into British architectural life. In an interview with the historian John R. Gold he said: “To me, as a refugee, it was a tremendous leg-up to be suddenly one of the boys.”36 Gold continues: “From the refugees’ point of view, at least initially, MARS supplied an important focus in an often unsettled environment.” For Moro, having arrived in 1936, MARS was his chief point of contact with other émigrés. The Free German League of Culture (FGLC), founded by artist and German émigré Fred Uhlman and his wife Diana among others, did not come into existence until December 1938.37 That year would see the formation of the Artists’ Refugee Committee (ARC) and the following, the Austrian ­Centre.38 Both aimed to liberate those facing persecution by the Nazi regime.

34 35 36 37

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Trevor Dannatt. Interviews with the author on 2 April 2012 and 23 February 2017. Edward Said, “Reflections on Exile”, in Reflections on Exile and other Literary and Cultural Essays (London: Granta, 2001); Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar in Exile, The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America (translation) (London: Verso, 2006). P. Moro cited in John R. Gold, “‘A Very Serious Responsibility?’ The MARS Group,  internationality and relations with CIAM, 1933–39”, Architectural History, vol. 56 (Cambridge: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2013), 249–75. Anna Müller-Härlin, “It All Happened in this Street, Downshire Hill: Fred Uhlman and the Free German League of Culture”, in Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet (eds.), Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies 6 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005), 241. Ibid., 245.

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Still later, in 1943, German-speaking exiles would form The Circle, which operated primarily as a social forum.39 Another important aspect of MARS was its attempt to help its émigré members after the outbreak of war in 1939. From June 1940, German nationals were interned as enemy aliens and the MARS executive committee attempted to help Moro, Arthur Korn and Eugen Rosenberg who were detained.40 In March 1941 Moro, by now married to an Englishwoman, Anne Vanneck, was arrested at their flat in north London and later transported to Huyton, Liverpool and thereafter to the Isle of Man. The irony of Britain detaining victims of the Nazis was not lost on him. As he recorded in his memoir: “the policy of interning genuine refugees from the very regime that their country was fighting was insane and merely added insult to injury.”41 Records show that the impending internment of its members was discussed by the MARS executive committee in August 1940. While there is no evidence of any lobbying for Moro, it was decided that the secretary of MARS should write a letter to the authorities asking for the release of Korn. In the absence of any record of a letter being sent, we can assume that the secretary approached the Home Office. However, there is little evidence that it was successful. While Moro served six months, Korn was interned for eighteen months on the Isle of Man, returning to London in January 1942.42 5

‛New Architecture’: 1938

Moro’s memoir reveals his delight in working on MARS’s ‛New Architecture’ exhibition of 1938, what he called his “first job in England” under his own name.43 Although his role was relatively minor, he was credited in the exhibition catalogue alongside eminent architects such as Walter Gropius, Serge Chermayeff, and Ernö Goldfinger. His memoirs do not, however, elaborate upon the exhibition or its reception. Indeed, very little material about ‛New Architecture’ survives. According to Dannatt, the archives of the exhibition had been lost or destroyed by the time he became secretary of MARS during the late 1940s.44 Some documents per39 40 41 42 43 44

Benton, op. cit., 88. Vinzent, op. cit., 33. Moro, op. cit., 72. Minutes of a meeting of the Executive Committee of MARS group on 7 August 1940. The Godfrey Samuel Papers, RIBA archive, BAL ref no. SaG\95\1. Moro, op. cit., 48. Dannatt, op. cit., 2 April 2012.

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taining to individual participants, such as Ove Arup and Godfrey Samuel, survive in the RIBA archive as do some photographs. The following brief account therefore relies on the coverage in the March 1938 issue of Architectural Review and the scholarship of John R. Gold who carried out many hours of interviews with surviving MARS members.45 The exhibition had been due to open in June 1937, but was delayed because of lack of money and internal disputes.46 Godfrey Samuel, a colleague of Moro at Tecton, came up with the idea of using Sir Henry Wotton’s famous three “conditions of well building” from 1624, based on writings by the Roman architect Vitruvius: “The end of architecture is to build well. Well building hath three conditions: commoditie, firmenes and delight.”47 These were interpreted as needs (planning), structure (knowledge) and aesthetics (vision). As its prospectus stated, it aimed to offer the public an invitation to judge for themselves the nature of modern architecture: “Now that the experimental stage is over there are enough examples to show the practical advantages of such buildings and the enjoyment that is to be derived from them.”48 The exhibition space was divided into two large rooms. The first was devoted to building needs (commoditie). Moro, assisted by fellow Tecton member, Gordon Cullen, designed the entrance screen to illustrate Wotton’s dictum. While the second section dealt with techniques such as prefabrication and industrialised production (firmenes), the final section was devoted to the imagination (delight): what was possible and desirable, with many architectural models on display. Showcases were designed by Ove Arup, Serge Chermayeff, Wells Coates, and Maxwell Fry, among others, while Summerson wrote the wall texts and much of the catalogue. More than 150 images were on display, including commercial schemes such as cement works, tobacco factories, department stores, schools, hospitals and bridges. Yorke and Breuer displayed a scheme for a concrete city, Mendelsohn and Chermayeff displayed the De La Warr Pavilion, Arthur Korn, the Fromm Rubber Works in Berlin, while Le Corbusier showed a villa at Poissy he had 45 46 47 48

John R. Gold, “‘Commoditie, Firmenes and Delight’: Modernism, the MARS Group’s ‘New Architecture’ exhibition (1938) and imagery of the urban future”, Planning Perspectives, 8 (London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 1993), 357–376. Alan Powers, “John Summerson and Modernism”, in Louise Campbell (ed.), Twentieth Century Architecture and Its Histories (Cambridge: Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2000), 164. MARS (Modern Architectural Research) group, New Architecture: an exhibition of the elements of modern architecture, exh. cat. for ‘New Architecture’ exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, 11–29 January, 1938, 8. Prospectus for MARS exhibition cited in David Dean, The Thirties: Recalling the English Architectural Scene (London: RIBA/Rizzoli, 1983), 114.

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Figure 2.2 Entrance screen to MARS exhibition at New Burlington Galleries, 1938, designed by Peter Moro with Gordon Cullen.

designed with his cousin Pierre Jeanneret. Projects, both proposed and realised, were shown from all over the world including the United States and Japan. From Germany, Mendelsohn showed his Schocken department store in Chemnitz and Gropius the Bauhaus at Dessau. The flat roof was promoted as providing access to light and sun, key preoccupations of the Modernist house. But its promotion, pace Lubetkin’s remark about MARS as a “flat roofs’ club”, did not exclude diversity in roof design. Aimed at championing new ideas, ‛New Architecture’ proved to be the British public’s first exposure to the Modern Movement. Between 11 and 29 January 1938, more than 7,000 people visited.49 Praising the exhibition in the Architectural Review, Le Corbusier lauded the exhibits as: poems in steel, glass and concrete [...] The New Architecture can no longer be reproached with being mere insensitive and soulless technics. The MARS Exhibition will prevent the repetition of such calumnies as these.50 49 50

Campbell, op. cit., 78. Le Corbusier, “Introduction to the MARS group Exhibition: The Elements of Modern Architecture. A Pictorial Recordˮ, Architectural Review, vol. 83, March 1938, 110.

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Given Le Corbusier’s response, we can justly interpret ‛New Architecture’ as a manifesto of pluralism, not a desire to impose uniformity. As Gold has written: Positions on design matters were fluid, ideologies were malleable […] As a weathervane of 1930s modernism [sic], the exhibition reveals a genuine plurality of thought and a broad agenda of potential direction for the future city rather than overriding visions.51 In summary he has written: The true consensus displayed by the MARS exhibition, it can be argued, lay not in architectural styles, but in a set of shared concerns about the problems of the existing city and the possibility of urban and social renewal.52 With its enlarged vocabulary, New Architecture showed that the flat roof/white box was only one of many Modernisms on view. Moro would draw upon that diverse vocabulary for his first commission, a country house for a wealthy steel magnate, Harbour Meadow. Moro’s involvement in New Architecture was noticed. The following year he was elected to the executive of MARS. Moro’s role in MARS heralded the beginning of a long and fruitful career in which he seized opportunity as it arose. The chance to design Harbour Meadow in late 1938 came through his then flat-mate, Richard Llewelyn Davies, a student at the Architectural Association (AA). In his memoirs, Moro remembers Davies telling him about an elegant woman in a fur coat who had swept into the AA asking for an architect. Moro recalled: She mistakenly thought that the AA was a sort of labour exchange for architects. He (Davies) told her that unfortunately he was only a student […] However all was not lost.53 Davies had the presence of mind to take her address and promised that he would give her some advice. He and Moro lost no time in meeting Mr and Mrs Tawse to present them with a list of leading architects, many of them MARS members such as Maxwell Fry, Berthold Lubetkin and Serge Chermayeff. They also, with some diffidence, asked if they might be considered. When Mr Tawse,

51 52 53

Gold, op. cit. [1993], 371. Ibid., 371. Moro, op. cit., 58.

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Figure 2.3 Davies and Moro, Harbour Meadow, 2012

the wealthy steel magnate, asked them what they had built they replied, “Nothing”. After a momentary hesitation, Tawse appointed them. The commission saved Moro from being deported. Granted a one-year extension to his work permit, he and Davies set to work at the end of 1938, collaborating under the name of Davies and Moro. Yet they were not in partnership full-time: Moro continued to work for Lubetkin while Davies finished his studies. Their collaboration produced a country house for a traditional bourgeois couple built in a contemporary idiom. Persuading them to abandon their desire for a neo-Georgian retreat, Moro and Davies succeeded in giving them the dream house that they had never dreamed of – and yet were delighted with.54 Constructed of flint-coloured bricks, it had a flat roof and an elegant elliptical staircase. Situated on the riverbank outside Chichester, the house made the most of river views using large sheets of glass. Its significance as an early Modernist house was acknowledged in 2000 when it was listed Grade II by English Heritage. 54

Ibid., 65.

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Peter Moro And The Men From Mars

Figure 2.4 Royal Festival Hall, London 2008

When the house was finished, it was another MARS member, J. M. Richards, who gave it eight pages in the magazine he edited, Architectural Review, in April 1941. A further seven pages appeared in the Architects’ Journal the following month. As Moro recalled in his memoir: “The article in the Architectural Review, and more publicity elsewhere, helped me on my way as an architect.”55 Despite the success of Harbour Meadow, Moro did not build any more private houses. Materials and manpower were needed for the war effort and by the time the construction industry had recovered, he was involved in an extensive programme of social housing and school buildings for the burgeoning public sector, aided by a Labour victory in 1945. It was through the extensive press coverage of Harbour Meadow that Moro came to the attention of the architect Leslie Martin, who would later work for London County Council (LCC) on a permanent concert hall (the Royal Festival Hall) on the South Bank. By the end of 1948, Moro had established himself as the lead architect under Martin, in charge of every detail of the concert hall. Dannatt remembers that Moro and Martin regarded the RFH as a ‘Gesamtkunstwerk’, an overall scheme with exteriors and interiors planned to complement and harmonise.56 They elevated the concert hall above ground level, leading to the structural concept of the “egg in a box”.57 Moro oversaw every detail, from foyers to cantilevered boxes, glazed balustrades to handrails. He

55 56 57

Ibid., 65. Dannatt 2017. John McKean, Royal Festival Hall, London County Council, Leslie Martin and Peter Moro, essay for ‘Architecture in Detail’ series (London: Phaidon, 2001), n. p.

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Figure 2.5 Auditorium, Royal Festival Hall, 2017

also designed the carpet motif of net and ball and adjustable music stands to move within a groove in the orchestra pit.58 6

A Confluence of Brilliant People

The reception of the RFH, and the success of the Festival of Britain, which drew more than 8.5 million visitors, has been well documented. On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the Royal Festival Hall in 1976 the cultural critic and columnist Bernard Levin wrote: I remember, and I shall remember no matter how many more quartercenturies of the Hall’s existence I survive, that first overwhelming shock of breathless delight at the originality and beauty of the interior.59 For Levin’s post-war generation, the architecture of the RFH represented the apogee of modernity: “[We felt that] we had been instantly transported far into the future and even that we were on another planet altogether.”60 As with Harbour Meadow, Moro’s MARS colleague, J. M. Richards, heaped praise upon Moro’s talents:

58 59 60

Ibid. Bernard Levin, ‘Times Remembered in the Royal Festival Hall of Fame’, The Times, 7 May 1976. Ibid.

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Figure 2.6 Buffet, Royal Festival Hall, showing details of carpet’s net and ball motif, 1955

Dr Martin and his colleagues have achieved something without precedent in this country [...] a modern building – modern in the sense of owing allegiance to no other age but ours – which is also monumental.61 When the RFH received its Grade I listing in 1988, it became the first postwar building in Britain to be honoured. Peter Moro’s place in architectural history was assured. Looking back at the number of MARS members who contributed to the Festival of Britain, Dannatt is tempted to see the whole endeavour as a late flowering of the group: “You could say that the Festival of Britain was a MARS group exhibition.”62 These MARS contributors included Maxwell Fry, Ernö Goldfinger and Wells Coates. The engineer Felix Samuely produced Skylon, the cigarshaped structure on the South Bank which served as a symbol of the Festival until its destruction in 1951. For the MARS members who had arrived as refugees, including Korn and Samuely, there could be no greater symbol of their successful and permanent integration into their host country than their role in the Festival of Britain. As Benton has pointed out, participation in “that quintessential postwar celebration of national identity, the 1951 Festival of Britain” signalled their absorption into the mainstream of British national life.63 Moro and the men from MARS had helped to build the fabric of Britain after 1945. For Dannatt, who reminds us that the young émigré architect arrived in London

61 62 63

J. M. Richards cited in Moro, op. cit., 98. Dannatt 2017. Benton, op. cit., 92.

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with only ten Reichsmark, the achievement of Moro has acquired a fable-like quality: “Like Dick Whittington becoming the Mayor of London”.64 By the time Skylon was being dismantled, Moro had left the LCC for private practice. Dannatt remembers: After the war everyone was busy with their practices. All the debates now took place on the drawing-board. I think that the members of MARS felt it had achieved its objective and the decision was made to wind it up.65 On 28 January 1957 it ceased to exist.66 How should we remember the work of Moro and his fellow émigrés? In assessing their architectural legacy, we should perhaps consider that it included not just buildings but people. One of the least discussed aspects of their work is their pedagogy. Arthur Korn taught at the Oxford School of Architecture before joining the AA, Nikolaus Pevsner at Birkbeck College, University of London, and Walter Segal lectured at the AA.67 Also at the AA was Felix Samuely while H. W. Rosenthal taught at Leicester School of Architecture.68 Later on Arnost Wiesner lectured at the Oxford School of Architecture before joining Liverpool University, while Frederick Marcus was appointed Head of the Department of Furniture and Interior Design at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.69 As their students attest, the émigrés had a profound effect, injecting rigour and excellence into their world. Dannatt remembers Moro as a scrupulous tutor at Regent Street Polytechnic: He brought, certainly into my architectural life, a very considerable tightening-up of attitudes, much more structured […] He was a very severe critic and had a remarkable influence on me.70 Dannatt, who would later become Professor of Architecture at the University of Manchester and a Royal Academician, pays tribute to Moro, MARS and the Festival of Britain thus: “There was a huge zest in our world, it was a hugely 64 65 66 67 68 69 70

Dannatt 2017. Ibid. Summerson, op. cit., 309. John R. Gold. The Experience of Modernism: Modern Architects and the Future City, 1928–53 (London: Routledge, 1997), 167. Benton, op. cit., 87. Ibid., 97. Dannatt cited in Gold, op. cit. [1997], 168.

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creative and fertile time. I remember the London scene as a confluence of brilliant people.”71

Works Cited

John Allan, Obituary of Berthold Lubetkin (1901–1990), Architectural Review, December 1990. John Allan, Architecture and the Tradition of Progress (London: RIBA, 2002). John Allan, Berthold Lubetkin (London: Merrell, 2002). John Allan, “Rediscovering Lubetkin”, in Susannah Charlton, Elain Harwood and Alan Powers (eds.), British Modern, Architecture and Design in the 1930s (London: Twen­ tieth Century Society, 2007). Walter Curt Behrendt, Modern Building (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1937). Charlotte Benton, A Different World: Emigré Architects in Britain, 1928–1958, exh. cat. (London: RIBA, 1995). Louise Campbell, “The MARS Group, 1933–1939”, in Transactions, issue no. 8, vol. 4, no. 2 (London: RIBA, 1985), David Dean, The Thirties: Recalling the English Architectural Scene (London: RIBA/Riz­ zoli, 1983). John R. Gold, “‘Commoditie, Firmenes and Delight’: Modernism, the MARS Group’s ‘New Architecture’ exhibition (1938) and imagery of the urban future”, Planning Perspectives, 8 (London: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 1993). John R. Gold. The Experience of Modernism: Modern Architects and the Future City, 1928–53 (London: Routledge, 1997). John R. Gold, “’A Very Serious Responsibility?’ The MARS Group, internationality and relations with CIAM, 1033-99”, Architectural History, vol. 56 (Cambridge: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 2013). Anthony Jackson, “The Politics of Architecture: English Architecture. 1929–1951”, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, vol. 24, no. 1 (California: University of California Press, March 1965). Arthur Korn and Felix J. Samuely, “A Master Plan for London”, Architectural Review, June 1942. Le Corbusier, “Introduction to the MARS group Exhibition: The Elements of Modern Architecture. A Pictorial Recordˮ, Architectural Review, vol. 83, March 1938. Berthold Lubetkin, “Modern Architecture in England”, February 1937, reprinted in Malcolm Reading and Peter Coe, Lubetkin & Tecton: An Architectural Study (London: Triangle Publishing, 1992). 71

Dannatt 2017.

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MARS (Modern Architectural Research) group, New Architecture: an exhibition of the elements of modern architecture, exh. cat. for ‘New Architecture’ exhibition, New Burlington Galleries, 11–29 January 1938. John McKean, Royal Festival Hall, London County Council, Leslie Martin and Peter Moro (London: Phaidon, 2001). Peter Moro, ‘A Sense of Proportion: Memoirs of an Architect’’, unpublished manuscript, 1990, The Peter Moro Archive, RIBA BAR MoP/10 Peter Moro, Obituary of Berthold Lubetkin (1901–1990), Architectural Review, Decem­ ber 1990. Anna Müller-Härlin, “It All Happened in this Street, Downshire Hill: Fred Uhlman and the Free German League of Culture”, in Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet (eds.), Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–1945. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies 6 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005). Jean-Michel Palmier, Weimar in Exile, The Antifascist Emigration in Europe and America (translation) (London: Verso, 2006). Jennifer Powell and Jutta Vinzent, Visual Journeys: Art in Exile in Britain (Chichester: George Bell Institute, 2008). Alan Powers, “A Zebra at Villa Savoye: interpreting the Modern House”, in The Modern House Revisited (London: Twentieth Century Society, 1996). Alan Powers, “John Summerson and Modernism”, in Louise Campbell (ed.), Twentieth Century Architecture and Its Histories (Cambridge: Society of Architectural Histo­ rians of Great Britain, 2000). Malcolm Reading and Peter Coe, Lubetkin & Tecton: An Architectural Study (London: Triangle Publishing, 1992). Edward Said, Reflections on Exile and other Literary and Cultural Essays (London: Granta, 2001). Godfrey Samuel, The Godfrey Samuel Papers, RIBA Archive, London, 7 August 1940. John Summerson, “The MARS Group and The Thirties”, in John Bold et al. (eds.), English Archi­tecture, Public and Private: Essays for Kerry Downes (London: Hambledon Press, 1993. Christopher Wilk, “Introduction: What Was Modernism?”, in Modernism, Designing a New World, C. Wilk (ed.), exh. cat., Victoria & Albert Museum (London: V & A Publi­ cations, 2006).

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Chapter 3

Women Exile Photographers  John March The subject of women photographers in exile was introduced by this author in Yearbook 18 in which he examined a cohort of émigrées who came to Britain in the 1930s and who either continued their photographic careers here, or else commenced their professions after their arrival. This introductory text outlined initial research and wider cultural attention and pointed to the growing interest in these women photographers, which has given rise to a range of historical studies, biographies, new exhibitions, films and fictionalised treatments. This chapter expands the original premise, with a more detailed, extended and analytical account of this group comprising: Inge Ader (1918– 2006), Erika Andersen (1914–1976). Alice Anson (1924–2016) Ellen Auerbach (1906– 2004), Dorothy Bohm (b. 1924), Anneli Bunyard (1913–1949), Gerti Deutsch (1908–1979), Lisel Haas (1898–1989), Adelheid Heimann (1903–1993), Bertl Gaye (1901–1989), Elsbeth Juda (1911–2014), Erika Koch (1915–2010), Lore Krüger (1914–2009), Erna Mandowsky (1906–2003), Margarete Michaelis (1902–1985), Lotte Meitner-Graf (1899–1973), Lucia Moholy (1894–1989), Ursula Pariser (1917–2010), Gerty Simon (1887–1970), Grete Stern (1904–1999) and Edith Tudor-Hart (1908–1973).

Recent new research conducted by the author1 employed a prosopographical method (the study of a group with similar biographical characteristics), collecting information from a variety of sources that provided basic life path details, as well as giving greater substance to the group members’ experiences as photographers, exiles and individuals. This research revealed 21 women who could fairly be categorised as part of this group, and who were identified through a variety of pragmatic means, including library and internet searches, personal contacts and chance readings. From this starting point, published and online sources were consulted, as well as oral history testimonies, and interviews were conducted with family members, friends and those connected with the subjects in some way. The first focus of attention was on those individuals who had been photographers before their exile to Great Britain and were relatively unknown, in order to seek out hidden histories and personal

1 See John March, Women Exile Photographers, Thesis MA by Research, University of Leeds. Submitted April 2017.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_005

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biographies that indicated how photographic practice learned in continental Europe was transferred to and adopted in the new exile host environment. 1

21 Women Exile Photographers

This cohort can be seen to fall into four distinct sub-groups, as follows: 1. The better-known photographers, who were well-established before their exile and remained in England following their emigration. These women have already been the subject of other research, publications and exhibitions. This category includes: Edith Tudor-Hart (1908–1973), Gerti Deutsch (1908–1979) and Lucia Moholy (1894–1989), and extensive extant studies of these photographers have been drawn upon for the purposes of this chapter.2 The other photographer in this group, Lotte Meitner-Graf (1899–1973), was recognised as a skilled portraitist before and after exile but has not been a subject of study or publications, and recent exhibitions sponsored by the Lotte Meitner-Graf Archive are just beginning to extend her reputation.3 2. The second sub-group is composed of lesser-known women who were photographers before they arrived in Britain, and who remained here. This group includes Lisel Haas (1898–1989), Erika Koch (1915–2010), Inge Ader (1918–2006), Anneli Bunyard (1913–1949), Adelheid Heimann (1903– 1993), Gerty Simon (1887–1970) and Bertl Gaye (1901–1989). 3. The third sub-group comprises women exiles who became photographers after their arrival in Great Britain. It includes Erna Mandowsky (1906–2003), Dorothy Bohm (b. 1924), Elsbeth Juda (1911–2014), Alice Anson (1924–2016) and Ursula Pariser (1917–2010). 4. The final sub-group includes those women photographer exiles who stayed in Great Britain for a relatively short time and were a combination of both the better- and lesser-known, as well as one who had just begun her career during her short stay in England. This group, who all went on to have significant careers elsewhere after leaving Britain, includes: Grete Stern (1904–1999), Ellen Auerbach (1906–2004), Lore Krüger (1914–2009), Margarete Michaelis (1902–1985) and Erika Andersen (1914–1976). 2 Three catalogues provide helpful introductions: Angela Madesani, Nicoletta Ossana Cadadini, Angelo Maggi, Stefania Schibeci and Antonio Negri, Lucia Moholy: Between Photography and Life (Centro Culturale Chiasso, Italy: Silvana Editoriale, 2012); Kurt Kaindl (ed.), Gerti Deutsch. Photographs 1935–1965 (Salzburg: Fotohof Edition, 2011); Duncan Forbes (ed.), In the Shadow of Tyranny (Ostfilden: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2013). 3 Meitner-Graf Archive (online): lottemeitnergraf.com/the-archive.html (accessed 4 April 2017).

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The first two groups made up of women who were trained photographers before they arrived in England are of particular interest in that they brought with them the skills and an approach to their practice that was radically different to the prevailing usage in Britain. Their ability to develop post-exile careers also reveals both the opportunities and obstacles existent for women exile photographers in 1930s Britain. For the shorter-stay émigrées, the wider process of exile is of salient interest. The women who became photographers after exile are examples of a wider cultural contribution and legacy that was brought about by migration per se rather than through cultural exchange based on existing pre-exile skills and experience. 2

Individual Lives

It is apparent that members of the cohort, on average, enjoyed very long lives – ten of the 21 women lived beyond 90 years. While it might be speculated that generally comfortable childhood conditions supported their longevity, it is also reasonable to imagine that the experiences of exile and difficult home front conditions in the First and Second World Wars could have been expected to counteract early environmental advantages. In any case, the group, with the exception of Anneli Bunyard, who died prematurely in an accident, can be understood as one that experienced a substantial span of the 20th century. Those born before 1910 (about half of the cohort) enjoyed a period of young womanhood that allowed them to reach their twenties at a time when opportunities for women were opening up within the educational and training spheres. Economic and social conditions in Weimar Germany and Austria were becoming more advantageous to middle-class women, especially in the sphere of photography.4 It should be noted that of those who were born before 1910 and undertook formal photography training in continental Europe, eight trained at either the Bauhaus or the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt in Vienna, four in each institution. Two of the group (Adelheid Heimann and Erna Mandowsky), who each had an early academic interest in art history, took up the opportunity to study to doctoral level.5 Study at art school in Stuttgart was the first step towards a cre4 See Ute Frevert, Women in German History (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1989), 168–205. 5 Another notable woman exile photographer, Ilse Bing (1899–1998) took the same academic path at the University of Frankfurt, before changing to pursue a photographic career. See Larisa Dryansky, Ilse Bing – Photography Through The Looking Glass (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2006), 11.

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ative career for Grete Stern and Ellen Auerbach, both of whom stayed briefly in London in the 1930s. This older age-group had the opportunity to study, to secure independent jobs and to become business owners, which meant that they were able to lay down the foundations of skills and experience, including social and professional networks that helped them when it became necessary to emigrate. For those born after the outbreak of the First World War early life experiences were significantly different and less encouraging. In the cases of two teenagers, Erika Koch and Inge Ader, their school years were cut short by Nazi persecution just as they were about to take their leaving exams and progress. In response, both took the route of photographic apprenticeships. The two younger schoolgirls, Alice Anson and Dorothy Bohm, were forced to leave the continent during their schooldays and later became photographers in Great Britain. Lore Krüger was forced out of her bank job aged eighteen and began a long exile journey that started in England, where she took the first steps in her photographic career. In terms of the whole group, there is strong evidence of international experience of living and working outside their countries of origin before exile, at least for those old enough to have had the opportunity. For Austrians, the experiences of studying and working in Germany were perhaps less surprising, yet spells of living in Paris in the early 1930s, visits to Italy for study and leisure, and in two cases attending school in England point to decidedly cosmopolitan orientations. An early desire to learn languages was also a motivating factor. Many of the older exiles enjoyed English language competence before arrival in England – the intellectual Lucia Moholy (née Schulz) was qualified at the age of eighteen6 to teach both English and German, and Gerti Deutsch was “fluent early on in three or four languages.”7 3

Family

The families from which these women photographer exiles came can be described as being urban, affluent and of Jewish heritage. They can further be characterised as relatively small – typical of the family size of the businessoriented middle class. Relevant in this context is the fact that family income

6 Angela Madesani, “Life as Witness: Notes on the Photographic Works of Lucia Moholy between Still Life and Portraiture”, in Madesani et al., op. cit., 17. 7 Amanda Hopkinson, “Gerti Deutsch of Vienna”, in Kaindl, op. cit., 17.

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was available for the education, training and support of relatively few children.8 All grew up in large towns – five coming from Vienna. A review of their fathers’ occupations indicates a middle-class status, suggesting either professional training and occupational recognition (lawyers, doctors and engineers) or else as business owner-managers. However, it may be noted that not all the families were equally wealthy or successful. Alice Anson relates that her father was not a “good businessman”9 while Inge Ader’s testimony includes details about the household servant retinue and a chauffeur-driven car which suggests significant affluence.10 In these family homes where education and a general embracing of German culture was the norm, there is evidence of strong support for the development of daughters’ accomplishments and careers, and no evidence or stated opinion that the sons of the family were treated preferentially. The Jewish heritage of the group plays an obvious and central role in their persecution and exile. The descriptions of the families often use the words ‘assimilated’ and ‘non-observant’. This characterisation is echoed in Michael Berkowitz’ book,  Jews and Photography in Britain (2015).11 In his introduction the context is laid out boldly: The thrust of this book […] is to explore a part of the Jewish world that usually did not identify strongly with traditional Judaism, or with the established Jewish community in an institutional sense. This is mainly a story of Jews who are not terribly “Jewish”.12 The direct testimonies of childhood and family life are insightful in giving substance to these broad categorisations. For example, Alice Anson, as a child in Vienna, was unaware of belonging to a Jewish household. She came to realise this fateful status when witnessing the arrival of the Hitler cavalcade during annexation (‘Anschluss’) in 1938, the appearance of Nazi flags in the flats opposite her block, and her extended absence from school.13 Inge Ader describes 8 9 10 11 12 13

Angelika Schaser, “Gendered Germany”, in James Retallack (ed.), Imperial Germany, 1871– 1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 130–131. Alice Anson testimony, Dataset: 09330_Ag_EU_Judaica_Jewish_Museum_London2 (accessed 10 March 2016). Inge Ader testimony from Refugee Voices – The AJR Audio-Visual History Collection. Interviewer Bea Lewkowicz. Interview date 4 June 2004. Michael Berkowitz, Jews and Photography in Britain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). Ibid., 6. Alice Anson testimony, Dataset: 09330_Ag_EU_Judaica_Jewish_Museum_London2 (accessed 10  March 2016).

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a warm childhood in Schwerin, and a family in which her parents were keen to see the children mix with the wider school community, and not to be spoiled by the advantages of their affluence. 4

Exile

It is apparent that Jewish heritage would have been enough to prompt exile from Germany and Austria; however, the events and immediate reasons for fleeing were varied. Edith Tudor-Hart’s political engagement in Vienna prompted her escape to London, prior to the Nazi takeover of Austria, while for Lucia Moholy who had been intimately involved in the Bauhaus project, her direct association with Communists in Berlin in 1933 meant that flight was planned even before the arrest of her partner, the Communist MP Theodor Neubauer, took place. In the cases of Moholy and Tudor-Hart it was immediate and existential political threats that propelled them to leave continental Europe. Two others from the group who were associated with the Bauhaus, Grete Stern and Ellen Auerbach, left Berlin at the same time through indirect political pressures and personal preferences.14 After 1933 in Germany and after 1938 in Austria, the manifestations of antisemitism, and the changes to everyday life brought on by Nazi power, produced a state of alarm that saw flight to a place of safety as the only reasonable course of action for individuals and families. Alice Anson, as we have seen, saw a combination of threatening signs in her own neighbourhood in 1938 in Vienna; for Dorothy Bohm it was Nazi advances into Lithuania in 1939 and a climate of violent antisemitism and exclusion from school;15 for Inge Ader school became a torment with her segregation and the limitations placed on study, while Erika Koch had the experience of hearing the screams of torture victims in the prison she walked past from her house in Tempelhof, Berlin.16 Lore Krüger was made redundant from her junior position in a bank in Darmstadt. In the narrative of exile relating to Hans and Elsbeth Juda, a restaurant alterca14 15 16

Ute Eskildsen and Susanne Baumann, Ellen Auerbach, Berlin, Tel Aviv, London, New York (München: Prestel Verlag, 1998), 98. Colin Ford, “Dorothy Bohm, A Life in Photography”, in Colin Ford, Ian Jeffrey, and Monica Bohm-Duchen, A World Observed 1940–2010 (London: Philip Wilson Publishers/Manchester Art Gallery, 2010), 11. In the film The View from our House screams from the prison become a central motif – the testimony having been given to the two filmmakers by Erika Koch. Interview with Andrea Kennedy and Ian Wiblin, 21 December 2015.

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tion with a Nazi in Berlin in 1933 resulted in a court summons and subsequent advice for them both to leave Germany immediately.17 Adelheid Heimann and Erna Mandowsky, both associated with the Warburg Library and the University of Hamburg through their research scholarship, would have been acutely aware of both the suppression of academic and intellectual freedom and the targeting of fellow staff. With their potential academic careers tied to those institutions, the decision made by those responsible for the library to relocate to London mirrored their personal choices. In the case of Adelheid Heimann, her brother’s anti-Nazi stance and flight to Prague would have brought the danger of her own position into immediate relief,18 while for Erna Mandowsky her father being stripped of his pharmacy business and the right to practise was a foreshadowing of later persecutions.19 Lisel Haas had her photographic studio in Gladbach effectively closed down by the local police who demanded she “display a notice in the window […] stating that it was a ‛Jewish business’ in order to avoid any further persecution”.20 For some, relationships with or else marriage to Englishmen played an obvious role in the geographical direction of exile – Edith Tudor-Hart, Gerti Deutsch and Anneli Bunyard fall into this category. Grete Stern’s marriage to an Argentinian, Horacio Coppola (1906–2012), influenced her later migration to Argentina.21 For Adelheid Heimann and Erna Mandowsky a professional and personal association with the Warburg Institute directed their escape towards London. Pre-existing family connections with England, either direct family or else friends of family, were influential in drawing Lisel Haas, Inge Ader, Alice Anson, Erika Koch and Dorothy Bohm to England. The young Lore Krüger was brought to England where a domestic job was arranged through the help of a rabbi in her home town. Further migration from Great Britain for those who might have wanted to travel further was often frustrated by the American authorities. Lucia Moholy was invited to move to the USA by her ex-husband, László Moholy-Nagy, a 17 18 19 20 21

Annamarie Stapleton, “Hans and Elsbeth Juda”, in Christopher Breward and Claire Wilcox, The Ambassador Magazine (London: V & A Publishing, 2012), 20. Claims Resolution Tribunal in re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation Case No. CV96–4849, at (accessed 10 March .2016). (accessed 15 April 2016). Amy Schulman, Memory and Identity: The Émigré Photographer, Lisel Haas (1898–1989), MPhil thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010, and accessible through the e-thesis repository. . Juan Mandelbaum and Clara Sandler, “Grete Sternˮ, in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009, Jewish Women’s Archive, (accessed 3 May 2016).

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leading figure in the Bauhaus, but the application was turned down, a fate also experienced by Lisel Haas.22 Ellen Auerbach, by contrast, wished to stay and work in London but, being restricted in work and residence, decided to move to the USA, finally settling in New York City.23 The migrations of those who stayed briefly in England and then experienced further ‘exile from exile’ point to the wider scattering of individuals and families through the fracturing and often protracted process of forced exile. As mentioned, Ellen Auerbach finally settled in America. but before coming to London had been an exile in Palestine, while for Lore Krüger, an initial spell of exile in London was followed by residence in Spain, France, USA, a postwar return to Berlin and an active career in East Germany. Grete Stern travelled to London in early 1934 and then migrated to Argentina in 1935 with her husband. Margarete Michaelis travelled to Spain and Poland before her brief stay in London and onward migration to Australia. Erika Andersen migrated to the USA in 1940, gaining American citizenship just after the end of the war and later enjoyed a successful film-making career there. For those who had accumulated a portfolio of photographs and equipment before exile, the loss of these assets was a matter of both short- and longterm significance. The negatives belonging to Lucia Moholy were stored first in Berlin and eventually shipped directly to USA, out of her control, and this was to have long-term negative financial and reputational consequences for her.24 Edith Tudor-Hart is believed to have brought some negatives released by the Viennese authorities with her but what remained was later destroyed.25 Lotte Meitner-Graf was able to bring many of her Viennese photographs and negatives to England and they are currently held in the Lotte Meitner-Graf Archive.26 Gerty Simon’s pre- and post-exile work has recently been donated to the Wiener Library in London. Erika Koch’s early work as an apprentice to Umbo (Otto Maximilian Umbehr 1902–1980) is held by her family and is collected into albums of contact prints.27 Grete Stern was fortunate in being able to bring the majority of her work and equipment to London.28 In her recorded testimony Inge Ader relates her struggle with the immigration authorities in England to import her camera equipment. One striking aspect of the early 22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Robin Schuldenfrei, “Images in Exile: Lucia Moholy’s Bauhaus Negatives and the Construction of the Bauhaus Legacy”, in History of Photography, 37, No. 2, May 2013, 192. Ute Eskildsen and Susanne Baumann, op. cit., 98. Robin Schuldenfrei, op. cit., 193. Duncan Forbes, op. cit., 11. Lotte Meitner-Graf Archive. Interview with Tony Barrett, 18  May 2016. Interview with Andrea Kennedy and Ian Wiblin, op. cit. Juan Mandelbaum and Clara Sandler, op. cit..

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collective experience that connects photographic skills, exile and the nature of the photographic enterprise lay in the setting up of photographic studios. Lucia Moholy established a photographic portrait studio soon after arrival in London, Gerti Deutsch, likewise, quickly established a studio presence in the Old Bond Street area, as did Gerty Simon in Chelsea; Elsbeth Juda progressed from learning photographic skills from Lucia Moholy to a studio in Soho; Lisel Haas set up in Birmingham; Grete Stern re-established the ringl+pit studio, while Anneli Bunyard and Inge Ader settled in a business located on Finchley Road, a typical refugee area in north west London. For Lotte Meitner-Graf a period of managing the Fayer Studio in Mayfair served as a preparation for the establishment of her own successful studio in the early 1950s. Families played a critical part in the process of exile both by helping migration to take place and then providing direct and indirect networks of support once in England. Networks of friendship and association also played a crucial role. For example, the contacts between émigrés once associated with the Bauhaus29 and with the Warburg Library are evident. In terms of working contact between the group of women exile photographers, the partnerships of Stern and Auerbach, and Bunyard and Ader, stand out. It has been noted that Lucia Moholy taught Elsbeth Juda photographic practice. Other less visible relationships existed between Lotte Meitner-Graf and the Warburg Institute and Adelheid Heimann, while a “taking tea together” level of friendship existed between Gerti Deutsch and Lotte Meitner-Graf.30 While these sustaining relationships may be highlighted to show how exile was coped with and how networks of association could be helpful, it is also an inescapable fact that exile brought with it profound family dislocation, fear for those who did not escape and, finally, grief for those who died in the Holocaust. Lore Krüger, Adelheid Heimann, Bertl Gaye and Erna Mandowsky all had immediate family who perished. 5

Career Paths in Photography

The career paths of the cohort were varied, and with regard to their photographic engagement, some distinction can be made between those who were drawn into photographic occupations by circumstance, and those with an intrinsic interest and a long-term commitment to the art and craft.

29 30

Robin Schuldenfrei, op. cit., 192. Interview with Amanda Hopkinson, 17 August 2016.

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Nevertheless, this distinction is not always clear. For example, Gerti Deutsch resolved to study and practise photography a short time after her first choice of career as a pianist was frustrated by injury. And yet, in her case, she developed a distinguished 30-year photography career in England. However, for the two art historians, Adelheid Heimann and Erna Mandowsky, taking up photography appears to have been a response to the rupture to their academic careers wrought by exile. Before her school career was interrupted, Erika Koch wanted to be a vet, while Inge Ader expected a conventional academic career and had her ambitions thwarted. After facing exile as a girl and having learned the trade of dressmaker, Alice Anson trained as a photographer in the wartime RAF, because it seemed interesting and was available to the young recruit. As a young woman adrift in exile in England, Lore Krüger slowly evolved an interest in photography that was to develop further in Spain and France. Thus, for many it can be seen that the circumstances of exile and the threatening dislocation that preceded it were a spur to engaging with photography. It is noteworthy that the relatively unknown Lisel Haas and the portraitists Lotte Meitner-Graf and Gerty Simon were the three women within the cohort who brought their skills with them into exile and maintained their engagement with photography, running photographic businesses from young womanhood to old age. Dorothy Bohm is an outstanding example of a life-long engagement with photography begun after exile. 6

Post-Exile Work and Influence

For most of the group, the period between the mid-1930s and the mid-1950s were the years of most active engagement as photographers, during which they made the greatest impact on British cultural life. It is apparent that in the group as a whole, photographic work played differing roles in the individuals’ wider personal and professional development, at times as a stop-gap activity when a prime career ambition was frustrated, at others as a modest incomegenerating business that could be conducted from home, or else as a paying job with an employer or on a freelance basis. Once in England, existing British institutions and new exile-founded ones became places of association, support and employment for the women photographers. The figure below sketches some of the institutional poles of influence. The role of the Warburg Institute in the careers of Erna Mandowsky and Adelheid Heimann has been mentioned, however exhibition work commis-

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Figure 3.1 The Institutional Poles of Influence

sioned by the Institute was also undertaken by Lotte Meitner-Graf.31 Picture Post, the illustrated weekly magazine, provided employment for both Gerti Deutsch and Adelheid Heimann and an outlet for the work of Edith TudorHart, while the studio of George Fayer provided employment for Lotte Meitner-Graf, Erika Anderson and Ursula Pariser. It is also worth noting that the British state provided Erika Koch and Inge Ader with paid commissioned photographic work, and gave Alice Anson photographic training as a WAAF recruit, and Erna Mandowsky contributed service as a fire-watcher during the London Blitz. The magazines most associated with the early photographer-in-exile narrative are Weekly Illustrated, Lilliput and Picture Post. The connection between all three publications is Stefan Lorant (1901–1997), the Hungarian-born journalist 31

Lotte Meitner-Graf’s participation in the development of changing currents of British portraiture can also be seen to extend beyond her studio practice. An example was when her work featured in an opening exhibition panel in a Warburg Institute exhibition entitled “Portrait and Character” that toured London and the provinces in 1943. This is discussed by Dorothea McEwan in “Exhibitions as Morale Boosters, The Exhibition Programme of the Warburg Institute, 1938–45”, in Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet (eds.), Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–45. Politics and Cultural Identity. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 6 (Rodopi: Amsterdam/New York, 2004), 289–291.

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Figure 3.2 Scope of Magazine Contributions

who had been the editor of the Münchener Illustrierte Presse and arrived in England in 1934 as a refugee.32 The recruitment of émigré photographers and the brilliant success of Picture Post is a story that has been extensively explored33 and is an important thread in this context, particularly in relation to the career of Gerti Deutsch. However, the range of illustrated magazines to which the cohort contributed was considerable, encompassing interests as diverse as fashion, diplomacy, high society, travel, and exploration. The figure above suggests the scope of engagement of the cohort. Figure 3.2 sketches some of the associations between the broad interests of the magazines, some of the titles of the magazines themselves and the women photographers who contributed to them. In the sphere of mass circulation magazines, the importance of Picture Post in the 1940s, and Radio Times in the 1950s34 was considerable and points to the contributions that Gerti Deutsch, Edith Tudor-Hart and (in an employee capacity) Adelheid Heimann made to the former, and the ongoing contributions made to the latter by Lotte MeitnerGraf. The Listener, with a smaller circulation, carried a cover photograph by Edith Tudor-Hart as early as 1931, while Lilliput was a vehicle for a photo-essay 32 33 34

Tom Hopkinson, Picture Post 1938–1950 (London: Penguin Books, 1970), 8–9. Tom Hopkinson, op. cit., and Robert Kee, The Picture Post Album (London: Guild Publishing, 1989). Picture Post had a high point of circulation of 1.5 million in 1940.

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by husband and wife Tom Hopkinson and Gerti Deutsch in the late 1940s. The work of Hans and Elsbeth Juda in the development of The Ambassador is a further example of a personal and professional partnership.35 The less defined sphere of special interest magazines which catered for fashion, society and advertising saw striking contributions from a number of the photographers through the 1940s and into the 1950s. These photographers included Elsbeth Juda and Alice Anson. The art direction of The Ambassador magazine by Elsbeth Juda, the work of Erika Koch for The Diplomat in the 1950s, and the brief spell of engagement of Alice Anson with Tatler in the postwar period are all examples of identifiable associations between magazines and individual photographers. Erika Koch’s contributions to magazines related to travel and exploration in the late 1940s and early 1950s also stand as examples of published work reaching a wide audience. In addition to magazine contributions there was also full authorship of books, with One Hundred Years of Photography 1839–1939 by Lucia Moholy36 as an outstanding example. The early use of colour photography employed by Anneli Bunyard in her 1945 children’s educational book What a Thread Can Do was a further innovative project.37 Both art historians, Adelheid Heimann and Erna Mandowsky produced work that was published in their academic sphere, and they also contributed to the Warburg Institute’s wider art historical educational efforts through their photographing of art objects. Lotte Meitner-Graf’s work was also used to provide illustrations for a wide range of publications (and is still called on today for this purpose) as well as for record sleeves, while Edith Tudor-Hart contributed to left-wing polemical books in the 1940s, as well as to campaigning pamphlets in the 1930s. Most of the exile group were engaged in making portraits of one kind or another, and at one time or another, following exile. One means of classifying the work of the photographers is to consider the status of those who sat for portraits. Some measure of the recognised quality of the portraiture undertaken can be seen by the fact that Lotte Meitner-Graf, Edith Tudor-Hart, Lucia Moholy, Elsbeth Juda and Bertl Gaye all have photographs archived with the National Portrait Gallery, London.38 Although the portraiture undertaken by many of the group can be seen as the income-generating staple of the studios they owned and ran, the treat35 36 37 38

The Ambassador was a postwar avant-garde trade magazine designed to promote British fashion and textiles. See “Textile in Exile” essay in this volume. One Hundred Years of Photography 1839–1939 published as part of the sixpenny Penguin series in 1939. The 200-page volume sold about 40,000 copies in two years. Anneli Bunyard, What A Thread Can Do (London: Collins, 1945). See: .

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Figure 3.3 Portraiture Work

ment and range of subjects indicate a wider cultural impact. For example, the depictions and publication of photographs of groups such as working-class women in domestic and workplace settings, and children in educational and health environments, introduced a candid social documentary form that was viewed for the first time by a wide audience in the illustrated magazines of the time. The portraits of eminent sitters by Lucia Moholy and Gerty Simon in the 1930s and by Lotte Meitner-Graf in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, created a record of elite British society. The exiles’ fresh approach to portraiture and how that compared with existing British photographic practice is provided through extracts from the oral testimony of Inge Ader, who had established her suburban studio during the war years: Photography in England wasn’t quite so advanced. The good photo­ graphers were the society photographers who did very old-fashioned ­pictures, which none of them where I worked did. That was done in Germany twenty years earlier. And I worked here for one year at Karl Schenker, also a refugee, and he did mainly fashion. That was again very good training and very modern for the times. And I learned really something completely new. A first-class fashion photographer […]39 Bond Street style which was hazy, sepia, brown, unsharp, kind, but not what I would call good photographs […]40 The society photographers in Bond Street, 39 40

Inge Ader testimony from Refugee Voices – The AJR Audio-Visual History Collection, 23. Ibid., 18.

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though they were very well liked by English people, they were not our style.41 7

Legacy

In her 1986 work The Other Observers (Women Photographers in Britain 1900 to the Present), feminist photography historian Val Williams sets out her aims as follows: first, to resituate, within a women’s tradition, women whose work is widely known and secondly to rediscover the work of women photographers whose photography has fallen into obscurity.42 In her history the extent of attention given to the work of Edith Tudor-Hart and Gerti Deutsch in connection with documentary photography and women’s involvement with Picture Post is noticeable. In both respects, the particular contributions of each are emphasised: first, the political dimensions in the work of Edith Tudor-Hart, and second, the skill with which Gerti Deutsch worked within the editorial limitations of Picture Post to produce work of lasting value. The situating of the work of these two women in the wider political and cultural environment of the 1930s and 1940s, and their positive influence from this feminist perspective, suggests that their arrival in England represented a vital infusion of energy and a fresh impetus that impacted on the wider photographic community. In this context they have come to represent central figures in the history of women within British photography. Although the centrality of key photographic figures is clear, the degree to which their arrival as exiles, and their subsequent careers, led to more opportunities and hence, the recognition of women photographers more widely, is less certain. It may be possible to see the acceptance and work of Grace Robertson (b. 1930) at Picture Post in the 1950s as partly due to the efforts of women photographers who went before, yet the continuing difficulties of working in an abrasive male working environment were well recognised by her.43 A material legacy of these photographers’ work lies in the collections of artefacts in archives that continue to be utilised for research and exhibitions. As noted above, five of the group have their work archived in the National Portrait 41 42 43

Ibid., 17. Val Williams, The Other Observers (London: Virago Press, 1986), 7. Grace Robertson, Photojournalist of the 50s (London: Virago Press, 1989), 18–22.

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Gallery; countless photographs by Adelheid Heimann and Erna Mandowsky are held in the collections of the Warburg Institute,44 with the Victoria & Albert Museum and Birmingham City Archives holders of yet more work. In the private sphere, the Lotte Meitner-Graf Archive holds a valuable comprehensive collection, which is just now beginning to be used for exhibitions and ongoing publishing requests. A recent family donation of Gerty Simon’s work is now housed in the Wiener Library, London.45 The work of Elsbeth Juda is held in archives at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The National Portrait Gallery and the British Library, all in London. One final aspect of the cultural legacy worth considering is the way in which these photographers were active participants in establishing the visual ‘stamp’ of the times in which they lived. The 1930s in Great Britain is typically understood as a decade of poverty and mass unemployment coexisting with wealth and privilege. This is an impression of the times that was, in part, formed by the photographs and photo-essays of these exiled women. The 1940s was a period defined by war and then by the emergence of welfare interventions which came to symbolise the hopes of postwar social democratic reconstruction and new forms of social care and was likewise skilfully depicted by the group. It was therefore during these decades that the recently arrived foreigners played an important part in presenting a view of Britain, and its people, to British society as a whole. These outsiders, by virtue of being given access to hitherto unrecorded and neglected aspects of national life through their photographic commissions were given an opportunity to cast a fresh eye over the land. 8

Lotte Meitner-Graf

The work and career of Lotte Meitner-Graf stand as an example of the way in which her dedication to her photographic work served to illuminate one important strand of British life. Likewise, her work acted a vehicle for her complete assimilation into British cultural life – a path that in different ways was mirrored in the experiences of others of the group. The portraits created by Lotte Meitner-Graf in the 1950s and 1960s were of the faces of meritocratic achievement in the political, musical, scientific and theatrical worlds of Britain. Carefully staged and retouched photographic images of the leading lights of their chosen fields were produced to project 44 45

As noted, Adelheid Heimann and Erna Mandowsky both worked at the Warburg Institute photographing works of art. Wiener Library Archive Ref 2016/41.

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eminence and, typically, a seriousness of demeanour on the part of the sitters. In her obituary which appeared in The Times in 1973, written by Professor Otto Frisch, the following observation was made: There can be few educated people who have not seen one of Lotte Meitner-Graf’s photographic portraits, either on a book jacket (for instance, Bertrand Russell’s autobiography, or Antony Hopkins’s Music All Around Me) or on a record sleeve or concert programme.46 In fact, beyond the “educated people” referred to by Professor Frisch, the reach of Lotte Meitner-Graf’s photographs was much wider. Her photographs of musicians were used by the Radio Times to trail concerts broadcast on BBC radio. The publication of her photographs, often miniaturised, meant that her work formed part of the visual backcloth, albeit fleetingly perceived, for millions of British people. (In 1955 the Radio Times circulation peaked at 8.8 million, while readership was, of course, higher.) The connection between the visual representation of musicians, radio words and music, and direct experience of the London classical music world coalesced in two BBC radio programmes about one of her portrait subjects, Otto Klemperer (1887–1973), which were broadcast in 1972 and 1976, and to which Lotte Meitner-Graf contributed her memories and opinions.47 The observer behind the camera had entered the picture. The outsider had become an insider.

Works Cited

Inge Ader testimony from Refugee Voices – The AJR Audio-Visual History Collection. Alice Anson testimony, Dataset: 09330_Ag_EU_Judaica_Jewish_Museum_London2. Shulamith Behr and Marian Malet (eds.), Arts in Exile in Britain 1933–45. Politics and Cultural Identity. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 6 (Rodopi: Amsterdam/New York, 2004). Michael Berkowitz, Jews and Photography in Britain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). Anneli Bunyard, What A Thread Can Do (London: Collins, 1945). Claims Resolution Tribunal in re Holocaust Victim Assets Litigation Case No. CV 96–4849 at . 46 47

Otto Frisch, Obituary of Lotte Meitner-Graf published in The Times, 2 May 1973. Programmes broadcast 9 November 1972 and 22 December 1976.

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Larisa Dryansky, Ilse Bing – Photography Through The Looking Glass (New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 2006). Ute Eskildsen and Susanne Baumann, Ellen Auerbach, Berlin, Tel Aviv, London, New York (Prestel Verlag, München, 1998). Duncan Forbes (ed.), In the Shadow of Tyranny (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2013). Colin Ford, “Dorothy Bohm, A Life in Photography”, in Colin Ford, Ian Jeffrey, and Monica Bohm-Duchen, A World Observed 1940–2010 (London: Philip Wilson Pub­ lishers/Manchester Art Gallery, 2010). Ute Frevert, Women in German History (Oxford and New York: Berg Publishers, 1989). Otto Frisch, Obituary of Lotte Meitner-Graf, published in The Times, 2 May 1973. Amanda Hopkinson, “Gerti Deutsch of Vienna”, in Kurt Kaindl (ed.), Gerti Deutsch. Photographs 1935–1965 (Salzburg: Fotohof Edition, 2011). Tom Hopkinson, Picture Post 1938–1950 (London: Penguin Books, 1970). Kurt Kaindl (ed.), Gerti Deutsch. Photographs 1935–1965 (Salzburg: Fotohof Edition, 2011). Robert Kee, The Picture Post Album (London: Guild Publishing, 1989). Juan Mandelbaum and Clara Sandler, “Grete Sternˮ, in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia. 1 March 2009, Jewish Women’s Archive, . Angela Madesani, “Life as Witness: Notes on the Photographic Works of Lucia Moholy between Still Life and Portraiture”, in Angela Madesani, Nicoletta Ossana Cadadini, Angelo Maggi, Stefania Schibeci and Antonio Negri, Lucia Moholy: Between Photo­ graphy and Life (Centro Culturale Chiasso, Italy: Silvana Editoriale, 2012). Angela Madesani, Nicoletta Ossana Cadadini, Angelo Maggi, Stefania Schibeci and Antonio Negri, Lucia Moholy: Between Photography and Life (Centro Culturale Chiasso, Italy: Silvana Editoriale, 2012). John March, Women Exile Photographers, Thesis MA by Research, University of Leeds, 2017. Meitner-Graf Archive (online): lottemeitnergraf.com/the-archive.html Lucia Moholy, One Hundred Years of Photography 1839–1939 (London: Penguin, 1939). Grace Robertson, Photojournalist of the 50s (London: Virago Press, 1989). Angelika Schaser, “Gendered Germany”, in James Retallack (ed.), Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Robin Schuldenfrei, “Images in Exile: Lucia Moholy’s Bauhaus Negatives and the Construction of the Bauhaus Legacy”, in History of Photography, 37, No. 2, May 2013 Amy Schulman, Memory and Identity: The Émigré Photographer, Lisel Haas (1898–1989), MPhil thesis, University of Birmingham, 2010. Annamarie Stapleton, “Hans and Elsbeth Juda”, in Christopher Breward and Claire Wilcox, The Ambassador Magazine (London: V & A Publishing, 2012). Val Williams, The Other Observers (London: Virago Press, 1986).

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Chapter 4

“Quite content to be called a good craftsman” – an Exploration of some of Wolf Suschitzky’s Extensive Contributions to the Field of Applied Photography between 1935 and 1955  Julia Winckler This essay foregrounds Austrian émigré Wolf Suschitzky’s contributions to the field of applied photography in Britain between 1935 and 1955. In particular, it focuses on three practical manuals on photographing children and animals, and two illustrated children’s books. A second aim of this essay has been to track some of the creative professional émigré circles within which Suschitzky moved during his first decade in exile and to explore how these intersected and diverged. Suschitzky also developed strong working relations with respected members of the British establishment, who supported his career by commissioning work from him.

1

Introduction

The aim of this essay is to emphasise some of the unique and lesser-known contributions made by émigré photographer and cameraman Wolf Suschitzky to the field of applied photography in Britain at the outset of his career.1 His productivity resulted in a vast range of outputs across different media during the immediate prewar, war and postwar years.2 A selection of projects are placed within a wider context of outputs in this period; where possible, a chronological order is followed, drawing on original publications. Of particular interest is Suschitzky’s own early account of how he came to take up photography “as a trade”, which accompanied a feature on his photographic contributions in the book The Man Behind the Camera (1948), edited by fellow émigré writer, photographer, and historian Helmut Gernsheim. Recorded conversations between 1 The quotation in the title comes from the “Introduction”, in Norman Hall & Basil Burton (eds.), Suschitzky, Great Photographs Series, Vol. 1 (London: Photography [1954]). 2 For example, Suschitzky took portraits, including of H. G. Wells, for feature articles in Illustrated. See Helmut Gernsheim, The Man Behind the Camera (London: The Fountain Press, 1948), 137. See also footnote 3.

© Julia Winckler, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_006

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2001 and 2015 with Suschitzky are also used as well as the transcript of a short documentary, Children are the Future (2016), in which Suschitzky reflected specifically on his early work photographing children.3 2

Life in Exile: Early Career and Professional and Social Circles in London

A second objective of this essay is to track and make visible some of the extensive social and professional circles that Suschitzky was able to develop at the start of his career in the first decade of exile: circles which interconnected but also diverged through a range of work projects. Suschitzky quickly succeeded in forging substantial professional and personal connections with other émigrés, including as already mentioned Helmut Gernsheim as well as Stefan Lorant, and he also became a close friend of Peter de Mendelssohn. Shortly after the war, his photographs were used for a children’s book produced by Adprint (1946), and in a Focal Press Photo Guide edited by Andor Krazna-Krausz (1952) and further discussed below. Remarkably, Suschitzky also succeeded in working with well-established British figures in the book publishing and social documentary worlds, despite having arrived in Britain as an outsider. From 1937 onwards, he found work with the renowned documentary film director and writer Paul Rotha and also met the biologist Julian Huxley, then secretary of the Zoological Society in London, as well as the writer and Picture Post photography editor, Harry Deverson, all of whom supported his early career. The prestigious Studio Ltd publishing house brought out two of his wartime photography guides.4 This particular work would lead to Suschitzky’s inclusion in The Studio annual of camera art, Modern Photography 1941–42, which represented a major accolade and achievement, especially since he had emigrated to England only six years earlier. Suschitzky’s introduction to London’s intellectual photographic circles was of course aided by his older sister, the photographer Edith Tudor-Hart who had already emigrated to London in 1933.5 Much research has been carried out on Tudor-Hart in recent years, and her studies at the Bauhaus in Dessau with Walter Peterhans are now well documented.6 In 1948, Suschitzky publicly 3 4 5 6

This was based on two recorded conversations on 16 December 2014 and 15 February 2015, filmed and edited by Tony Wallis and the author. Gernsheim, op. cit., 134. On Tudor-Hart, see chapter 3 in this volume. For an in-depth account of Edith Tudor-Hart’s early years in London, see Duncan Forbes, “Edith Tudor-Hart in London”, in Duncan Forbes, Anton Holzer and Roberta McGrath,

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credited his sister for his career choice: “it was my sister who gave me the idea of going in for photography, and I should like to record this gratefully.”7 Their Jewish Socialist parents had given Wolf and Edith a progressive Viennese upbringing, instilling in both a strong sense of social justice, which was palpable in their photographic sensitivity.8 His sister was instrumental in his coming to England as she had herself moved to London in 1933 to escape political persecution in Vienna after marrying the English medical doctor Alexander TudorHart. In order to support herself and her young son, Tommy, born in 1935, she set up a portrait studio in central London after her husband chose to join the International Brigades in Spain in 1936, leaving his wife and young son behind.9 Edith Tudor-Hart’s work was more overtly political, as Suschitzky commented later: Edith saw her photography not so much as an art form but as a weapon in the fight against injustice in the world, against poverty and the appalling conditions she saw around her.10 However, Suschitzky’s own work demonstrated a deep humanist awareness early on, which is tangible in a short text written in 1948 for Gernsheim’s publication (referred to above) where he made a case for the photographer’s ability to affect change through his or her work:

7

8

9 10

Edith Tudor-Hart, In the Shadow of Tyranny (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013), 65–74. For a detailed account of Suschitzky’s early years in London, see Duncan Forbes, “Wolf Su­ schitzky in Vienna and London: Photographic Exchange and Continuity”, in Michael Omasta, Brigitte Mayr, Ursula Seeber (eds.), Wolf Suschitzky Photos (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2006). See Gernsheim, op. cit., 133. Dissuaded by his father from studying zoology, as there would not be “the slightest chance of being able to earn a living” in the sciences in Vienna, Su­ schitzky took up a three-year course at the Austrian State School of Photography in ­Vienna, where the focus was on technique. Their father, Wilhelm Suschitzky, had been co-founder, with his brother Philipp, of Vienna’s first Socialist bookshop and publishing house. For an in-depth account see Julia Winckler, “Gespräch mit Wolfgang Suschitzky, Fotograf und Kameramann”, in Exilfor­ schung: Ein Internationales Jahrbuch, Bd 21: Film und Fotografie (München: edition text+ kritik, 2003), 254–279. Edith Tudor-Hart shared a portrait studio with the South African photographer Vera Elkan. See Michael Berkowitz, Jews and Photography in Britain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015), 75. See Suschitzky in Edith Tudor-Hart, Das Auge des Gewissens, Foto-Taschenbuch 6 (Berlin: Nishen, 1986), 10.

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a photographer who has sympathy with social conditions and has been brought into contact with human suffering has in the photo document a significant instrument for expressing his feelings, and usually takes sides.11 Suschitzky came to London for the first time in 1934, but was unable to stay without a work permit. He took one of his most reproduced photographs, that of a young couple having afternoon tea at Lyons Corner House, Tottenham Court Road, during that first visit. In order to escape the rise of fascism and antisemitism in Vienna, Suschitzky then spent a year in Amsterdam with his first wife, the Dutch photographer Puck Voute, and made portraits of children in the Jewish quarter, employing a sympathetic style that was to define his portraiture work.12 He also obtained paid work producing picture postcards with an old wooden field camera, which enabled him to explore the country by train, but without “a chance to take the views I liked or to wait for the most favourable light”.13 Suschitzky returned to London alone in 1935 on a student permit. He recalled buying a German Primarflex camera from Pelling and Cross on Baker Street in order to explore London as an observer.14 The cornerstones of ­Suschitzky’s photographic practice had been established early on. He excelled at portraiture and social documentary. His observational skills, patience and attention to detail came to define his approach; his early London photographs echo the work of other socially engaged photographers such as Bill Brandt, himself an émigré photographer, Willy Ronis and Brassaï, whose Paris de Nuit (1932) series he admired. Suschitzky would capture the changing geography of London in visual form: its traditional working-class neighbourhoods and modernisation, cityscapes, factories, commercial arteries and places of leisure, echoing Walter Benjamin’s urban ‘flâneur’, the modern spectator and investigator of city spaces, who explores expanding European cities like London or Paris on foot, registering street scenes.15 Suschitzky later observed that “a for11 12

13 14 15

See Gernsheim, op. cit., 136. For further comments, see “Wolf Suschitzky: ‘Ich bin noch immer ein Sozialist’”, in Anna Auer, Fotografie im Gespräch (Passau: Dietmar Klinger Verlag, 2001), 285–293. Suschitzky included one of the portraits he had taken in 1934 in Amsterdam’s Jewish Quarter in his 2014 monograph along with a caption noting that there had been “70,000 Jews in Amsterdam before the war. Only a few survived”. See Michael Omasta and ­Brigitte Mayr (eds), Seven Decades of Photography (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2014), 95. Gernsheim, op. cit.., 134. Winckler, conversation with Wolf Suschitzky, 15 February 2015. On the ‘flâneur’, see Walter Benjamin, Das Passagenwerk, Gesammelte Schriften V.5.1 (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1982), 524–69. Benjamin refers to Edgar Allan Poe’s short story The Man of the Crowd (1840), in which a narrator observes London, by then the largest city in

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eigner notices things that the local people take for granted and do not observe any more. So anything that is slightly strange to them draws their attention.”16 Documenting parallel and conflicting worlds through his lens, Suschitzky’s photographs made visible places of wealth and poverty revealing an older London about to disappear and capturing a sense of alienation palpable in the faces of some of the passers-by. He photographed inhabitants of slum tenements in Stepney, portraits of shopkeepers, city workers, road menders, children at play, the sky over London and the River Thames weaving through the city. These street scenes reveal the city as an ever-changing, fluid landscape and a complex labyrinth of structures and document its anonymised interactions. In this series, the interpretation of the relationships within the photographs is left largely to the viewer, although class differences and social injustices are subtly underlined. Photographer and writer Lucia Moholy who had emigrated to Britain in 1934 from Germany, described how the photographic medium had impacted on British culture and society during the 1920s and 1930s, highlighting the way it had inserted itself into all aspects of everyday life.17 In her prescient survey, A Hundred Years of Photography (1939), she explained that due to the “growing demand in pictorial reading” media outlets had to call upon international networks of “individual photographers, news agencies, photographic agencies” to supply a constant flow of photographic images.18 Moholy concluded that: life without photographs is no longer imaginable. They pass before our eyes and awaken our interest; they pass through the atmosphere, unseen and unheard, over distances of thousands of miles. They are in our lives, as our lives are in them.19 Exiled publishers, writers and photographers brought sensitivity, knowledge and a keen awareness of innovations within the world of publishing with them to Britain from 1934 onwards. The small portable Leica had placed the German-speaking world at the forefront of illustrated magazine and picture book

16 17 18

19

the world, at first from a café window, and then through its busy streets, following in the footsteps of other pedestrians. Wolf Suschitzky quoted in Winckler, op. cit. (2003), 276. See Chapter 3 “Women Photographers” above. See Lucia Moholy-Nagy, A Hundred Years of Photography (London: Penguin, 1939), 176. Moholy-Nagy noted that between 1928 and 1938, 76,000 pictures had been transmitted between London and Manchester by the Daily Express newspaper alone (177), and that by 1939 the newspaper had attained a circulation of 2,270,00 copies, which highlighted the increased circulation of photographs in the printed press (174). Moholy-Nagy, op. cit., 178.

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publishing. Photo historian Irme Schaber describes the considerable influence émigré editors and photographers had on the landscape of British journalism.20 Stefan Lorant, who had arrived in 1934, had the single greatest influence on the magazine landscape. He initially worked as the editor of Odham’s Weekly Illustrated from 1934, before founding Lilliput in 1937 and then in 1938 becoming editor-in-chief at the new magazine Picture Post. His modernist continental outlook and style and knowledge of technical innovations helped tell and sell stories through pictures. Suschitzky was aware that both his own and his sister’s photographic styles were “slightly different from the photography people were used to in the UK in the 1930s. Photography in Britain was very pictorial still, romantic, imitated painting.”21 Like his sister, and fellow émigré photographers, Suschitzky tried to make a living as a jobbing photographer and sought out editorial commissions. He would sometimes help Tudor-Hart in her studio, and they collaborated on several prewar commissions.22 Edith Tudor-Hart had successfully placed picture stories with Lilliput and Picture Post, and so in 1937 her brother showed his London portfolio to Stefan Lorant, who was duly impressed by the beauty of the photographs, but told him that he was not a real photojournalist, as he “knew too much about photography itself”.23 Lorant introduced him to the leading documentary filmmaker, writer and editor Paul Rotha, who frequently collaborated with the pioneer of British documentary film, John Grierson. Ro-

20

21 22

23

Irme Schaber, “Pioniere mit Langzeitwirkung: Der Einfluss der fotografischen Emigration der NS-Zeit auf die englische Fotolandschaft und Bildpresse am Beispiel von Kurt Hutton, Felix H. Man, Wolf Suschitzky und weiteren Fotoschaffenden”, in J. M. Ritchie (ed.), German-speaking Exiles in Great Britain. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 3 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2001), 73–86. Winckler, op. cit. (2003), 259–60. This included a commission to photograph London’s new South London Women’s Hospital (which no longer exists) and to document a new apartment block in Kensal Rise Estate and kindergarten, built by the Gas Light and Coke Coy [sic]. See Winckler, op. cit. (2003). Three photographs of London street scenes taken by Suschitzky and one by Tudor-Hart of a nursery school were included in the RIBA Rebuilding Britain exhibition catalogue (London: Lund Humphries, 1943). The catalogue was published in February 1943 to accompany an exhibition of the same name at the National Gallery, London. Their inclusion in this important catalogue and exhibition highlights the fact that their humanist photography work had become known and was valued. Winckler, op. cit. (2003), 266. Suschitzky would eventually also be commissioned to provide picture essays to Lilliput, e.g. Vol. 23, No. 4, Issue 136, ‘Granite City’, 85–90, which comprises six photographs taken of Aberdeen.

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tha was equally impressed by Suschitzky’s portfolio and invited him to work as an unpaid camera assistant for the Strand Film Unit.24 3

Photographing Children and Animals

Suschitzky assisted Rotha’s crew at London Zoo, thus learning new camera techniques and how to film on location. Rotha had been greatly inspired by the modernist movement and was keen to explore the “possibility of opening up the screen on the real world”, which had been more difficult to achieve through films made in studios.25 The 23-year-old Suschitzky was impressed by the social realism and sense of purpose in Rotha’s and Grierson’s films, as well as their social conscience, recognising that “they wanted to teach and educate.”26 Importantly, he was not only able to make still images at the zoo, but was given opportunities to “enter cages and enclosures whenever possible” to get closer to the animals and to create close-up portraits.27 This afforded him new photographic opportunities as a freelancer, leading to work for Animal and Zoo Magazine, which was connected with the Zoological Society and also with the Geographical Magazine.28 Suschitzky’s innovative approach to photographing animals and children was a skill he honed most extensively at the London Zoo and its other site, Whipsnade. In 1939, 25 of his animal photographs were included in Lorna Lewis’ children’s book, The Children’s Zoo; he only received picture credits. Published by Country Life Ltd, this book comprised a series of photographs of children interacting and playing with pet animals in the children’s area. They also gave insight into the zoo’s enclosures showing visitors feeding baby goats, donkeys, wolf cubs, rabbits and baby antelopes.29 Extreme close-ups, unusual viewpoints and angles were other marks of ­Suschitzky’s photographs. Some of these photographs echo those taken in 24 25 26 27 28 29

See Forbes, op. cit. (2006), 8. Suschitzky still did not have a work permit, so could not be paid. See J. Roberts, The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998), 59. Winckler, op. cit. (2003), 270. Wolf Suschitzky, Photographing Animals (London & New York: Studio Ltd, 1941), 70. Suschitzky elaborates on the work for Animal and Zoo Magazine in Photographing Animals, 70. His photographs were used on the magazine’s cover, e.g. in September 1938 and May 1941. There is a lovely photograph of a girl feeding an antelope in this book. A second photograph of the same girl with antelope taken within moments of the other was reproduced in Suschitzky’s Photographing Animals, op. cit., 69.

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Figure 4.1 ‘Child with Lamb’, The Children’s Zoo, 1939

London streets; they also have a cinematic energy, as is the case with this photograph of a girl and lamb. By 1940, Suschitzky was an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, with regular commissions for Illustrated magazine, applying the disciplined, attentive approach developed earlier in commercial portraiture work. In Gerns­ heim’s 1948 book, Suschitzky evaluated his reportage work and commented that: I have done quite a lot of this too before the war, mostly for Illustrated. In this field the photographer has an opportunity to tell a story in pictures […] and a photographer with a conscience may not only inform but also influence public opinion […] at heart, however, I was never a real Press

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photographer – it needs good elbows in that job to push oneself forward, and that is a thing I hate to do.30 Unlike many fellow émigrés, Suschitzky, who had also been declared an ‘enemy alien’, was exempted from internment through working for Burroughs, a medical company for whom he photographed laboratories and did some advertising work. On a personal level, this time was very eventful for Suschitzky, as his mother was able to emigrate to join him and his sister in London, and he also met his second wife, Ilona Donat, through his sister.31 Suschitzky’s photography work attracted the attention of Geoffrey Holme at Studio Ltd., and he was asked to develop two photography manuals for the “How to Do It” series: Photographing Children (1940, no. 26)32 and Photographing Animals (1941, no. 29). Suschitzky was the only photographer to have two books published within this series, and in quick succession.33 Studio Ltd was an established British art publishing house, founded in 1893 by Charles Holme, and owned and directed by three generations of the Holme family over a 60year period.34 In 1948, Gernsheim paid tribute to the Holmes as patrons of photography, citing Charles Holme’s 1905 Art in Photography as a classic, praising his son Geoffrey for introducing the series Modern Photography in 1931 and his grandson Rathbone as editor of The Studio.35  Photographing Children included a special notice on the wartime economy standard of the publication, however the quality of the photographic reproductions was exceptionally high. Pictures were reproduced on special photo-

30 31

32 33

34 35

Suschitzky in Gernsheim, op. cit., 137. He first met Ilona, a Hungarian refugee, in his sister’s darkroom, when he went in to fetch some film. His sister was known to help new refugees by offering them temporary accommodation and work. The couple married in 1939 and had their first son, Peter, in July 1940 (personal communication with the author, 15 February 2015). In another recorded conversation, Suschitzky recalls their flat being firebombed. , last accessed 28 March 2017. Wolf Suschitzky, Photographing Children (London & New York: Studio Ltd, 1940). No. 8, Making a Photograph (1935), had been written by the pioneering American photographer Ansel Adams. The modernist German émigré photographer Walter Nurnberg, highly respected for his industrial and commercial photography, contributed The Science and Technique of Advertising Photography (1940, No. 25). Joanna Melvin, “Studio International magazine: Tales from Peter Townsend’s Editorial Papers 1965–1975”. Doctoral thesis, University College London 2013, 14. . Last accessed 9 April 2017. Gernsheim, op. cit., 5.

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graphic paper and inserted separately on the pages of each guide.36 This was due to the publisher’s basic concept of combining “high design standards and an international perspective” and a broad focus on “visual arts related fields in Britain”.37 Suschitzky recalled having “had nerve enough” to accept The Studio’s offer, and producing the book “with the help of a journalist friend […] who kindly assisted me in the writing of this book”.38 This writer was Harry J. Deverson, who had been working as photography editor for Picture Post, and Suschitzky recounts his admiration for the magazine, and meeting Deverson, in a 1990 interview recorded by photographic and cultural historian Val Williams.39 For both guides, Suschitzky drew on his growing portfolio, and three of the photographs previously included in The Children’s Zoo were reused in Photographing Animals; one photograph was reused in Photographing Children.40 Suschitzky was given the opportunity to share his craftsmanship with a wide audience and made his camera techniques and preference for panchromatic film accessible; he generously shared sketches and tips with readers and gave advice directed at amateurs and professionals alike. Photographing Children was divided into three chapters which dealt with the use of different types of cameras, film and gadgets, and photographic technique and approach. Frequently working with a close-up lens, he advocated the use of natural light, taking photographs outdoors, but also drawing on the use of flash or studio lights when required. At the same time, his philosophical outlook on the photographic process – not to press the shutter immediately but be patient – stemmed from his growing interest in documentary photography, and he 36

37 38 39

40

Photographing Children included a note on the potential “below the normal peace-time standard” of paper due to the war economy. Each guide lists a different address for the publisher as bomb damage caused by a German air raid in September 1940 forced Studio Ltd to move from 44 Leicester Square to 66 Chandos Place. Melvin, op. cit., 14. Gernsheim, op. cit., 134. The British Library Sound Archive. An Oral History of British Photography. Suschitzky, Wolfgang. (2 of 8) C459/2. Based on two interviews by Val Williams with Wolfgang Suschitzky on 9 February 1990 and 24 February 1990. Last accessed 9 April 2017. See the photograph titled ‘Guarding its Sleep’ of a girl with Nubian goat in Suschitzky, op. cit. (1941), 73. A slightly different crop of the same picture had previously been used in Lorna Lewis’ book The Children’s Zoo, (London: Country Life Ltd., 1939) but with added sepia toning. An unedited photograph of two deer was reproduced in Photographing Animals, 1941, 39. In The Children’s Zoo, this photograph had also been used, but the feet of another deer (which are just visible to the right in the 1941 publication) had been edited out.

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argued that “children should not be aware of the camera”.41 In a brief introduction on the history of child photography he explained that spontaneous portraits and “lively action pictures” had not really been possible until now.42 The child on the book’s cover was Tommy, photographed in 1936 when Suschitzky’s nephew was just five months old. Tommy also featured in the book having a bath aged nine months.43 In 2015 Suschitzky recalled: when I came to England in 1935, I found that most children were photographed once a year at the photographer’s, and they had to be in their best clothes and they had to sit still and look at the camera. Whereas I went to people’s houses to photograph them in their own surroundings and if possible I sent the mother out because they tended to interfere a bit, make the child smile which looked unnatural, or prevented me from photographing a child who cried and things like that. I wanted to make the child comfortable, because having a photograph taken is not always welcomed by children, but nobody cares about that.44 The guide also included a portrait of Ruth, a little girl holding a big apple, which was well known as it had already been used in 1938 to advertise the 64page weekly Illustrated magazine on a large billboard at Monument Underground station in London. Suschitzky recalled in the guide that “the advertisers claim that it is the largest enlargement ever made in Great Britain, perhaps in the world”. He explained that he took the child’s photograph “on such a hazy March day. We gave her a big apple which she found a little sour but enjoyed nevertheless”.45 In total, the guide featured 35 portraits of children, some taken at the zoo, which Suschitzky had described as “a photographers’ paradise”.46 He recalled watching the children’s tender and joyful reactions to the animals, as in the photograph of a little girl feeding an antelope, captioned ‘Making Friends’.47 41 42 43

44 45 46 47

Photographing Children, op. cit. (1940), 11. Ibid., 1940, 18. Ibid., 1940, 54. Suschitzky recalled this moment in the guide, explaining that “Tommy […] was photographed near a window, with two photoflood lamps in front of him at three feet distance. I stood on a chair almost directly above the bath, next to the lamps. The camera got away with a few splashes and was none the worse for it.” Personal communication, from transcript, February 2015. Photographing Children, op. cit. (1940), 52. Ibid., 1940, 70. A slightly different photograph of the same child feeding an antelope had already been used in the 1939 children’s book, The Children’s Zoo.

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Figure 4.2 ‘Making Friends’, Photographing Children, 1940

The guide also includes a portrait of nine-year-old child artist Plato Chan, taken at The Cooling Gallery on Bond Street, where the publisher Victor Gollancz had organised an exhibition of Plato’s work.48 Suschitzky described Plato as: certainly one of the most interesting children of his age I have ever met […] he nearly took my camera to bits, so interested was he in photography […] while I was operating, Plato made a lightning sketch of me with camera and lamps and all – a work of art completed in the same amount of time as it took me to take his photograph!49 The style of the guide reflected Suschitzky’s patience, empathy and understanding for children all of whom he wrote about with respect. But there was also a deeper political message in some of the photographs, and Suschitzky 48 49

See , accessed 30 March 2017. Plato is best known as the illustrator of The Good Luck Horse, by Chih-Yi (London: Whittlesey House, 1943). Photographing Children, op. cit. (1940), 74.

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Figure 4.3 ‘Open Air Class’, Photographing Children, 1940

noted that while the camera could be used “to record the loveliness of children”: it can also be used in the cause of children: it can demonstrate the need for more parks and playgrounds by picturing children playing in the streets. By pointed comparison of well-fed and ill-fed children the camera has power to give help to the unfortunates, to fight against child-labour, which is still far more widespread than is generally realised. The camera can show up bad and inadequate school-buildings and help in the campaign for better conditions generally.50 The guide concluded with a glossary of technical camera terms and some further book recommendations including Photography without Tears (1939) from Fountain Press. It is somewhat surprising that no other guides on how to photograph children were included in the list of further readings, especially since at least two others had just been published by Andor Krazna-Krausz’ Focal Press. In fact, one of Focal’s earliest photo guides, the 1938 book Snaps of Chil50

Ibid., 1940, 70.

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dren and How to Take Them also offered advice on taking natural-looking portraits. Written by the writer and cameraman Alex Strasser, it had originally been published in German in 1936 as Kinder-Bilder. Wie man sie macht. Richard Abel and Gordon Graham, authors of a volume on immigrant publishers, explain that following his arrival as an émigré in England in 1937, Focal’s founder, Krazna-Krausz relied “heavily on former contacts in Germany”.51 In 1939, Focal Press followed Strasser’s book up with Phototips on Children: The Psychology, the Technique and the Art of Child Photography, written by the émigré film critic Rudolf Arnheim and his wife Mary. The Arnheims also encouraged parents to capture their children unawares and unselfconsciously on film.52 A further 1939 Focal Press publication, Photographing People, written by the Dutch-British photographer Hugo van Wadenoyen, also included instructions on how to take natural portraits of children, advocating how important it was to “put the model at ease, never to give direct instructions and to be ready to seize the moment when it comes”.53 It is possible that Geoffrey Holme at Studio Ltd. was aware of these Focal Press guides and wanted to provide a competitive alternative publication, distinguished from the others by superior photographic printing quality. The guide focused both on the craft of picture making and offered accessible technical information for the reader, while showcasing photographs capturing children’s awareness and interaction with their immediate environment. Another plausible explanation for the surge in guides on how to photograph children is offered by Matthew Thomson, who discusses the image of the child “as an ideal subject” during wartime, and tracks the popularity of using images of children as “a symbol both of devastation and of future hope”.54 This could have given the main impetus to commission Suschitzky’s guide in 1940 as his co-author Harry Deverson had taken up work with the Photographic Division of the Ministry of Information, where he was “effectively the chief censor as most war pictures passed through his hands”.55 51 52 53 54 55

Richard Abel and Gordon Graham, (eds.), Immigrant Publishers: The Impact of Expatriate Publishers in Britain (London: Transaction Publishers, 2009), 103. Rudolf and Mary Arnheim, Phototips on Children: The Psychology, the Technique and the Art of Child Photography (London: Focal Press, 1939), 14. Hugo van Wadenoyen, Photographing People. Ways to New Portraiture (London & New York: The Focal Press, 6th edition, originally published 1939), 21. Mathew Thomson, Lost Freedom: The Landscape of the Child and the British Post-War Settlement (Oxford University Press, 2013), 34. . This blog is kept and updated by Steve Holland, and information on Deverson comes from this and additional personal correspondence with Holland, accessed 3 April 2017.

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Figure 4.4 Cover, Photographing Animals, 1941

In 1941 Photographing Animals (PA, 1941) was published. It included a foreword by Julian Huxley who endorsed Suschitzky’s animal photography. Huxley spoke about animal studies Suschitzky had made, and encouraged readers to enter “war-time photographic competitions” held at the London Zoo.56 The animal portraits transformed public perception of animals (both captive and domestic), as Suschitzky suggested a more personalised and sympathetic photographic style.

56

Wolf Suschitzky, op. cit. (1941), 8. Huxley and Suschitzky also collaborated on Kingdom of the Beast, written by Huxley and illustrated with Suschitzky’s photographs (London: Thames and Hudson, 1956). In 1958, Suschitzky took new photographs for another children’s book, A Little Golden Book: Wild Animals (New York: Simon and Schuster).

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I like to think of myself as a photographer of all things that are photographable, and in particular of children and animals – camera subjects which I find to have remarkable similarities.57 Suschitzky encouraged readers to use a small single-lens reflex camera, to adopt the point of view of the animals, and to photograph animals at their own level. He argued that it was important to treat each animal with respect and patience: [Animals] have wills of their own and it will cost you some effort to persuade them to react in the way you wish. And that brings you right back to the first rule of good photography – patience. If you wait for it, you’ll get along far better than the man or woman who tries to force the picture, tries to bully or goad the animal. You must begin, where it is possible, by putting the animal at its ease […] never ridicule the animal.58 The guide included 44 beautifully produced photographs, such as the gorilla baby ‘Meng’, an alligator, a Nubian goat, a peacock, sheep and rabbits and photographs of children at London’s Children’s Zoo. There is a tender double portrait of a girl with a Nubian goat sleeping in her lap, entitled “Guarding its Sleep” (PA 1941, 73). This feature of the zoo which combined “these two most attractive photographic subjects together – young animals and children” had been suspended during the war.59 The book was organised into nine sections, which covered the relationship between photographer and subject, composition, and included pictures of domestic pets, farm and zoo animals. Suschitzky included advice he had received from an art editor, who had requested “pictures of animals which make me feel I want to cuddle ’em” (PA 1941, 78): this usually meant photographs of kittens and puppies, which sold well in newspapers, magazines and advertising.60 The final section of the book explored whether animal photography can be made to pay; and Suschitzky shared some of the assignments he had been sent on; these included making pictures of laboratory mice and photographing England’s largest bee farm.61 Some of the animal portraits make the familiar look extraordinary, surreal and beautiful. The photograph simply captioned “Pig” is one such example. Describing pigs as “farmyard comedian[s]” (PA 1941, 68) 57 58 59 60 61

Wolf Suschitzky, op. cit. (1941), 10. [i.e. PA, 1941, 10] Ibid., 16–18. Ibid., 72. Ibid., 78. Ibid.

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Suschitzky cautioned keen photographers to “beware of over-exposing – your panchromatic film is very sensitive to the pig’s pink skin”.62 The publication of these two guides, coupled with ongoing magazine work for Illustrated led to two of the photographs (an animal portrait of a husky pup, and the portrait of baby Peter) being included in The Studio annual of camera art, Modern Photography 1941–42 which had been created and edited by Geoffrey Holme since 1931. 4

Documentary Film Work during Wartime

From 1939 onwards, the Crown Film Unit, under the Ministry of Information, had responsibilities for wartime propaganda, and commissioned a series of documentary films. By 1942 Suschitzky was again working as a cameraman at the invitation of the British documentary filmmaker Donald Alexander since many English colleagues had been called up. With Alexander and the female director, Budge Cooper, Suschitzky worked on Life Begins Again, shot in a hospital near Mansfield which focused on a doctor treating injured miners. This was followed by Debris Tunnelling with Kay Mander (1942–43), which instructed people how to help others out of the rubble of collapsed buildings after bombing raids.63 During 1944, Suschitzky worked on a series of newsreels for Worker and Warfront (1944).64 One of the biggest innovations within British social realist film had been the use of non-professional actors, including children. Suschitzky recalls the result: it was surprisingly successful to use ordinary people as actors, as they were familiar with what they were doing. It was the pioneering work of the early documentary movement that made these developments pos­ sible.65 62 63

64

65

Ibid., 68. In 1944, again with Mander, Suschitzky would also make New Builders, which was again produced by Paul Rotha. The documentary focused on young people learning to rebuild homes, and included some harrowing staged scenes of children lying under rubble. One such posed photograph of a young child was reprinted in Seven Decades of Photography (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2014), 90. For a detailed account of all the films, see Winckler 2003. The same year, a number of camera technicians who had met working with Rotha set up DATA (Documentary Technicians Alliance Ltd), the first cooperatively-run film unit, and Suschitzky was asked to join Cooper, Alexander and Jack Chambers. Personal communication, 2015.

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The first film that Suschitzky worked on as director of photography, as opposed to camera assistant, was the 1944 Ministry of Information documentary Children of the City, by Budge Cooper, produced by Paul Rotha.66 It focused on changes to the Education Act and alternative approaches to dealing with petty youth crime in Dundee. In addition to an engaging plot and humanist approach, which included the innovative use of non-professional child actors, the film is remarkable for several additional reasons: It was difficult to film on location and we had to make the camera move a lot. We made it move around corners, filmed from below and above to make the film more lively. It is quite difficult to keep the same mood in a scene. Nobody taught me how to do it, so at the beginning I used too much light.67 Revealing social deprivation, the film provided a strong critique of the difficult living conditions, recalled by Suschitzky: I remember a block of flats about ten stories high and each floor had one lavatory and one cold tap on the gangway, and I had never seen flats like that before. It was very unexpected in Britain to see such poor conditions for people to live in. There was one tap of cold water on each floor and toilets with eight people using it [sic].68 5

Adprint’s Children’s Book That Baby. The story of Peter and his new brother

Immediately after the war, Suschitzky embarked on film work abroad, but also continued to work on illustrated children’s books, for which he photographed in colour for the first time for Adprint Ltd, London. The genesis of Adprint has been documented in great detail by Anna Nyburg in her book Émigrés: The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain (2014). She discusses Adprint’s foundation by the Viennese publisher and émigré Wolfgang Foges, who decided to

66 67 68

Children of the City, 1944, Ministry of Information film, Scottish Education department, Paul Rotha productions, film director: Budge Cooper, director of photography: Wolf ­Su­schitzky. Personal communication, 15 February 2015. Personal communication, 15 February 2015.

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specialise in colour printing.69 Paul Rotha was also director of photography at Adprint.70 Rotha invited refugee photographers like Suschitzky and TudorHart to contribute as he thought they “were the ideal choice of photographers, as their social realism was still unusual in Britain”.71 After the war Adprint continued to publish, in particular children’s books. “The clarity and appeal of the colour photographs continued to be a selling point of the books”.72 In 2015, Suschitzky recalled that Adprint .

made some of the first colour photography books for children and used a camera which took three photographs at the same time with half transparent mirrors in it. Along with Zoltan Wegner, I was one of the photographers because they had seen some of my photographs of children.73 Suschitzky’s contributions to Adprint’s children’s book series included an illustrated book on the alphabet, and the 1946 picture book That Baby. The story of Peter and his new brother published by Collins, which is remarkable for its professional production quality and rich colour photography, storyboard and message.74 The plot, illustrated with 24 of Suschitzky’s photographs, focuses on a young boy, three-year-old Peter, whose parents are expecting a second child. Readers follow Peter over the course of a year as he adjusts to the arrival of a brother and addresses a range of conflicting and confusing emotions such as jealousy, excitement, envy, sibling rivalry and love. Peter is pictured playing with wooden toys but also smearing paints all over his face and clothes in an act of jealousy, as he anxiously awaits the arrival of his sibling, Stephen. Susch­ itzky later recalled that the book had been “found to be very useful by parents who wanted to introduce the problem [of a new sibling] to their young son or daughter”.75 No doubt the book’s success and sensitive, empathetic, child-focused narrative was due to the fact that the photographs had been made in the Hampstead 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Anna Nyburg, Émigrés: The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain (London: Phaidon, 2014), 151. Ibid.,152. Ibid. Ibid.,153. See transcript of personal communication, 15 February 2015. Zoltan Wegner was the first husband of Heather Anthony, who was to become Suschitzky’s long-term partner. Wolf Suschitzky and Liselotte Frankl, That Baby. The story of Peter and his new brother (Adprint, London & Glasgow: Collins, 1946).This children’s book was produced by Adprint and published by Collins. . Last accessed 8 April 2017.

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Figure 4.5 1946

‘Peter in the Playroom’, That Baby. The story of Peter and his new brother,

nursery of Austrian-Jewish émigrée Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud. The text was written by Liselotte Frankl, a Viennese psychoanalyst. Frankl, who had received a PhD in Vienna in 1935, immigrated to London where she worked together with Anna Freud at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic. Freud had set up a war nursery in 1941, in order to respond to the needs of traumatised young children, including refugees.76 The book provided a rare insight into the nursery and included pictures of the children’s playroom and dining area. The story included outdoor scenes of Peter and his mother, a bus ride, shopping trip, and afternoon tea, all intended to make Peter feel special. The book was child-centred and reflected Frankl’s training as a children’s analyst, and her ability to shape the narrative to reflect the uncertainties of childhood.77 By 76 77

At one point Anna Freud’s nursery provided refuge to 100 children who had lost their homes during the Blitz. He continued to receive commissions to work on children’s books; most notable amongst these was Wolfgang Suschitzky and Brian MacMahon, Brendan of Ireland (London:

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1946, Suschitzky had become a father again, and of course was also aware of Maria Montessori’s work through his sister, who had previously studied with Montessori. 5.1 The Man behind the Camera Suschitzky articulated his respectful approach to children and image-making in the text he contributed to Gernsheim’s aforementioned book, The Man Behind the Camera: I much prefer my subject to take up a favourable position of its own accord instead of having to coax it into position. And children and animals do not need much coaxing. What they need is understanding and sympathy.78 Gernsheim had worked at the Warburg Institute during the war, and had been commissioned by Fountain Press, a small publishing company headed by Arthur C. Farr, to write a practical guide to photography that would recognise the medium as ‘an independent art’.79 He praised new documentary realist approaches in particular, and championed the use of photography as “an expression of and contribution to our time”.80 The book had a playful modernist cover design created by John Bainbridge, depicting a studio photographer whose self-portrait was refracted in the lens of his own camera.81 Gernsheim’s book focused on the aims, ideals and methods of “nine famous photographers”, three of whom were émigrés. Alongside photographic and written contributions by Suschitzky, Felix H. Man and Gernsheim, the book featured work by German-born E. O. Hoppé, Cecil Beaton, Angus McBean, Harold White, J. Allan Cash and the only female photographer, K. M. Parsons. Rathbone Holme, son of Geoffrey Holme, had replaced his father as art editor 78 79

80 81

Methuen & Co Ltd, 1961). See Gernsheim, op. cit., 135. See Gernsheim, op. cit.,13. Michael Berkowitz (see footnote 9 above) tracked Gernsheim’s publishing experience with Fountain Press in much detail in Jews and Photography in Britain, (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). Here he explains that Fountain Press began to publish photography books from the 1930s onwards (see Michael Berkowitz, 2015, 226). Prior to the publication of The Man Behind the Camera, Gernsheim had already written two photography books for Fountain Press: The New Photo Vision (London, 1942) and Julia Margaret Cameron (London, 1948), the first comprehensive survey of the photographer. Gernsheim, op. cit. Bainbridge, who had moved to Britain in 1945 from Australia, became a well-known poster artist and commercial designer, including for London Underground.

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at The Studio and, in the book’s foreword, made a case for creative photographic practices based on camera control and subject knowledge. It is possible that Holme had suggested Suschitzky for inclusion in the book on the basis of the success of the two earlier photography manuals; but equally, Gernsheim would have been familiar with the success of Suschitzky’s photographic documentary work, on whose character and output he commented generously in the book: Although Suschitzky makes no claim for his work and modestly suggests, “it is usually the sitter who makes the picture – whether human or animal. You have only to wait for the right moment”, we know better. A picture does not make itself but depends on the hundred-and-one things which constitute the ingenuity and ability of the man who sees, and who has complete control over his instrument. This of course applies equally to all Suschitzky’s other work: reportage and documentary photography.82 The book included six of Suschitzky’s photographs, representing the full range of his visual sensitivity and technical skill: the street photograph captioned ‘Roadmenders’ from the 1935 London series, two animal portraits, a baby photograph, and two pictures taken on location in Yugoslavia while working on The Bridge with Jack Chambers for the British Foreign Office.83 6

The Making of Focal Press guide All About Taking Baby (1952)

At the invitation of Andor Krazna-Krausz’ Focal Press Suschitzky made a further Photo Guide that was published in January 1952.84 The project proved most successful, and in 1955 another 4,000 copies were issued, bringing the total number to 20,000. On the back of the guide was a portrait of Suschitzky himself with this short introductory text: 82 83

84

Gernsheim, op. cit., 73. Suschitzky took all the photographs for the children’s book, The Flying Poodle, with a story written by Roland Collins (London: Harvill Press, 1951). By then, he had returned to black and white photography, the form he kept to for the rest of his long career. This work led to a portfolio of ten poodle portraits being included in the picture book Poodles (London: Wolfe Publishing Ltd, 1960), which included photographs by Sheila Harrison and was edited by Harry Deverson. After the war, Deverson had become picture editor at the Sunday Times and then managing editor at Wolfe Publishing Ltd. Wolf Suschitzky, All About Taking Baby (London: Focal Press, 1952). Reading recommendations included further Focal Press publications compiled by Hugo van Wadenoyen, All About Children Outdoors, All About Children Indoors, Photographing People, as well as Walter Nurnberg’s Lighting for Portraiture.

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Figure 4.6 Cover of All About Taking Baby, 1952

Suschitzky hails from Vienna, where he picked up his trade at the Venerable G.L.V [Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt], the world’s first training and research Institute to be devoted to photography. In 1937 he began camera work on a whole series of famous British documentary films. His pet still subjects never ceased to be children and animals […] His work and personality radiate the unfailing competence and quiet modesty of a man who wouldn’t know how to do a poor job.  All About Taking Baby included seventeen photographs of babies and toddlers, and a photograph of Suschitzky’s son Peter, aged only two weeks, a baby and nurse in hospital, a woman breastfeeding, and toddlers learning to take their first steps.85 Detailed technical advice and drawings were accompanied by a

85

Suschitzky, op. cit. (1952), 17.

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section on child development, one on child psychology and suggestions on how to keep photographic diaries to map progress. Accompanied by the caption “hands show character right from the first day”, the guide reproduced a photograph of a one-month-old baby on its cover. In 2015, Suschitzky, at the age of 103, reflected on his photography of young children and his long career: I have always liked children, especially babies. If you look at the toes of babies they are pretty and almost fully formed for the future. Children are the future of any country and to see them learning, roaming around and twisting all the buttons and pushing all the drawers in and out – they really want to learn about their surroundings and do a lot of research. It is important to give children some confidence in their existence.86 7

Conclusion

From 1950 onwards, following the success of Rotha’s fiction debut, No Resting Place, filmed on location in Ireland, Suschitzky’s camerawork took precedence over the stills work. In 1954, Photography, a leading European monthly magazine, launched a new series called ‘Great Photographs’, and its editors, Norman Hall and Basil Burton, made Suschitzky’s work the subject of their first volume, simply titled, Suschitzky: Great Photographs. The volume comprised 24 black and white photographs spanning two decades, and the editors introduced Suschitzky as “undoubtedly one of the greatest of international photographers, in spite of his modest description of himself as being ‘quite content to be called a good craftsman’”.87 The fact that within 20 years of his arrival in Britain, Suschitzky managed to gain substantial success as a cameraman and still photographer across a variety of media platforms, and had achieved this as an émigré outsider, represented a major success. This signature modesty defined his long career and would sometimes mask his immeasurable technical abilities which he continued to quietly perfect. He maintained a keen eye for composition and showed 86 87

From transcript, February 2015, personal communication with Julia Winckler and Tony Wallis. Hall and Burton, op. cit. The guide includes child portraits of Suschitzky’s daughter Julia, page 16, and son Misha , page 20.

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formidable adaptability to working on location, always rising to new chal­ lenges, and continued to thrive professionally across seven productive decades.

Dedication

The author would like to dedicate this essay to the memory of Wolf Suschitzky (1912–2016) and photographer and documentary filmmaker Tony Wallis (1938– 2016), both much missed.

Works Cited

Richard Abel and Gordon Graham (eds.), Immigrant Publishers: The Impact of Expa­ triate Publishers in Britain (London: Transaction Publishers, 2009). Anna Auer, Fotografie im Gespräch (Passau: Dietmar Klinger Verlag, 2001). Michael Berkowitz, Jews and Photography in Britain (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015). Duncan Forbes, “Wolf Suschitzky in Vienna and London: Photographic Exchange and Continuity”, in Wolf Suschitzky, Photos (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2006). Duncan Forbes, “Edith Tudor-Hart in London”, in Duncan Forbes, Anton Holzer and Roberta McGrath, Edith Tudor-Hart, In the Shadow of Tyranny (Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz, 2013). Helmut Gernsheim, The Man Behind the Camera (The Fountain Press: London, 1948). Lorna Lewis and Wolf Suschitzky, The Children’s Zoo (London: Country Life Ltd., 1939). Joanna Melvin, Studio International magazine: Tales from Peter Townsend’s editorial papers, 1965–1975, Doctoral thesis, University College London, 2013. Anna Nyburg, Émigrés: The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain (London: Phai­ don, 2014). John Roberts, The Art of Interruption: Realism, Photography and the Everyday (Man­ chester: Manchester University Press, 1998) Irme Schaber, “Pioniere mit Langzeitwirkung: Der Einfluss der fotografischen Emigra­ tion der NS-Zeit auf die englische Fotolandschaft und Bildpresse am Beispiel von Kurt Hutton, Felix H. Man, Wolf Suschitzky und weiteren Fotoschaffenden”, in J. M. Ritchie (ed.), German-speaking Exiles in Great Britain. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 3 (Amsterdam/New York: Rodopi, 2001). Wolf Suschitzky, Photographing Children (London & New York: Studio Ltd, 1940). Wolf Suschitzky, Photographing Animals (London & New York: Studio Ltd, 1941).

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Wolf Suschitzky and Liselotte Frankl, That Baby. The story of Peter and his new brother (Adprint, London & Glasgow: Collins, 1946). Wolf Suschitzky, All About Taking Baby (London: Focal Press, 1952). Wolf Suschitzky and Brian MacMahon, Brendan of Ireland (London: Methuen & Co Ltd, 1961). Wolf Suschitzky, Photos (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2006). Wolf Suschitzky, Seven decades of Photography (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2014). Wolf Suschitzky, Films (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2010). Matthew Thomson, Lost Freedom: The Landscape of the Child and the British Post-War Settlement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). Edith Tudor-Hart, Das Auge des Gewissens, Foto-Taschenbuch 6 (Berlin: Nishen, 1986). Hugo van Wadenoyen, Photographing People. Ways to New Portraiture (London & New York: The Focal Press, 6th edition, originally published 1939). Julia Winckler, “Gespräch mit Wolfgang Suschitzky, Fotograf und Kameramann”, in Exilforschung: Ein Internationales Jahrbuch, Band 21: Film und Fotografie (München (edition text+kritik, 2003). Julia Winckler, “The First Rule of Photography is Patience: the photographs of Wolf Suschitzky”, in Michael Omasta and Brigitte Mayr (eds), Seven Decades of Photo­ graphy (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2014). Julia Winckler, “The Photography of Wolf Suschitzky”, in LIP: London Independent Photography, Number 18, Winter 2004/5.



Filmography

 Children of the City, Ministry of Information film, Scottish Education department, Paul Rotha productions, film director: Budge Cooper, director of photography: Wolf Suschitzky, 1944.  Children are the Future, documentary film with Wolf Suschitzky, editor: Tony Wallis, director: Julia Winckler, London, 2016.

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Chapter 5

Navigating Wolf Suschitzky’s Charing Cross Road  David Low While a sizeable achievement, the series of photographs made by Viennese exile Wolf Suschitzky on London’s Charing Cross Road in the 1930s was never published as a book as originally intended and thus remains somewhat fluid and fragmentary in form. With this in mind, this essay takes its cue from street photography in order to explore the work, ‘wandering’ through Suschitzky’s photographic streets on the ‘hunt’ for chance encounters and striking visual motifs. It sets the series within a history of street photography, identifying a practice that involves elements of photojournalism and documentary without being constrained by either of those modes. Utilising Suschitzky’s own words while foregrounding the photographs themselves, it examines the series as a work of social observation that in turn might provide observations on the photographer. It suggests that the series might be considered a visual record not only of a particular time and place but also of the character of Suschitzky himself.

Even many years after photographing Charing Cross Road, Wolf Suschitzky would still speculate about what the people he photographed might have come across as they trawled through the books that were lined up and piled high outside the famous bookshops.1 Indeed, the picture created by his photographs is of the road as a hunting ground, the site of pursuits absorbed and yet unfocused, hinging on chance encounter and often lacking any definite sense of the quarry. It was a place of people seeing what was there to be found and, in this way, the photographer himself emerges as one of the browsers, visually rummaging through the life of the street, waiting for an image to catch his eye. Suschitzky was, in a sense, himself after a book, but the photographic book on Charing Cross Road that he had imagined was never realised and the project was abandoned at the end of the 1930s. Selected photographs were published and exhibited over the years, with a volume finally appearing in the 1980s, but even that was, according to Suschitzky, “only the beginning of a much larger book”.2 It is thus a series that, unlike many of the other noteworthy 1 I would like to thank the following and acknowledge their contributions to this essay: Shulamith Behr; Anthony Hartley and The Photographers’ Gallery; the Suschitzky family, Heather Anthony and, above all, Wolf Suschitzky, in whose memory this is written. 2 Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road in the Thirties (London: Nishen Photography, 1989).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_007

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photographic works of the era, was not consolidated by publication and instead remains fragmentary. Being thus unmapped, it is a series that we must navigate for ourselves. This essay concerns itself with street photography, a fluid and ambiguous genre that can be related to others that Suschitzky has been associated with and which he either distanced himself from or accepted with a certain diffidence, namely photojournalism (“At heart […] I was never a real Press photographer”) and documentary (“a label as good as any”).3 Street photography might be considered both in terms of limits, producing spatial and temporal curtailments as it snatches instantaneous images from the flow of the city, and expanse, with it also tending towards a layering of time and space, as well as of images and experience, in a series of intertextual relationships. My purpose here is not to define the genre, nor is it to define Suschitzky where he himself resisted definition (choosing instead to describe himself “as a photographer of all things that are photographable”).4 Instead, I suggest that the street might offer us a space within which to explore aspects of his work. This essay, in short, adopts a street photographer’s approach by taking an attentive wander through Suschitzky’s photographs. Suschitzky was drawn to Charing Cross Road because a street devoted to bookshops had not existed in Vienna and was therefore “something extraordinary” for him.5 However, it also carried a connection to something already seen, for it recalled the socialist bookshop and publishing firm run by his secular Jewish family in one of Vienna’s largest working-class districts. With this background in mind, books no doubt stood as a particular symbol of culture and progressive politics.6 There were also, of course, other associations: books as targets, attacked as part of a wider assault on people and culture. These two worlds of the book collided in Vienna in Suschitzky’s absence. His father committed suicide in the wake of the socialist defeat in the 1934 February Uprising and Austrofascism bringing its authoritarian rule to bear on the bookshop and publishing firm. The business continued under the stewardship 3 Wolfgang Suschitzky, “W. Suschitzky”, in Helmut Gernsheim (ed.), The Man Behind the Camera (London: The Fountain Press, 1948), 133–137 (137); Wolf Suschitzky quoted in Brigitte Mayr and Michael Omasta, “A Lucky Man. Wolf Suschitzky – Photographer and Cameraman”, in Charmian Brinson, Richard Dove (eds.), German-speaking Exiles in the Performing Arts in Britain after 1933. Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 14 (2013), 253–273 (256). 4 Suschitzky, “W. Suschitzky”, 134. 5 Interview by author with Wolf Suschitzky, 22 April 2010 [Interview 2010]. 6 Duncan Forbes, “Wolfgang Suschitzky and the British Documentary Tradition in the 1930s”, in Anna Auer (ed.), Photography and Research in Austria: Vienna, the Door to the European East (Passau: Klinger, 2002), 107–117.

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of Suschitzky’s uncle until the Anschluss of 1938, at which point it was closed down and its books destroyed by the Nazis.7 Viewed thus, street photography becomes in part about the return of the past and of the images that preoccupy the photographer. As suggested by Brassaï, this subverts the theme of the hunt, with the photographer becoming the quarry, “hunted by his pictures”.8 It appears difficult not to view the photographs through the lens of time, and many viewers will read not a lost Vienna but a vanished London. When the photographs were published as Charing Cross Road in the Thirties in 1989, half a century after their making, they were situated temporally as much as spatially, emphasising the pastness of the world they represented. Indeed, the road has changed substantially over the years, owing in part to local redevelopment and the retrenchment of independent bookselling. Even at the time of writing the road is in the midst of being rebuilt, with the Crossrail development remaking the road’s north end while, in a separate development, the old Foyles building, the site of one of the photographer’s most famous images, has been demolished. Suschitzky is sometimes spoken of as a depictor of a “disappearing world”,9 a phrase that positions the photographer as an archivist who creates visual records as a means of embalming the imperilled, capturing sites, cultures and historical moments that will disappear. Street photography has, after all, often been concerned with salvage, with Charles Marville, for example, documenting the small, picturesque streets of medieval Paris that were about to give way to the grand boulevards of Baron Haussmann’s new city.10 However, Suschitzky did not picture his street as a memory. When asked if he had intended to document what would eventually vanish, his firm response was, “no, one doesn’t think ahead.”11 It was only with the passage of time, he suggested, that the photographs became historical documents. He himself had imagined his photographs as another kind of document, “the reflection of the contemporary scene.”12 Charing Cross Road appears to have been a perfect place for the candid photography of everyday life. “The pavements are always filled with hurrying crowds,” wrote H. V. Morton, the wandering chronicler of London life of the era, “and with their backs to the world stand the bookmen, the book readers, 7 8 9 10 11 12

Mayr and Omasta, op. cit., 256. Brassaï, Camera in Paris (London and New York: The Focal Press, 1949), 10. Mayr and Omasta, op. cit., 258. For Charles Marville and the “preservation aesthetic”, see Sabrina Hughes, “Imag(in)ing Paris for Posterity”, in Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 10, 2 (2013), 1–15. Interview 2010. Gernsheim, op. cit., 136.

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Figure 5.1 Photograph by Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road, London, 1936

the book hunters, the book tasters, the book maniacs […] completely oblivious that they are not standing in an empty street.”13 Morton’s ‘bookmen’ seem easily recognisable in Suschitzky’s series, a central example being the famous photograph of a bowler-hatted man lost in his book on the pavement’s edge, the Foyles sign in the background. Lingering in a state of distraction, his eyes filled with the pages of his book (as reflected in his glasses), the man forms the very picture of obliviousness. He is but one of many photographed by Suschitzky, people so wrapped up in their own individual quests that they fail to realise that they have become the object of a hunt of a different kind. Yet Suschitzky’s is by no means an aggressive pursuit, for he instead emphasised the element of chance, speaking of himself as an observer who preferred to “come across” his photographs. In what can be read as a manifesto statement of sorts (which also exhibits his wry playfulness), Suschitzky wrote, “I do not like arranging my vic13

H. V. Morton, In Search of London (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1951), 315.

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tims too much, but prefer to wait for the right moment with considerable patience.”14 As already stated, he did not see himself as a photojournalist, a label that stems from his freelance work for the illustrated journals Picture Post, Lilliput and, above all, Illustrated, for it needed “good elbows in that job to push oneself forward, and that is a thing I hate to do”.15 Along with a sense of the self-effacement that was one of Suschitzky’s cardinal qualities, we have here an indication of differences between photographic modes. While photojournalists strive to get close to a central event, street photographers stand back and allow the small vignettes of daily life to unfold around them. It is perhaps significant that Suschitzky frequented Charing Cross Road “on days off when there was no work”.16 On those days he could pursue a practice different from the photo essays that ran in the illustrated press (indeed, he recalled being told by the famed editor Stefan Lorant that, being a creator of “individual photos rather than series”, he was not a photojournalist).17 His street work offered small glimpses of the metropolis, such as can be seen in his photograph of a road mender laying wooden blocks, framed by two men, their backs to the camera, who have stopped to watch. We are here granted a view, as we often are by Suschitzky, of Charing Cross Road as a “paradise for loiterers”.18 It is a scene based around a daily sight, but it is also about sight itself and the discreet work of observation, with the interested bystanders becoming stand-ins for the photographer himself. Suschitzky’s photograph of a milkman outside the Cameo Revudenews (a newsreel cinema once located on the lower end of Charing Cross Road) demonstrates an interest in transient effects and chance conjunctions of visual elements. Taken during a rainfall, the photograph captures the reflection of cinema light on the wet road, turning the image into a play of different textures and surfaces. Such visual concerns are much in evidence in further photographs from the series, and are perhaps most clearly on display in his mid-air capture of a woman’s legs as she jumps over a puddle. It is here in the attention to the fleeting moment that elements of the street photographic collide with the photojournalistic. The development of the light, portable small-format cameras that could be used quickly and unobtrusively, such as the Ermanox, 14 15 16 17 18

Norman Hall and Basil Burton (eds.), Suschitzky (London: Photography [1954]), n. p. Gernsheim, op. cit., 137. Interview 2010. Wolf Suschitzky. Interview, catalogue no. 26512 (Imperial War Museum Sound Archives, 1997). Raphael Samuel, “Wolf Suschitzky: Charing Cross Road in the Thirties”, in Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road in the Thirties (London: Nishen Photography, 1989), 2–4.

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Figure 5.2 Photograph by Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road, London, 1936

the Contax and the Leica, fuelled the development of both disciplines during this era. Suschitzky, however, never seemed fond of these models and preferred using the larger, but still relatively light, 6×6 Rolleiflex, a camera that allowed him greater scope for indulging his interest in people. With this, we enter a world of social observation, and we are shown that the road is not only a place for loiterers. The photograph of the milkman, like that of the road mender before it, dwells on visual effects and yet remains, ultimately, an image of labour, depicting a street of travails and traversals. Indeed, the composition is suggestive of the existence of different spheres, with Suschitzky’s eye being on the world that others might pass over in favour of the world of spectacle promised by neon lights. It is a world for which Suschitzky demonstrated a particular affinity, with the personal perspective playing a stated part in his work, for “a photographer who has sympathy with social conditions and has been brought into contact with human suffering has in the photodocument a significant instrument for expressing his feelings, and usually takes sides.”19 19

Gernsheim, op. cit., 136.

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The mass poverty of the era, and the feeling that it was being ignored, became epitomised by the Jarrow March of 1936, and although London was faring better than the north of the country at the time, Suschitzky still found on its streets the “same poverty as at home in Vienna, although perhaps on a larger scale”.20 In this context, his blind match seller, photographed on Charing Cross Road in the same year as the Jarrow March, takes on certain connotations. The blind form something of a recurring motif in street photography (the most famous example coming from Paul Strand, a photographer admired by Suschitzky) and have often been construed as metaphors for the photographer and the desire for invisibility.21 By contrast, traceable in the work of Suschitzky is a concern for the social invisibility of his subjects, and in this way they contend with what Siegfried Kracauer described as the “blind spots of the mind”, those things that “habit and prejudice prevent us from noticing”.22 As well as continuities between Vienna and London, Suschitzky also observed the differences, and like many others spoke of the exile being in a position to notice particular aspects of British life and culture. As Eva Hoffman has said, “every immigrant becomes a kind of amateur anthropologist.”23 It is a sentiment that chimes with Duncan Forbes’s description of the series as an “anthropology of urban life”,24 and reminds us of Suschitzky’s early interest in zoology, as well as his tendency to reference the photographic medium in terms of scientific investigation, and as a way of seeing and knowing the world. Without photography, he stated, “we would know a good deal less about other countries, their landscapes and their people”.25 Therefore to see this as a series about books would be to miss the wider view Suschitzky creates. One need hardly compare his West End images with those he made in the East End to get a sense of the social divides of the time.26 The 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Wolf Suschitzky, “Edith Tudor-Hart”, in Edith Tudor-Hart, The Eye of Conscience (London: Nishen, 1987), 8–26 (10); for the Jarrow March and other hunger marches of the era see Juliet Gardiner, The Thirties: an Intimate History (London: HarperPress, 2010), 445–453. See for example, Geoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment (London: Abacus, 2005), 12–13; Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz, Bystander: a History of Street Photography (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994), 187. Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 53. Eva Hoffman, interview with Harry Kreisler, Conversations with History, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley, 2000: [last accessed 31 August 2017]. Forbes, op. cit., 112. Wolf Suschitzky, Wolf Suschitzky Photos (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2006), 202. This is a comparison and argument presented in Ben Gidley and Mick Gidley, “Another London: Overseas Photographers View the City at Mid-Century”, in Helen Delaney and Simon Baker, Another London: International Photographers Capture City Life 1930–1980 (London: Tate Publishing, 2012), 8–17 (11).

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Figure 5.3 Photograph by Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road, London, 1936

coterminous social spheres of Charing Cross Road are evidently on display in his photograph of a shoeblack at work near Cambridge Circus. The strong vertical forces of the upright man, woman and tree emphasise the space vacated by the worker’s hunched form. It is one of the few Charing Cross images in which (some of) the subjects acknowledge the presence of the photographer, and yet this only serves to strengthen a sense that the shoeblack is invisible to his customers. It is beyond doubt that Suschitzky himself has seen this man. The image reminds us of another disappearing shoeblack by conjuring memories of one of the first street views, Louis Daguerre’s image of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. It is a photograph that has been hailed as the first to capture a human being (with passing figures not registered on the plate owing to the long exposure time), and yet, as Geoffrey Batchen notes, this claim ignores the presence of another figure, a shoeblack at work shining the shoes of the “first” man.27 Batchen suggests that the photograph might more accurately be 27

Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: the Conception of Photography (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1997), 133–136.

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spoken of as the first to depict labour and class difference, and we might take this further by describing it as the first photographic depiction of the bourgeois city space in which labour is rendered invisible. The disappearing shoeblack becomes an absent presence, a figure overlooked to this day. For Giorgio Agamben, the frame that is supposedly empty but for the one solitary figure of the man having his shoes shined becomes an image of the Last Judgment: “a single person, a single life […] picked out, captured and immortalised”, so that the simplest of scenes becomes “charged with the weight of an entire life”.28 Despite being premised on an act of misrecognition, Agamben’s assessment has something to tell us about the Charing Cross Road photographs, for Suschitzky managed, like Daguerre a century before him, to filter from his street views the clamour of the city and centre upon the individual. Yet it was technique and not technology that created this effect, “a combination of the right choice of detail, the elimination of all that is unessential, and the right moment” that isolated subjects,29 and even social encounters, from the flow of the city and placed them upon their own stage. Making use of his training in photographing in natural light, Suschitzky succeeded in turning the outside world into a studio space, and at times he resembles that other kind of street photographer, the less often examined figure of the commercial photographer who calls aside passers-by in order to take their portraits.30 Although we might recognise his dramatis personæ (the puddle-jumper, the shoeblack, the blind man) from other street photographs, each has their own scene and exudes their own character, and at no stage are they forced into a taxonomy or reduced to social types. It might be argued that these aspects separate the work from a documentary practice concerned with the search for typical, representative specimens.31 This creates difficulties for presenting the photographs in terms of an “anthropology”, and suggests that reference to a discipline often associated with the power of the state, especially the colonial state, is not unproblematic. The anthropology of the street is similarly predicated on power imbalance, and certain street photographic concerns can be traced back to colonial image-making, with John Thomson, for example, adapting colonial tropes from his travels in pursuit of the urban unknown in nine-

28 29 30 31

Giorgio Agamben, Profanations (New York: Zone Books, 2007), 24. Hall and Burton (eds.), Suschitzky, n.p., op cit. For this other kind of street photographer see Geoffrey Batchen, “Seeing and Saying: A Response to ‘Incongruous Images’”, in History and Theory 48, 4 (2009), 26–33. I here employ Clive Scott’s reading of the documentary mode. Clive Scott, Street Photography: from Atget to Cartier-Bresson (London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007), 57–89.

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teenth-century London.32 This was a form of study of the social underclass that constituted the reverse side of the removal of the worker from sight, and its vestiges can be discerned in a certain bourgeois tourism practised by some during Suschitzky’s own era, with Humphrey Spender’s photographs of East London and northern English cities often discussed in these terms.33 However, perhaps we cannot so easily separate Suschitzky from such urban explorations. Keeping in mind Eva Hoffman’s understanding of the immigrant as an amateur anthropologist, we might identify his photographs as part of a personal investigation of the city that assisted the processes of acclimatisation. As Susan Sontag has suggested, “as photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.”34 Viewed thus, dislocation is not only something that the exiled photographer harnesses for the making of images, but equally something that images might help him to overcome. This would constitute a form of reversal of the established paradigm, with the anthropological mode, or semi-anthropological mode, becoming a practice not of those with power but of those without. Suschitzky’s search for the “other side of London” (including “the dark and the grubby”)35 seems evident in a photograph taken at night, one that returns us to Foyles after our perambulations along the more southerly part of Suschitzky’s road. Once again offering a scene played out beneath one of the bookshop’s signs, this photograph appears as an inversion of his portrait of the bowler-hatted man. In this way, it seems to suggest that just as there existed the parallel worlds of idler and worker, so too did the street of the day have its counterpart in the street of the night. As he does at other moments, the photographer emphasises the street as a shared space occupied and appropriated at different moments for different purposes and activities. It is an image that provides us with a fascinating glimpse of a side of the Charing Cross Road project that was never fully realised. Significantly, the photograph was made at the bookshop’s side entrance on Manette Street, one of the roads that, sitting on its easterly edge, operates as an entrance point into Soho. Suggested thus is a deviation of the series away from 32 33 34 35

James R. Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualisation of the British Empire (London: Reaktion Books, 1997), 140–182. For an examination of Humphrey Spender’s photography, see Lucy D. Curzon, Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017), 18–49. Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin, 1977), 9. Wolf Suschitzky, “In Conversation with Zelda Cheatle”, in Katy Barron (ed.), Unseen: London, Paris, New York (London: Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, 2016), 23–25.

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Figure 5.4 Photograph by Wolf Suschitzky, Soho, London, 1934

the main thoroughfare and into the corners of a district that was then a particular London underbelly, with Suschitzky specifically remarking on it being a place of prostitution. Furthermore, there was another liminal world to be traced in Soho, with the area being home to immigrant Italian and French communities that the photographer expressed a desire to photograph.36 It was these earlier arrivals that had, in Suschitzky’s view, paved the way for the qualified welcome he received. “I realised you couldn’t be English ever,” he said, “but you were accepted”.37 Beyond Manette Street lies Soho Square, where we see how the local area and Suschitzky’s photographs of it were, in a very real sense, instruments of his finding a role in Britain. It was through showing his Charing Cross Road photographs first to Basil Wright and then to Paul Rotha, filmmakers both at the time 36 37

Wolf Suschitzky, “The Charing Cross Road Photographs”, interview with Misha Donat, Web of Stories, 2008: [last accessed 13 April 2017]. Interview 2010.

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based in Soho Square, that he became involved in the British documentary film movement.38 Soho Square also, in a way, signalled the end of his Charing Cross Road series. He continued to photograph the road for a time, but the series eventually came to a halt as he failed to find a publisher and found more film work. Despite the fact that they were not made for posterity, we can today read the Charing Cross Road photographs as visual records, for they offer us portraits not only of a particular time and place but also of a particular person. The Manette Street photograph, with its atmospheric shadows and overtures to the demi-monde of Soho, carries reminders of Brassaï, and in turn brings to mind that photographer’s words about pictures being akin to entries in a diary: They say not only: “such or such a thing happened,” but also “I was there,” “I saw this thing,” or even “I was this thing”. For something very strange has happened to him: the more scrupulously he has respected the independence and autonomy of his subject and the closer has he gone towards it instead of bringing it nearer to himself, the more completely has his own personality become incorporated in his pictures.39 The photographer, in entering the street and endeavouring to capture the everyday world unawares, has also, without it being his intention, captured something of himself. It is this book, this inadvertent diary, that we might come across as attentive browsers along Suschitzky’s Charing Cross Road, catching glimpses of the reticent photographer in a rainswept street, a crouching shoeblack and myriad other forms, details and fleeting moments.

Works Cited

Giorgio Agamben, Profanations (New York: Zone Books, 2007). Geoffrey Batchen, Burning with Desire: the Conception of Photography (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Pres, 1997). Geoffrey Batchen, “Seeing and Saying: A Response to “Incongruous Images”, in History and Theory 48, no. 4 (2009). Brassaï, Camera in Paris (London and New York: The Focal Press, 1949). 38 39

For Suschitzky’s film work see Wolf Suschitzky, Wolf Suschitzky Films (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2010); Paul O’Reilly, “World of Plenty: The Cinematography of Wolfgang Suschitzky”, ­Visual Culture in Britain 13, 2 (2012), 249–268. Brassaï, Camera in Paris, op. cit., 19.

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Lucy D. Curzon, Mass-Observation and Visual Culture: Depicting Everyday Lives in Britain (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017). Geoff Dyer, The Ongoing Moment (London: Abacus, 2005). Duncan Forbes, “Wolfgang Suschitzky and the British Documentary Tradition in the 1930s”, in Anna Auer (ed.), Photography and Research in Austria: Vienna, the Door to the European East (Passau: Klinger, 2002). Juliet Gardiner, The Thirties: an Intimate History (London: HarperPress, 2010). Ben Gidley and Mick Gidley, “Another London: Overseas Photographers View the City at Mid-Century”, in Helen Delaney and Simon Baker (eds.), Another London: Inter­ national Photographers Capture City Life 1930–1980 (London: Tate Publishing, 2012). Norman Hall and Basil Burton (eds.), Suschitzky (London: Photography [1954]), n.p., ‘Great Photographs’, vol. 1. Eva Hoffman, Interview with Harry Kreisler, in Conversations with History, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley (2000). Sabrina Hughes, “Imag(in)ing Paris for Posterity”, in Future Anterior: Journal of Historic Preservation, History, Theory, and Criticism 10, no. 2 (2013). Siegfried Kracauer, Theory of Film: The Redemption of Physical Reality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960). Brigitte Mayr and Michael Omasta, “A Lucky Man. Wolf Suschitzky – Photographer and Cameraman”, in Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove (eds.), German-speaking Exiles in the Performing Arts in Britain after 1933. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 14 (Amsterdam and New York: Editions Rodopi, 2013). H. V. Morton, In Search of London (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1951). Paul O’Reilly, “World of Plenty: The Cinematography of Wolfgang Suschitzky” in Visual Culture in Britain 13, no. 2 (2012). James R. Ryan, Picturing Empire: Photography and the Visualisation of the British Empire (London: Reaktion Books,1997). Raphael Samuel, “Wolf Suschitzky: Charing Cross Road in the Thirties”, in Suschitzky, Wolf, Charing Cross Road in the Thirties (London: Nishen Photography, 1989). Clive Scott, Street Photography: from Atget to Cartier-Bresson (London & New York: I. B. Tauris, 2007). Susan Sontag, On Photography (London: Penguin, 1977). Wolfgang Suschitzky, “W. Suschitzky”, in Helmut Gernsheim (ed.), The Man Behind the Camera (London: The Fountain Press, 1948). Wolf Suschitzky, “Edith Tudor-Hart”, in Edith Tudor-Hart, The Eye of Conscience (London: Nishen, 1987). Wolf Suschitzky, Charing Cross Road in the Thirties (London: Nishen Photography, 1989).

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Wolf Suschitzky, Interview, catalogue no. 26512 (Imperial War Museum Sound Archives, 1997). Wolf Suschitzky, Wolf Suschitzky Photos (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2006). Wolf Suschitzky, “The Charing Cross Road Photographs”. Interview with Misha Donat, in Web of Stories (2008): . Wolf Suschitzky, Wolf Suschitzky Films (Vienna: SYNEMA, 2010). Wolf Suschitzky, “In Conversation with Zelda Cheatle”, in Katy Barron (ed.), Unseen: London, Paris, New York (London: Ben Uri Gallery & Museum, 2016). Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz, Bystander: a History of Street Photography (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1994).

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Chapter 6

„It is the spaces between the notes that give the sound“. Von Hamburg, über London, New York nach Australien: Der Fotograf Francis Reiss*  Wilfried Weinke Erst 1997 und 1998 widmeten sich zwei große Ausstellungen in Bonn und Wien der Exilfotografie und stellten Leben und Werk emigrierter, fast vergessener Fotografinnen und Fotografen vor. Weitere fünf Jahre später, 2003, nahm sich auch die „Gesellschaft für Exilforschung“ des Themas Film und Fotografie an. Auch jenseits der eigentlichen Bedeutung beider Medien für das 20. Jahrhundert eine bemerkenswerte verspätete Wahrnehmung, hatten doch sowohl der Film wie die Fotografie vielen Emigranten den Lebensunterhalt gesichert. Der in Hamburg geborene Francis Reiss emigrierte noch vor der Pogromnacht nach England und wurde als 17-Jähriger Fotograf bei der renommierten Illustrierten Picture Post. An sein bis heute währendes fotografisches Schaffen soll hier erinnert werden.

Eine Beschäftigung mit Hamburgs Fotogeschichte des 20. Jahrhunderts findet nicht statt. Der letzte, eher populär­wissen­schaftliche Versuch stammt von Fritz Kempe, dem ehemaligen Leiter der Staatlichen Landesbildstelle Hamburg. Sein Buch Vor der Camera. Zur Geschichte der Photographie in Hamburg1 erschien 1976. Der vom Autor selbst als „historische Skizze“ charakterisierte * Bei diesem Text handelt es sich um die erweiterte Fassung meines Vortrages, den ich unter gleichem Titel auf der Jahrestagung der Gesellschaft für Exilforschung in Aberystwyth/Wales am 2. 7. 2016 gehalten habe. 1 Fritz Kempe, Vor der Camera. Zur Geschichte der Photographie in Hamburg (Hamburg: Christians, 1976). Noch im selben Jahr erschien das Buch bei gleichem Umfang und Layout auch unter dem plakativen Titel Alt-Hamburgs schönste Fotos. Menschen, Häuser, Schiffe. Die Illustrationen basierten auf dem Material, das 1973 in der Ausstellung „Hamburg – Stadt und Menschen – In 131 Jahren fotografiert“ in der Staatlichen Landesbildstelle Hamburg gezeigt worden war. Nicht ohne Stolz verwies Kempe darauf, dass sein kurzer Abriss zur Fotogeschichte Hamburgs bereits 1975 unter dem englischen Titel „A Historical Sketch of Photography in Hamburg“ in dem von Van Deren Coke herausgegebenen Buch One Hundred Years of Photographic History – Essays in Honor of Beaumont Newhall (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1975) erschienen war. Die 1977 vom Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe herausgegebene und von Fritz Kempe bearbeitete Veröffentlichung Photographie zwischen Daguerreotypie und Kunstphotographie ‚Bilderhefte des Museums für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg, 14‘ erweiterte zwar das Spektrum, blieb aber bezogen auf die Fotogeschichte Hamburgs genauso lückenhaft. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_008

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Überblick zur Photographie in Hamburg beschränkt sich auf die Darstellung ihrer Frühzeit, ihrer Bedeutung um die Jahrhundert­wende bis zum Ersten Weltkrieg. Auch das 1989 anlässlich des 150. Jubiläums der Photographie herausgegebene Katalogbuch Photographie in Hamburg 1839–1989,2 das die Veranstaltungen im sogenannten „Sommer der Photographie“ auflistete und kommentierte, änderte an diesem Befund nichts. Die auch für Fotografen ungemein produktive, von starken Veränderungen bestimmte Zeit der Weimarer Republik, die brachiale Zäsur der sogenannten Machtergreifung sowie die politisch-publizistische Gleichschaltung der Presse in den zwölf Jahren des „Tausendjährigen Reiches“ blieben erneut un(-ter)belichtet. Eine Tendenz, die sich bis in die Gegenwart fortsetzt. Insbesondere das „Schicksal“ von Hamburger Fotografinnen und Fotografen jüdischer Herkunft, die die Machtübertragung an die Nationalsozialisten besonders traf, harrt bis heute intensiver Ausleuchtung. Das Foto zeigt ein Mädchen, bekleidet mit einem Rock im Schottenmuster, einer passenden Krawatte und einer weißen Bluse. Das Mädchen trägt Seidenstrümpfe und eine Armbanduhr. Es sitzt mit übergeschlagenem Bein auf einem großen, weißen Sessel, von dem nur das aufwendige Dekor mit Früchten und Pflanzen erkennbar ist. In den Armen des lächelnden Mädchens liegt ein rauhaariger Jack Russell Terrier. Hund wie Mädchen schauen direkt in die Kamera. Auf der Rückseite ist handschriftlich vermerkt: „Eva Reiss, sister of Francis Reiss, 9 3/4 Jahre, November 1936.“ Ein Zusatz ergänzt: „Probably taken in her room at Perkamp, Klein Flottbek.“3 In der linken, unteren Ecke befand sich der gedruckte Stempel des Fotografen: „Max Halberstadt. Aufnahmen. Vergrösserungen. Hamburg, Neuerwall 54.“ Das Foto verbarg sich im Anhang einer email, die der Autor dieses Beitrages im Dezember 2010 erhielt. Das Foto stellte die erste Verbindung zu Francis Reiss dar. Auch wenn Francis Reiss kein Hamburger Fotograf im eigentlichen Sinne war, verließ er die Hansestadt doch im Kindesalter und begann erst im Exil, als Fotograf zu arbeiten, so entstand die Faszination für die Fotografie schon in seiner Geburtsstadt. Er reagierte als einer der ersten auf einen Suchaufruf an alle 1.600 ehemaligen jüdischen Bürger, in dem um Informationen zu dem in Hamburg geborenen Fotografen Max Halberstadt (1882–1940) gebeten wurde. Halberstadt war nicht nur Schwiegersohn des Wiener Psychoanalytikers Sigmund Freud, sondern auch und dessen bevorzugter Porträtist. 2 Arbeitskreis „Sommer der Photographie“ Denis Brudna, Prof. F. C. Gundlach, Dr. Enno Kaufhold, Prof. Hans Meyer-Veden (Hg.) mit Unterstützung der Kulturbehörde Hamburg, Photographie in Hamburg 1839–1989. Katalog der Veranstaltungen zum 150. Jubiläum der Photographie in Hamburg (Hamburg o.J.) [1989]. 3 Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 15. 12. 2010.

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Halberstadt, Gründungsmitglied der Gesellschaft Deutscher Lichtbildner, hatte sich in Hamburg auch einen Namen als anerkannter und gern aufgesuchter Kinderfotograf gemacht. Nach 1933 aber gab es für den jüdischen Max Halberstadt keine Zukunft mehr; drei Jahre nach der „Machtergreifung“ der Nationalsozialisten gelang es ihm, nach Südafrika zu emigrieren. Zu dem Foto seiner Schwester schrieb Francis Reiss ergänzend: „If the attached images are not good enough for you, please just give me the specifications of an image that would meet your quality requirements. You are welcome to reply to me in German, as I can still understand that language very well.“ Im Adressfeld hieß es: Francis Reiss, Photography & Digital Imaging, 40 Bentley Str., Surrey Hills, Vic. 3127, Australia.4 Ein Mann vom Fach also, ein Mann, der die deutsche Sprache verstand, ein Mann mit einem Bezug zu Hamburg. 1

A German-Born Photographer

Aus dem weiteren email-Austausch schälte sich nach und nach die Geschichte seiner Familie heraus. Eher zurückhaltend und knapp waren die Auskünfte zur eigenen Vita: After living for a while in the USA, ‚47–51‘, finally emigrated to Australia, by far the best country ever! Here you might say I have been a fairly successful photographer. You can see my work on the web site of the National Portrait Gallery and in the Picture Collection of the National Library, both Canberra. Or just go to Google!5 Auch wenn Wikipedia keine seriöse Quelle sein kann, fanden sich hier erste Informationen zu dem australischen Kommunikationspartner: „Francis Reiss (born 1927) is a German-born photographer, best known for his work for Picture Post and Life magazines.“ Schon dieser erste Satz des Wikipedia-Eintrages verwies auf seinen Beruf, genauer spezifiziert unter der Zwischenüberschrift „Professional career“: Reiss began working for Picture Post magazine in the UK at the age of 17, the youngest staff photographer employed by them. Picture Post published over 60 picture stories by him.6 4 Ebd. 5 Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 17. 12. 2010. 6 , letzter Zugriff am 3. 8.  2017.

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Ein Eintrag in Francis Reiss‘ „Certificate of Registration“, mehrfach abgestempelt von der Metropolitan Police sowie vom Alien Registration Office, dem Ausländermeldeamt, bestätigte, dass Francis eine Arbeitserlaubnis als „assistant photographer with Hulton Press Ltd., 43/44 Shoe Lane, London“ besaß.7 Welche Bedeutung die von dem Verleger Edward Hulton (1906–1988) herausgegebene Picture Post hatte, unterstreicht der englische Fotohistoriker Colin Osman (1926–2001), wenn er seinen Aufsatz über den „Einfluß deutscher Fotografen im Exil auf die britische Pressefotografie“ mit den Sätzen einleitete: Das entscheidende Datum in der Geschichte des britischen Fotojourna­ lismus ist der 1. Oktober 1938. An diesem Tag erschien die erste Nummer der Wochenzeitschrift Picture Post. Sie war, so würden viele – nicht nur in Großbritannien – urteilen, zwischen 1938 und 1950 die bedeutendste Illustrierte.8 Als „treibende Kraft hinter der Zeitschrift“ würdigte er den Fotografen, Journalisten und Herausgeber Stefan Lorant (1901–1997), der nach Tätigkeiten für Das Magazin, den Bilder-Courier, die Sonntagsbeilage des Berliner Börsen-Couriers Chefredakteur der Münchener Illustrierten Presse wurde. Nach halbjähriger „Schutzhaft“ in München emigrierte Lorant zuerst nach Ungarn, von dort nach England.9 Hier gründete er 1934 die Zeitschrift Weekly Illustrated, 1937 die Zeitschrift Lilliput und 1938 schließlich Picture Post. Osman nannte in seinem Aufsatz zudem die Namen von Tom Hopkinson, Felix H. Man, Kurt Hutton, Tim Gidal, Wolf Suschitzky u.a. Selbst wenn im Wikipedia-Eintrag zu Picture Post der Name von Francis Reiss auftaucht, so sind doch die meisten Namen der damaligen Fotografen von Picture Post nur den ‚happy few‘ eingeweihter Fach7 Certificate of Registration, No. 959200. Attachment der email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 27.  11.  2014. 8 Colin Osman, „Der Einfluß deutscher Fotografen im Exil auf die britische Pressefotografie“, in Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Berlin (Hg.), Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933–1945 (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1986), 83. Vgl. auch Irme Schaber, „Pioniere mit Langzeitwirkung: Der Einfluß der fotografischen Emigration der NS-Zeit auf die englische Fotolandschaft und Bildpresse am Beispiel von Karl Hutton, Felix H. Man, Wolf Suschitzky und weiteren Fotoschaffenden“, in J. M. Ritchie (ed.), German-speaking Exiles in Great Britain: The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 3 (Amsterdam, New York: Editions Rodopi, 2001), 73–86. 9 Vgl. Stefan Lorant, Ich war Hitlers Gefangener. Ein Tagebuch 1933 (München: List Verlag, 1985). Die englische Erstausgabe erschien 1935 unter dem Titel I Was Hitler’s Prisoner im Verlag Victor Gollancz in London. Siehe auch Stefan Lorant, Sieg Heil! Eine deutsche Bildgeschichte von Bismarck zu Hitler (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 1979); Thomas Willimowki, „‚Ein Mann der Bilder‘. Zum Tode des Photopioniers und Historikers Stefan Lorant“, in Aufbau, New York, No. 25, 5 December 1997, 20.

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leute geläufig. Der Publizist Dewi Lewison, Kurator von Ausstellungen zur Fotografie (u.a. zur Picture Post), urteilte: Whilst we celebrate our heritage in almost every other art form, we seem remarkably adept at ignoring it when it comes to photography and, in particular, photojournalism. Our museums and art galleries are full of visitors. Hordes of tourists traipse through our country houses, yet we largely ignore the richness that can be found in the photojournalism of the middle years of the 20th century.10 Er würdigte die Bedeutung von Picture Post, würdigte deren Mitarbeiter als „jobbing photographers tasked with providing images to fill the pages of a weekly magazine“, nannte die Namen von Bert Hardy und Kurt Hutton, um dann festzustellen: The list of other forgotten and ignored „Picture Post“ photographers seems endless; Thurston Hopkins, John Chillingworth, Haywood Magee, Leonard McCombe, Grace Robertson, Gerti Deutsch, Charles Hewitt, Joseph McKeown and Alex Dellow to name just a few. If the names mean nothing to you then search them out. They have much to reward you with.11 Auch wenn Francis Reiss‘ Name weder in einschlägigen Fotografen-Lexika12 noch in dem Nachschlagewerk Und sie haben Deutschland verlassen ... müssen. Fotografen und ihre Bilder 1928–199713 Erwähnung gefunden hat, trugen seine Fotoberichte für die Illustrierte Picture Post zu deren Erfolgsgeschichte bei.

10 11

12 13

Dewi Lewison, „The Picture Post Photographers“, , letzter Zugriff am 3. 8. 2017. Ebd. Erst 2011 erschien parallel zur gleichnamigen Ausstellung in Salzburg der Katalogband „Die Fotografin Gerti Deutsch. Arbeiten 1935–1965“ (Salzburg: fotohof edition, 2011). Die Ausstellung, die erstmals einen Überblick über das fotografische Gesamtwerk von Gerti Deutsch lieferte, wurde von September 2016 bis Februar 2017 auch in „Das Verborgene Museum“ in Berlin gezeigt. Vgl. Reinhold Mißelbeck (Hg.), Prestel-Lexikon der Fotografen. Von den Anfängen 1839 bis zur Gegenwart (München, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel Verlag 2002); Hans-Michael Koetzle, Das Lexikon der Fotografen 1900 bis heute (München: Knaur, 2002). Klaus Honnef, Frank Weyers, Und sie haben Deutschland verlassen ... müssen. Fotografen und ihre Bilder 1928–1997 (Köln: PROAG, 1997).

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Herkunft und Kindheit in Hamburg, Emigration nach England

Francis Erik Reiss kam am 2. Juli 1927 als drittes Kind von Walter Abraham Reiss (1886–1960) und seiner Frau Franziska, geb. Simonis (1899–1981), in Hamburg zur Welt. Sein Vater war dänischer Staatsangehöriger jüdischer Herkunft. Walter Reiss war im Wollhandel tätig, er importierte vor allem Rohwolle aus Südafrika und Südamerika. Zuerst Mitinhaber der Firma E. M. Stavenhagen hatte er im Januar 1933 gemeinsam mit seiner Frau Franziska die Kommanditgesellschaft Walter Reiss & Co gegründet. Der Firmensitz ihrer Wollgroßhandlung befand sich in der Mönckebergstraße 5, im Hammonia-, dem ehemaligen Caledonia-Haus.14 Während seine ältere Schwester Eva Marie (1921–1984) und sein älterer Bruder Herbert Erik (1922–2005) in Hamburgs Isestraße 119 geboren wurden, stand das Geburtshaus von Francis Reiss in der Agnesstraße 53, einer Villen gesäumten Straße in Hamburg-Winterhude. Walter Abraham Reiss muss stolz auf den Besitz dieses Hauses gewesen sein, denn er hatte das Atelier Dührkoop und Max Halberstadt damit beauftragt, die repräsentative Villa in der Nähe der Außenalster fotografisch zu dokumentieren. Ein noch in Familienbesitz be­ find­liches, ledergebundenes Fotoalbum beinhaltet neunzehn Fotografien in Hoch- wie Querformat, die sowohl die Außenansicht aber auch die Eingangshalle, den Salon, das Esszimmer, den Wohnbereich, die Schlafzimmer und das Kinderzimmer zeigen. Im April 1929 verließ die Familie die bürgerliche Wohngegend und ließ sich im Liliencronweg 119 im zu Altona gehörenden Groß-Flottbek nieder. Sie nannten ihr neues Domizil „Perkamp“. Eine im Besitz von Francis Reiss befindliche Luftaufnahme zeigt ein imposantes, herrschaftliches Anwesen, ein großes, zweigeschossiges Wohnhaus mit zwei separaten Gebäuden, einer Garage mit mehreren Toren, Stallungen für Pferde sowie Unterkünften für den Chauffeur und den Pferdepfleger. In einer email schrieb Francis Reiss zu dem an einen Poloplatz angrenzenden Familienbesitz: „Seems my father was a very wealthy man at some stage. That explains Haus Perkamp and the 8 (?) polo ponies with an Irish groom, James.“15 Diese ausführliche Beschreibung und 14

15

Ralf Lange, Das Hamburger Kontorhaus. Architektur. Geschichte. Denkmal (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Verlag, 2015), 226. Besondere Beachtung verdienen Langes wenn auch knappe Bemerkungen im Einführungskapitel unter der Zwischenüberschrift „Jüdische Schicksale“. Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 18. 1. 2014. In dem von Hans Bunge und Gert Kähler herausgegebenen Buch Villen und Landhäuser. Bürgerliche Baukultur in den Hamburger Elbvororten von 1900 bis 1935 (München, Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Verlag, 2012) findet sich leider kein Hinweis auf den Wohnsitz von Walter Reiss. Nach 1945 und

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Kommentierung ist weder aufschneiderisch noch marginal. Ein weiteres, im Familienbesitz befindliches Fotoalbum, das die von dem Hamburger Fotografen Otto Reich erstellten Aufnahmen von den Baumaßnahmen sowie vom Richtfest des Wohnhauses zeigen, enthält auch zwei Fotos des siebenjährigen Francis (mit seinem Spielgefährten, einem großen Schäferhund, sowie allein im Steingarten des Hauses), aufgenommen im September 1934. Beide Bildmotive mögen profan erscheinen, sie stammen aber, wie die rückseitigen Stempel nachweisen, von dem Hamburger Fotografen Erich Kastan (1898–1954), dem späteren Dokumentaristen des Jüdischen Kulturbundes Hamburg, dem im Dezember 1938 die Emigration in die USA glückte.16 Walter Abraham Reiss, der von 1915 bis 1930 Mitglied der Deutsch-Israelitische Gemeinde in Hamburg gewesen ist, muss sehr schnell verstanden haben, dass es für ihn nach der sogenannten Machtergreifung keine gesellschaftliche wie wirtschaftliche Zukunft im nationalsozialistischen Deutschland geben konnte. Schon im Juli 1933 emigrierte er gemeinsam mit seinem ältesten Sohn Herbert in das nördlich von Leeds gelegene Bradford. Wie recht er mit dieser Entscheidung hatte, belegt ein Vorgang vom Frühjahr 1934, der in einer Akte aus dem Bestand des Oberfinanzpräsidenten Hamburg dokumentiert ist. Ein Obersturmbannführer einer SS-Standarte aus dem sächsischen Werdau schrieb am 13. Februar 1934 an den Präsidenten der Geheimen Staatspolizei Dresden: Von einem achtbaren Kaufmann von hier wird mir soeben folgendes mitgeteilt: Der Jude Reis [sic], Mitinhaber oder alleiniger Inhaber der Firma Walter Reis & Co., (Wolle, Kammzüge), Hamburg, ist nach der Revolution 1933 nach England geflüchtet und hat dort in Bradford die Firma Wool Trading Compagnie gegründet. Er erzählt Däne zu sein und verbreitet Schauergeschichten über seine Behandlung in Deutschland. Sein eif­ rigstes Bestreben ist, gegen Deutschland Stimmung zu machen.17

16

17

vermutlich bis 1970 befand sich das Haus im Besitz der Unilever-Deutschland, die es seit 1952 als Schulungszentrum nutzte. Aus dieser Zeit existieren 28 Fotografien. Diesen Hinweis verdanke ich meinem Kollegen Klaus Westermann, der das Archiv von Unilever im Museum der Arbeit betreut. Barbara Müller-Wesemann, Theater als geistiger Widerstand. Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Hamburg 1934–1941 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler, 1996); Wilfried Weinke, Verdrängt, vertrieben, aber nicht vergessen. Die Fotografen Emil Bieber, Max Halberstadt, Erich Kastan, Kurt Schallenberg (Weingarten: Kunstverlag Weingarten, 2003), 176–245. Staatsarchiv Hamburg, 314–15 (Oberfinanzpräsident), R 1934/50, Schreiben des Obersturmbannführers II/ 7 SS-Standarte Werdau an den Präsidenten der geheimen Staatspolizei Herrn Oberführer Fr. Schlegel, Dresden, 13. 2. 1934.

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Diese unverhohlen antisemitische Denunziation ging einher mit der Unterstellung, dass Walter Reiss überteuerte Rechnungen ausstellen würde, um auf diesem Wege sein Vermögen nach England zu transferieren. Der Briefeschreiber hoffte, dass „durch Nachprüfungen von Fachmännern die Machinationen des Reis verhindert werden und damit zugleich der Schaden, den der deutsche Staat dadurch hat.“18 Auch wenn der Vorgang vom Geheimen Staatspolizeiamt Sachsen unverzüglich an die Polizei­behörde Hamburg weitergeleitet und eine Prüfung der Vorhaltungen veranlasst wurde, blieb der Ermittlungsbericht der Polizei- wie Finanzbehörden für den in England lebenden Walter Reiss zunächst folgenlos. Doch 1937 wurde die Firma Walter Reiss & Co. amtlich liquidiert.19 Seine Ehefrau Franziska war gemeinsam mit ihren Kindern Eva Marie und Francis in eine Wohnung in der Heilwigstraße in Hamburg-Harvestehude gezogen, 1936 emigrierten auch sie nach England. Fortan lebte die Familie in Ilkley im nordenglischen West Yorkshire, wo es Walter Reiss gelungen war, erneut ein Haus zu kaufen. 3

Auf dem Weg zu Picture Post

An seine Schulzeit in Hamburg hat Francis Reiss nur rudimentäre Erinnerungen: I seem to remember going to a Volksschule, or something like that, somewhere near Perkamp, but having to leave it on account of being Jewish, then I was sent to the Bartram (could be Bertram) school somewhere in Hamburg on account of it being the only school that accepted Jews.20 In England besuchte Francis Reiss zuerst die Ghyll Royd-Vorschule in Ilkley, nach der Scheidung der Eltern das Internat Wells School, danach die traditionsreiche Boarding School Oundle in Northamptonshire. Als er die Schule im August 1944 verließ, stellte er ein Fotoalbum zusammen, dem er den Titel 18 19 20

Ebd. Frank Bajohr, „Arisierung“ in Hamburg. Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933– 1945 (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 1997), 368‚ ‚Hamburger Beiträge zur Sozial- und Zeitgeschichte, 35‘. Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 24. 4. 2015. Vgl. Andreas Hoffmann, Schule und Akkulturation. Geschlechtsdifferente Erziehung von Knaben und Mädchen der Hamburger jüdisch-liberalen Oberschicht 1848–1942 (Münster: Waxmann Verlag, 2001), insbesondere 47–100: „Bildungsgang für jüdisch-liberale Jungen: Die Bertram-Schule, 1848–1939.“ ‚Jüdische Bildungsgeschichte in Deutschland, 3‘.

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„Passage through Oundle“ gab. Zwischen dem Foto eines Lokomotivführers und sich perspektivisch verjüngenden Gleisen zierte ein Selbstporträt die Frontseite, der Untertitel lautete „The Traveller“, datiert auf Juli 1944.21 Noch bevor Francis Reiss bei Picture Post als Fotograf zu arbeiten begann, absolvierte er zwischen August 1944 und Januar 1945 eine kurze Lehrzeit im Londoner Warburg Institute. Als das National Buildings Record gegründet worden war, um angesichts denkbarer Kriegszerstörungen historisch wichtige Gebäude des englischen Südens fotografisch zu dokumentieren, beteiligte sich auch das Warburg Institute an dieser nationalen Aufgabe. Unter Anleitung des ebenfalls aus Hamburg nach London emigrierten Fotografen und Buchbinders Otto Fein (1906–1966) war auch Francis Reiss an dieser fotografischen Bestandsaufnahme beteiligt: „I worked in the darkroom as assistant to Mr. Fein and learnt a great deal from him about developing and printing Leica pictures.“22 Auf Empfehlung seines ebenfalls in Hamburg geborenen Stiefvaters Dr. Hans Jacob Türkheim (1889–1955),23 der 1942 die geschiedene Franziska Reiss geheiratet hatte, kam Francis Reiss zuerst in Kontakt mit Leslie Saxby, dem Sekretär von Edward George Warris Hulton, dem Besitzer von Picture Post, der ihn wiederum dem Herausgeber Tom Hopkinson (1905–1990)24 vorstellte. Nach Vorlage einer ansehnlichen Mappe mit eigenen Fotoarbeiten bekam er eine Anstellung als jüngster Fotograf von Picture Post. 4

Vom Hobby zum Beruf

Francis Reiss‘ erster Fotoapparat war eine von Eastman Kodak hergestellte ‚Brownie‘-Camera, die er eines Tages in seinem Spielzeug-Regal entdeckte. Mit dieser einfach zu bedienenden und preiswerten Kamera, die von Kodak spe­ziell für Kinder vermarktet wurde, um die Fotografie zu popularisieren, machte er seine ersten Schnappschüsse. Doch nutzte Francis Reiss die Kamera 21 22 23

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Kopien der Seiten dieses Fotoalbums wurde dem Verf. von Francis Reiss zur Verfügung gestellt. Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 24. 4. 2015. Vgl. Hendrik van den Bussche (Hg.) unter Mitarbeit von Angela Bottin, Medizinische Wissenschaft im „Dritten Reich“. Kontinuität, Anpassung und Opposition an der Hamburger Medizinischen Fakultät (Berlin, Hamburg: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1989), ‚Beiträge zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 5‘; Carmen Cornelia Hohmann, Ein jüdisches Professorenschicksal zwischen Hamburg und London: der Zahnmediziner Hans Jacob Türkheim (1889–1955) (Berlin, Münster, Wien, Zürich, London: LIT Verlag, 2009); ‚Hamburger Studien zur Geschichte der Medizin, 6‘; Anna von Villiez, Mit aller Kraft verdrängt. Entrechtung und Verfolgung „nicht arischer“ Ärzte in Hamburg 1933 bis 1945 (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Verlag, 2009) ‚Studien zur jüdischen Geschichte, 11‘. Vgl. Tom Hopkinson, Of This Our Time. A Journalist’s Story, 1905–50 (London: Hutchinson, 1982).

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eher heimlich: „I used it secretly to take pictures in the garden. It was not thought suitable for a young boy to have a camera, rather he should be reading Soll und Haben.“25 Schon in Oundle konnte Francis Reiss eine Leica benutzen; ob es sich dabei um das Modell 3A oder 3B handelte, ist ihm heute nicht mehr erinnerlich. Aber der Besitz einer solchen Leica-Kamera mit kurzer Verschlusszeit und den Gebrauch von 35mm-Kleinbildfilmen schuf die Grundlage für einen erfolgreichen Fotojournalisten. Und als solcher verstand sich Francis Reiss: My work is strictly of the photo-journalism kind, as practiced [sic] by Picture Post and Life photographers. I am NOT an artist, but use every device/ trick at the disposal of an artist, such as composition, colour, light etc. to work for me.26 Als 17-Jähriger begann Francis Reiss bei Picture Post: „I started work there at £3.10 a week on January 10th, 1945. The date is inscribed in a book I bought at Zwemmers bookshop on that day to celebrate, and of course still have.“27 Es handelte sich um das von Charles Holme 1905 herausgegebene Buch Art in Photography. In der kurzen Zeitspanne zwischen Januar 1945 und Juni 1947 lieferte Francis Reiss 60 ‚picture-stories‘, gelegentlich Ergebnis der Zusammenarbeit mit Kollegen wie Bert Hardy (1913–1995), Kurt Hutton (1893–1960), Raymond S. Kleboe (1914–2005), Haywood Magee [keine Daten gefunden], Leonard ­McCombe (1923–?) und Merlyn Severn (1897–1973). Einige dieser sich über mehrere Seiten erstreckenden Foto-Essays seien stellvertretend erwähnt: „THE PICTURES COME BACK“28 vom 9. Juni 1945 über einen Besuch von King  George VI und Queen Elizabeth in der National Gallery, um während des ­Krieges nach Wales ausgelagerte Gemälde anzuschauen; „BACK HOME TO ALDERNEY“29 vom 12. Januar 1946 über die Rückkehr der Bewohner auf die 25 26 27 28

29

Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 24. 4. 2015. Francis Reiss spielte hier auf Gustav Freytags 1855 erschienenen Kaufmannsroman Soll und Haben an. Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 11. 5. 2011. Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 24. 4. 2015. „THE PICTURES COME BACK. The King and Queen go to the National Gallery to see the first pictures which have been returned from their wartime hide-out in Wales“ in: Picture Post, London, Vol. 27, No. 10, 9 June 1945, 12–13. Die Fotoreportage umfasste sechs Fotografien. Für eine vorbildliche, kollegiale Zusammenarbeit bei der Bereitstellung der Jahrgangsbände von Picture Post und der Digitalisierung einzelner Artikel danke ich Herrn Christoph Albers von der Zeitungsabteilung der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin sehr herzlich. „BACK HOME TO ALDERNEY. Before the Germans occupied the Channel Islands, the whole population of Alderney were evacuated to England. Now they are returning to

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ehemals von der deutschen Armee besetzten Kanalinsel; „A YOUNG COUPLE GO BACK TO THE LAND“30 vom 23. Februar 1946 über einen aus dem Kriegsdienst zurückgekehrten Bauern, der mit seiner Frau auf ihrer Farm im südwalisischen Pembrokeshire ein neues Leben beginnt. Das Themenspektrum war vielschichtig: „THE MICROSCOPE FIGHTS FAMINE“31 vom 18. Mai 1946 über die Bekämpfung von Erkrankungen von Pflanzen und den Bau komplexer Glasmodelle von Pilzschmarotzern, „FAR AWAY FROM IT ALL!“32 vom 22. Juni 1946 über das West Wales Field Study Centre und dessen Programm zur Beringung von Seevögeln, „WHY NOT USE OUR BOMB SITES LIKE THIS?“33 vom 16. November 1946 über die phantasievolle Nutzung durch Kriegseinwirkungen verwüsteten Geländes als Spielgelände für Kinder. Am 22. Februar 1947, fast auf den Tag genau, druckte Picture Post nochmals eine Foto-Text-Reportage von jenem Ehepaar, dass ein Jahr zuvor ein ziviles Leben als Bauern in Pembrokeshire begonnen hatte. Den auf vier Seiten gedruckten Bericht „A YEAR AFTER ON THE FARM“34 schrieb wie zuvor der aus

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32

33

34

rebuild their lives in what has become almost a desert island“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 30, No. 2, 12 January 1946, 8–10. Zehn Fotografien illustrierten den nicht namentlich gekennzeichneten Artikel. Die Ausgabe enthielt eine weitere Fotoreportage von Francis Reiss; sie trug den Titel „AN ICE HOPE. Beryl Bailey, a 15-year-old London schoolgirl, has hopes of winning the British Free-Skating Championship this year.“ Dieser Bericht umfasste sechs Fotografien. „A YOUNG COUPLE GO BACK TO THE LAND. As an air-gunner, Alan Burdekin fought in the Battle of Britain. Now, as a farmer, he is a front-line fighter in another battle – the battle for food“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 30, No. 8, 23 February 1946, 8–10. Elf Fotografien illustrierten die Reportage. Einen weiteren Artikel mit dem Titel „SNOW FIGHT“ veranschaulichten sechs Fotografien von Francis Reiss. „THE MICROSCOPE FIGHTS FAMINE. As science advances, the danger to crops from blight and disease retreats. Preliminary to the attack is identification of the fungus, aided by delicate glass models of the plant invader made in a Cambridge laboratory“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 31, No. 7, 18 May 1946, 23–25. Den von Clifford Troke verfassten Artikel illustrierten acht Fotos von Francis Reiss. „FAR AWAY FROM IT ALL! When the West Wales Field Study Centre opened hostels on Skokholm and Skomer Islands, off the Pembrokeshire coast, over 1,000 people applied for accommodation. The lucky few have to work for their privilege, for catching and ringing birds as a first step to the study of migration habits is one of the Centre’s most important activities“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 31, No. 12, 22 June 1946, 16–19. Den von John Buxton und R. M. Lockley geschriebenen Text illustrierten zehn Fotografien von Francis Reiss. „WHY NOT USE OUR BOMB SITES LIKE THIS? Lady Allen of Hurtwood describes her experiment with a piece of waste land in Denmark, [which] gives children just the playground they’ve been looking for. Similar use of bomb sites in our cities could prevent deaths and juvenile delinquency“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 33, No. 7, 14 November 1946, 26–29. Die Reportage wurde durch elf Fotografien von Francis Reiss illustriert. „ONE YEAR AFTER ON THE FARM. Many readers have asked about the demobbed airman and his wife – featured in Picture Post of February 23 last year – who took over a derelict

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Abbildung 6.1 Picture Post vom 18. 5. 1946, mit der Ankündigung des Bildberichts „THE MICROSCOPE FIGHTS FAMINE“ von Francis Reiss.

Schottland stammende James Fyfe Robertson (1902–1987), der damals bei Picture Post als ‚picture editor‘ und ‚feature writer‘ arbeitete. Elf Fotografien von Francis Reiss illustrierten den Text; er verstand es sowohl die Menschen, das Ehepaar und ihren Nachwuchs, aber auch die tägliche Arbeit wie die Freizeit, vor allem aber die sichtbaren und erfreulichen Veränderungen im Leben des jungen Bauernpaares fotografisch einzufangen. Als einen seiner besten Foto-Essays bezeichnet Francis Reiss die Fotoabfolge zu dem Artikel „A MODERN PILGRIMAGE“,35 erschienen am 17. August 1946. Francis Reiss dokumentierte eine Pilgerfahrt von 30 britischen Männern von Dieppe in der Normandie zu dem 300 Meilen entfernten Wallfahrtsort Vézelay in Burgund. Der gedruckte Bericht umfasste vier Seiten, den Text schrieb die bekannte Schriftstellerin, Übersetzerin und Journalistin Antonia White (1899– 1980). Ihren Bericht dieser anstrengenden Wallfahrt, während der die Männer abwechselnd ein großes, eichenes Kreuz trugen, illustrierte Francis Reiss mit zwölf atmosphärisch dichten Fotos. Fotos von unterschiedlicher Größe, zum Teil halbseitig gedruckt, die allesamt vor allem die Menschen, die Pilger, in den Mittelpunkt rückten. Eines der Fotos, raumgreifend auf zwei Drittel einer

35

Pembrokeshire farm. Here is the follow-up story of twelve months of adventure for two. It is a story of hard work and success – with a surprise ending“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 34, No. 8, 22 February–8 March 1947, 20−23. Erneut lieferte Francis Reiss für diesen Bericht elf Fotografien. „A MODERN PILGRIMAGE“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 32, No. 7, 17 August 1946, 7–10.

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Zeitungsseite gedruckt, ist Francis Reiss besonders wichtig. Es trägt den Untertitel „A French Doctor Entertains the British Pilgrims: A Rare Moment on a Long and Exhausting March“ und erinnert ihn an das Abendmahl mit Jesu und den zwölf Aposteln. Besonderer Clou des Fotos: Der verwaiste Platz und der leere Teller in der unteren, rechten Ecke gehörten dem Fotografen. Eine ebenfalls von Francis Reiss favorisierte ‚picture-story‘ erschien am 5. Oktober 1946 und trug den Titel „All in a Hoxton Garden“.36 Der Begleittext ist von bemerkenswerter Kürze; es sind die fünf großformatigen Fotos und deren Bildunterschriften, die den Bericht ausmachen. Schon die beiden ersten Fotos kontrastieren zwei Welten, das obere Foto zeigt die durch deutsche Raketen- und Bombenangriffe verursachten Zerstörungen in den Hinterhöfen der Shaftesbury Street, die untere Aufnahme das private Idyll einer zufriedenen Bewohnerin. Die Bildunterschriften verstärken die Aussagen der Bildmotive: „Among the Blitz Ruins of the East End lies a Hidden Personal Heaven.“ ̶ „Mrs. Neale’s Pleasant Sunday Afternoon: The Practical Paradise of a Country-Loving Londoner.“ Dem Garten- und Blumenliebhaber Francis Reiss wird insbesondere die weitere Textinformation aus dem Herzen gesprochen haben: „She collected boxes and tubs, flower-seeds and livestock. Now she has a garden, thirteen rabbits, eight chicken and six ducks and a hammock.“ Alles war im Foto zu sehen. Natürliche Sensibilität und Einfühlungsvermögen, der Verzicht auf jede Form von Voyeurismus ermöglichten die Themenvielfalt in Francis Reiss‘ fotografischem Schaffen. Seine Fotosequenzen sollten, wie Colin Osman 1977 feststellte, als „story telling sequence of pictures about people, their emotions, their feelings, above all the impact of society on them, rather than single works of art“37 angesehen werden. Auch mit Blick auf Francis Reiss‘ fotografisches Schaffen in den USA charakterisierte Osman ihn „first and foremost as a photojournalist with a social conscience“.38 Francis Reiss‘ eigene Bewertung seiner Fotografien fällt bescheidener aus:

36 37 38

„All in a Hoxton Garden“ [sic], in Picture Post, London, Vol. 33, No. 1, 5 October 1946, 22–23. Colin Osman, „Francis Reiss“, in Creative Camera, London, No. 161, November 1977, 368. Das Heft würdigte neben Francis Reiss die Fotografen Walker Evans, Brian Alterio, John H. Dodds, Brian Hope und Nik White. Ebd. Zur Veranschaulichung des Werks druckte Creative Camera elf schwarz-weiß Fotografien aus Francis Reiss‘ amerikanischer Schaffensperiode, Fotos, die zwischen 1947 und 1949 entstanden. Es sind eindringliche Aufnahmen, von einem Farmer, dem man die Mühsal seines Alltags ansieht, Straßenszenen in Columbia und New York, soziales Elend in Missouri, aber auch fotografische Studien von Händen.

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Abbildung 6.2 Die Jubiläumsausgabe der Picture Post, 2. 10. 1948. Rechtes Foto von Francis Reiss.

My pictures are very low key – don’t know how that translates into German? Leise/ruhig/nicht auffallend ?? Much of the power lies in the quality of the printing: deep shadows/deep blacks, like the saying/Sprichwort: it is the spaces between the notes that give the sound.39 Ein weiterer ‚photo-essay‘ erschien in der Picture Post am 2. Oktober 1948, zu einem Zeitpunkt, als Francis Reiss nicht mehr in England lebte. Die Picture Post feierte ihr 10-jähriges Bestehen mit einer ‚Birthday Number‘ und dem selben Titelblatt, das schon am 1. Oktober 1938 den Titel bildete.40 Neben einem langen Artikel von Tom Hopkinson mit dem Titel „HOW PICTURE POST BEGAN“ enthielt die Ausgabe einen ausführlichen wie berührenden Bildbericht über die fürchterlichen Auswirkungen eines V2-Angriffes auf London am 8. März 1945. Die Autorin war Lorna Hay, die beiden Fotografen Haywood Magee and Francis Reiss lieferten acht illustrierende Fotos. Eines von ihnen, ganzseitig präsentiert, zeigte zwei uniformierte Frauen des ‚Ambu39 40

Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 25. 11. 2014. Vgl. zur Arbeit bei Picture Post und weiteren Jubiläen der Zeitschrift Tim Gidal, „Work­ing for Picture Post”, in Creative Camera, „Fifty years of picture magazines“, London, Nos. 211/212, July/August 1982, 602–611; Robert Kee, The Picture Post Album. A 50th Anniversary Collection. With a Foreword by Sir Tom Hopkinson (London: Guild Publishing, 1989). Drei der in diesem Band vereinten Fotografien stammen von Francis Reiss.

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lance Service‘ inmitten der Zerstörungen, und stammte von Francis Reiss. Der Text trug die Überschrift „ONE STORY WE COULDN’T TELL“41 Text und Bild berichteten von dem deutschen Raketenangriff, bei dem mit einem Schlag 380 Menschen ihr Leben verloren. 5

Von England in die USA

1947 hatte Francis Reiss seinen Lebensmittelpunkt in die USA verlegt, am 30. Juni 1947 war er in New York angekommen, lebte aber fortan in Columbia, Missouri, wo er zwei Jahre an der dortigen Universität Journalismus, Philosophie und Allgemeine Semantik studierte. Wilson Hicks (1897–1970), der Chefredakteur vom Magazin Life in New York, akzeptierte ihn als freiberuflich arbeitenden Fotografen, nachdem er Reiss’ Fotoreportage „TWO AMERICAN SOLDIERS SAY GOOD-BYE“,42 veröffentlicht in Picture Post vom 22. September 1945, gesehen hatte. Schon am 3. Oktober 1947 erhielt Francis Reiss folgendes Telegramm:  Life is closing this week for issue/on stands next Friday both your Negro and Candid Mike stories. Negro is speaking of pictures. Candid Mike is page and several halves with generous text. We are delighted at the success of your work while here. What was the result of your appeal to Journalism School Faculty? Appreciate your wiring me soonest. Regards Wilson Hicks.43 Hicks‘ Telegramm bezog sich auf die Life-Ausgabe vom 13. Oktober 1947, in der sowohl in den Rubriken „RADIO“ sowie „SPEAKING OF PICTURES“ gleich zwei Fotoserien von Francis Reiss veröffentlicht worden waren. Unter der headline „SPEAKING OF PICTURES...“ stand der provokante Untertitel „NEW YORKERS

41 42

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„ONE STORY WE COULDN’T TELL. Our office is in a cluster of buildings surrounded by acres of bomb-site. Here is the record of one ‚near-miss‘, untold before because of wartime censorship“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 41, No. 1, 2 October 1948, 32–35. „TWO AMERICAN SOLDIERS SAY GOOD-BYE. A year and a half ago there were 2,000,000 Americans in England. All but 150,000 have gone, and many English homes have lost a foster-son“, in Picture Post, London, Vol. 28, No. 12, 22 September 1945, 7–9. Der Text dieses Artikels, der auf der Titelseite angekündigt worden war, stammte von Pat Paterson, sieben Fotografien trug Francis Reiss bei. Telegramm von Wilson Hicks an Francis Reiss vom 3. 10. 1947. Attachment der email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 5. 6. 2016.

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PROVE THEY ARE NOT THEIR BROTHER’S KEEPER“.44 In einer Serie von acht Fotos gelang es Francis Reiss, die Gleichgültigkeit New Yorker Passanten aufzuzeigen, die, ohne großartige Notiz zu nehmen, an einem schlafenden Schwarzen vorbeigingen, der völlig erschöpft auf einer Treppe zu einer Station der New Yorker Untergrundbahn lag. Für die gleiche Ausgabe von Life begleitete er den Rundfunkredakteur Allen Funt (1914–1999), der kurz zuvor, im Juni 1947, für ABC Radio die Show „The Candid Microphone“ erfunden hatte, die er schon ein Jahr später für das Fernsehen als „Candid Camera“ („Versteckte Kamera“) weiterentwickelt hatte und als Moderator leitete. Vier Fotos von Francis Reiss illustrierten den Life-Artikel mit dem Titel „‚CANDID MICROPHONE‘ CATCHES PEOPLE OFF-GUARD. New radio show secretly records what New Yorkers say in odd situations and puts results on the air.“45 Nur zwölf Tage später, am 25. Oktober 1947, wandte sich Wilson Hicks erneut an Francis Reiss: „You seem to have committed yourself to a good many extra-curricular activities other than photography, but hope you will find time to do some stories for us out that way.“ Bezogen auf eine Verbindung von Francis Reiss mit der Agentur Black Star schrieb Hicks: „I hope you will not commit yourself irrevocably so that you won’t be free to discuss further possibilities of work with Life after you finish at M.U.“46 Schon ein Jahr später sollte die Chefredaktion mit Stolz über ihren neuen Mitarbeiter berichten können. In einem Journal für die Mitarbeiter von Life stand neben einem Foto von Francis Reiss: A LIFE photographer got a two-page-spread in the August 23 issue when he snapped two exclusives while covering a story that turned out to be one of the great ones of the year. He is Francis Reiss (see cut), a newcomer whose pictures have appeared in LIFE only five times previously. Die knappe Notiz beschrieb detailliert, wie er seine Fotos machen konnte: Last Wednesday Reiss was assigned to watch the Russian Consulate in Manhattan. While other photographers, two newsreel men and a 44 45

46

„SPEAKING OF PICTURES... NEW YORKERS PROVE THEY ARE NOT THEIR BROTHER’S KEEPER‟ in Life, New York, Vol. 23, No. 15, 13 October 1947, 16–18. „‚CANDID MICROPHONE‘ CATCHES PEOPLE OFF-GUARD. New radio show secretly records what New Yorkers say in odd situations and puts results on the air“ in Life, New York, Vol. 23, No. 15, 13 October 1947, 77, 78. Der auf Seite 33 gedruckte Fotonachweis listete die Fotos von Francis Reiss auf. Schreiben von Wilson Hicks, Life, New York, an Francis Reiss vom 25. 10. 1947. Francis ­Reiss‘ damalige Adresse lautete: 206 Thilly Avenue, Columbia, Missouri.

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television operator kept watch across the street, Reiss planted himself near the Consulate door. Suddenly a car drove up. Consul Lomakin was handed the writ of habeas corpus on behalf of the captive teacher, Mrs. Kosenkina, and Reiss got an exclusive picture.47 Dieses Foto entstand am 11. August 1948, einen Tag später konnte Francis Reiss auf Grund seiner Geistesgegenwart den Fluchtversuch der gekidnappten Lehrerin Oxana Stepanowna Kosenkina (1897–1960) und dessen Behinderung durch sowjetisches Botschaftspersonal fotografisch dokumentieren. Wie es ihm gelang, wurde in der knappen Nachricht für die Mitarbeiter von Life exakt beschrieben: As he left the telephone booth, he saw police-men rushing into the Cavendish Club. A Leica around his neck, he followed one of them on the run up the nearby stairway. Before the excited Russians could stop him, he saw Mrs. Kosenkina crumpled in the courtyard, shot the scene continuously from the window until she was carried inside. Result: the most dramatic pictures on the most dramatic story of the week.48  Life publizierte Francis Reiss‘ Fotos in der Ausgabe vom 23. August 1948; die Schlagzeilen der kommentierenden Texte lauteten „THE MYSTERY OF THE KIDNAPPED RUSSIAN“49 und „MRS. KOSENKINA JUMPS FROM CONSULATE WINDOW“.50 Der Fall ‚Kosenkina‘ führte zu einer ernsten amerikanisch-russsischen Staatsaffäre, in der Francis Reiss den fotografischen Beweis für die Verschleppung der Lehrerin in das russische Konsulat geliefert hatte, was schließlich dazu führte, dass sie unter den Schutz der Vereinigten Staaten gestellt wurde und die sowjetischen Konsulate in New York und San Francisco aus Protest zeitweilig geschlossen wurden. Am 15. Oktober 1949 heiratete Francis Reiss die aus Boston stammende Jeanne Delano (geb. 1925). Aus ihrer Ehe stammen vier Kinder, zwei Jungen und zwei Mädchen. 1951 beendete Francis Reiss seine Arbeit als Fotograf und

47 48 49 50

Cutting from FYI/Life staff journal, undatiert. Attachment der email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 17. 11. 2013. Ebd. „THE MYSTERY OF THE KIDNAPPED RUSSIAN“, in Life, New York, Vol. 25, No. 8, 23 August 1948, 23. „MRS KOSENKINA JUMPS FROM CONSULATE WINDOW“, in Life, New York, Vol. 25, No. 8, 23 August 1948, 26–27. Der auf Seite 21 gedruckte Fotonachweis benannte Francis Reiss als Fotografen.

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kehrte gemeinsam mit seiner Frau nach Europa zurück. Über seine weiteren Lebensstationen berichtete er in Kürze: From 1951 to the early 1960s I ran the family business in Bradford, Yorkshire and built two factories in Malta, which thanks to the activities of a local politician and his Labour Trade Union went bankrupt. Then for three years I worked for the German women’s underwear manufacturer Triumph International, then for seven years I converted my country house in England into a small Country House Hotel, then in 1984 I emigrated lock stock and barrel, including one ginger pussycat, to OZ.51 6

„Lock stock and barrel ... to OZ“

Mit Blick auf seine in Australien erneut belebte Leidenschaft für die Fotografie charakterisierte sich Francis Reiss als „fairly successful photographer“. Allein angesichts der jüngsten Ausstellungen gelinde gesagt, ein understatement, eine Untertreibung: Vom 16. August bis 28. September 2008 zeigte die Bendigo Art Gallery in Bendigo, Vic., die Ausstellung „A Moment in Time. Portraits from the 1990s by Francis Reiss“, die Monash Art Gallery, auch als „home of Australian photography“ bezeichnet, präsentierte vom 8. Dezember 2010 bis 30. Januar 2011 die Schau ‚Pictures of the 1940s. Francis Reiss‘. Die Whitehorse Artspace Gallery folgte vom 4. August bis 1. September 2012 mit der Ausstellung ‚Francis Reiss: War and Peace‘. Am 5. März 2014 schließlich fand die Eröffnung der Ausstellung ‚On the Sheep’s Back‘ statt, wiederum in der Whitehorse Artspace Gallery. Die Schau zeigte schwarz-weiß Fotografien, „a series of photographs taken by Reiss of an Australian sheep station in the early 1950s typifying the postwar wool boom“. Als ‚touring exhibition‘ konzipiert, ist geplant, sie noch bis 2017 zu zeigen. Zum Zustandekommen der Fotoserie schrieb Jacquie Nichols-Reeves, Senior Arts Officer und Kuratorin der Whitehorse Art Collection, im begleitenden Katalogbuch: It was the lack of security as a photographer on short-term contracts that steered Reiss in another direction – that of working in the wool industry. Reiss spent time in training, undertaking wool sorting and spinning, then 51

Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 5. 11. 2014.

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Abbildung 6.3 Francis Reiss, fotografiert von June Orford, 2014

Abbildung 6.4 Cover des Katalogs On the Sheep’s Back

Abbildung 6.5 Francis Reiss mit seiner Partnerin June Orford, März 2014

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spent a year attending wool sales in Australia. It was during that time that he visited Burren Burren Station.52 Die Fotos, die Francis Reiss 1951 auf dieser Station/Ranch von 31.000 Acre Größe und 5.000 Schafen im nördlichen New South Wales aufnahm, schließen nahtlos an seine ‚photo essays‘ für Picture Post an. Ausgestattet mit einer Leica IIIc sowie mit 35mm und 90mm Wechselobjektive, dokumentierte Francis Reiss den Alltag des Farmerehepaares Helen und Rex White, fotografierte das mühsame Zusammentreiben der Schafe, deren Markierung durch Brandmarken, die Schafschur, die kurze Teepause, die Herstellung von Butter per Hand, den abendlichen Feierabend, die notwendige Büroarbeit, aber auch den Einkaufsbesuch in der Stadt Collarenebri. Wie Jacquie Nichols-Reeves schrieb, wurden diese Fotos zum Glück nicht Francis Reiss‘ „‚Swan-song‘ as a photojournalist“,53 setzte er doch seine Arbeit als Fotograf nach seiner vollständigen Übersiedlung nach Australien fort. 7

Epilog

Nach seiner jüdischen Herkunft befragt, antwortete Francis Reiss „I call myself a practicing [sic] atheist“. Zur Erläuterung schrieb er: My being Jewish has an interesting history: for many years, in fact until more or less recently, I would not admit to it; sometimes even denying it. Especially when living in England. Now it’s ‚no problem‘. It can happen that when I hear an antisemitic joke, or opinion, that I will even say to the person concerned: ‚actually I am Jewish‘. You see in Australia it doesn’t matter. Nobody cares what you are or where you come from.54 An anderer Stelle äußerte er sich zu seiner Emigration aus Deutschland und seiner Identifikation mit Australien: I do not consider myself to be an exile from any country. I have never had German nationality, but until I became a naturalised Australian, I always maintained Danish nationality, which was the nationality of my father. 52 53 54

Jacquie Nichols-Reeves, „On the Sheep’s Back: A Ride To Prosperity”, in Francis Reiss, On the Sheep’s Back. A documentary of the life and times of a rural enterprise (Melbourne: Whitehorse Artspace, 2014), 4. Ebd. Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 20. 12. 2010.

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Abbildung 6.6 Francis Reiss, Der walisische Dichter Dylan Thomas, 1946

Today I consider myself to be just an Australian Citizen in this wonderful country to which people from so many countries have come.55 In der Ausgabe von Creative Camera vom November 1977, in der auch Francis Reiss gewürdigt worden war, schrieb der Herausgeber und Fotohistoriker Colin Osman in der Einleitung: This issue was nearly called Britain The Grand Tradition but we lacked the courage at the last moment to do it. However it has been purposefully chosen to illustrate what has made British photography classic throughout the world. One should always be careful about how one talks about British photography; like American photography much of it was produced by immigrant photographers particularly, again as in America, from Germany and Hungary, as from many other countries.56 Der Fokus auf britische und amerikanische Fotografie ließe sich durch ein Weitwinkel auf Australien ausweiten, um so auch die Arbeit des Fotografen Francis Reiss zu erfassen. Dieser schlaglichtartige Blick auf Francis Reiss‘ Leben und Werk stellt zugleich eine weitere Facette der bis heute ungeschriebenen Fotogeschichte Hamburgs im 20. Jahrhundert dar. Auch wenn im Juni 2015 die nunmehr sechste „Triennale der Photographie“ durchgeführt wurde, kann dieses 55 56

Email von Francis Reiss an den Verf. vom 11. 5. 2011. Osman (wie Anm. 37), 363.

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Zusammenspiel von Museen, Galerien und anderen kulturellen Institutionen nicht das Fehlen einer systematischen Auseinandersetzung mit Hamburgs Fotogeschichte und ihrer Protagonisten kompensieren.57 Eine erinnerungslose Tagespresse feierte zwar den Rundumschlag in Sachen Fotografie; doch gerade die Hamburg-bezogenen Ausstellungen stellten weniger Neuentdeckungen oder Erstpräsentationen dar, entpuppten sich vielmehr als Umwälzungen oder Neugruppierungen von Sammlungsbeständen. Nach der Veröffentlichung diverser Dissertationen58 und Monografien59 sollte sich eine ernstgemeinte Fotogeschichte Hamburgs endlich mit den Auswirkungen der historischen Zäsur der nationalsozialistischen ‚Machtergreifung‘ beschäftigen. Es gilt die Fotografinnen und Fotografen jüdischer Herkunft zu würdigen, die aus ihrem Berufsstand ausgeschlossen wurden, zur Emigration gezwungen waren, die inhaftiert, deportiert und ermordet wurden. Angesichts der ökonomischen wie sozialen Ausgrenzung, die diese Fotografinnen und Fotografen zur Aufgabe ihrer Berufe und zu Verkäufen ihrer Ateliers zwang, sollten die Hamburger Adressbücher und Akten der Handwerkskammer Hamburg genutzt werden, um aufzuklären, wer von den Atelierverkäufen, der Übernahme der Kundenkartei und der Fotoarchive profitierte. Denn diese kostengünstigen Besitzwechsel gingen einher mit einer fatalen Langzeitwirkung: Das Skandalöse an der ‚Arisierung‘ von photographischen Firmen, Archiven, Agenturen und Ateliers ist die Auslöschung jedweder Erinnerung an ihre früheren Besitzerinnen und Besitzer. In gestalterischen Berufen ist dieses historisch einem Identitätsverlust gleichzusetzen, denn die 57 58

59

Wilfried Weinke, „Hamburger Foto-Flut. Zwischen Aufklärung, Information und Augenwischerei‟, in AKMB-news. Informationen zu Kunst, Museum und Bibliothek. Jg. 22 (2016), Heft 1, 62–65. Siehe Roland Jaeger, Block & Hochfeld. Die Architekten des Deutschlandhauses. Bauten und Projekte in Hamburg 1921–1938. Exil in Los Angeles (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1996), insbesondere der Exkurs „Der Architekt Fritz Block als Photograph“; ders., „Fritz Block: Mit der Leica um die Welt. Teil 1: Europa“, in LFI. Leica Fotografie International. Hamburg, 57. Jg., 4/2005, 6–17; ders., „Mit der Leica um die Welt. Teil 2: Amerika‟ in LFI. Leica Fotografie International. Hamburg, 57. Jg., 5/2005, 14–25; Martin Malte Blumenthal, Ursula Wolff (1906–1977). Fotografin für DIE ILLUSTRIERTE PRESSE. Leben und Werk einer modernen Fotojournalistin in der Weimarer Republik., Doktorarbeit, Bd. 1., Universität Hamburg, 2014. Claudia Gabriele Philipp (Hg.), Natascha A. Brunswick: Hamburg – wie ich es sah. Photographien aus den zwanziger und dreißiger Jahren (Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 2001) ‚Dokumente der Photographie, 6‘; Wilfried Weinke, Verdrängt, vertrieben, aber nicht vergessen. Die Fotografen Emil Bieber, Max Halberstadt, Erich Kastan, Kurt Schallenberg (Weingarten: Kunstverlag Weingarten, 2003).

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Entwürfe und Bilder existieren weiter, nur ohne Urheberinnen und Urheber.60

Dedication

Francis Reiss starb am 4. Dezember 2017. Diesen Artikel möchte ich dem Fotografen Francis Reiss widmen.

Works Cited

Frank Bajohr, „Arisierung“ in Hamburg. Die Verdrängung der jüdischen Unternehmer 1933–1945 (Hamburg: Christians Verlag, 1997) . Martin Malte Blumenthal, Ursula Wolff (1906–1977). Fotografin für DIE ILLUSTRIERTE PRESSE. Leben und Werk einer modernen Fotojournalistin in der Weimarer Republik, Doktorarbeit, Bd. 1., Universität Hamburg, 2014. Denis Brudna, Prof. F. C. Gundlach, Dr. Enno Kaufhold, Prof. Hans Meyer-Veden (Hg.), mit Unterstützung der Kulturbehörde Hamburg, Photographie in Hamburg 1839– 1989. Katalog der Veranstaltungen zum 150. Jubiläum der Photographie in Hamburg (Hamburg: Hamburg o.J., 1989). Hans Bunge, Gert Kähler (Hg.), Villen und Landhäuser. Bürgerliche Baukultur in den Ham­burger Elbvororten von 1900 bis 1935 (München, Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Verlag, 2012). Hendrik van den Bussche (Hg.), unter Mitarbeit von Angela Bottin, Medizinische Wissen­schaft im „Dritten Reich“. Kontinuität, Anpassung und Opposition an der Ham­ burger Medizinischen Fakultät (Berlin, Hamburg: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 1989). Tim Gidal, „Working for Picture Post”, in Creative Camera, “Fifty years of picture magazines”, London, Nos. 211/212, July/August 1982. Andreas Hoffmann, Schule und Akkulturation. Geschlechtsdifferente Erziehung von Knaben und Mädchen der Hamburger jüdisch-liberalen Oberschicht 1848–1942 (Mün­ ster: Waxmann Verlag, 2001). Carmen Cornelia Hohmann, Ein jüdisches Professorenschicksal zwischen Hamburg und London: der Zahnmediziner Hans Jacob Türkheim (1889–1955) (Berlin, Münster, Wien, Zürich, London: LIT Verlag, 2009). 60

Rolf Sachsse, „,Dieses Atelier ist sofort zu vermieten‘. Von der ,Entjudung‘ eines Be­rufs­ standes“, in Fritz Bauer Institut (Hg.), „Arisierung“ im Nationalsozialismus. Volksge­mein­ schaft, Raub und Gedächtnis (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2000), 280 ( Jahr­buch 2000 zur Geschichte und Wirkung des Holocaust).

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Klaus Honnef, Frank Weyers, Und sie haben Deutschland verlassen... müssen. Fotografen und ihre Bilder 1928–1997 (Köln: PROAG, 1997). Tom Hopkinson, Of This Our Time. A Journalist’s Story, 1905–50 (London: Hutchinson, 1982). Roland Jaeger, Block & Hochfeld. Die Architekten des Deutschlandhauses. Bauten und Pro­jekte in Hamburg 1921–1938. Exil in Los Angeles (Berlin: Gebr. Mann Verlag, 1996). Roland Jaeger, „Fritz Block: Mit der Leica um die Welt. Teil 1: Europa“ , in LFI. Leica Foto­ grafie International, Hamburg, 57. Jg., 4/2005. Roland Jaeger, „Mit der Leica um die Welt. Teil 2: Amerika“, in LFI. Leica Fotografie International, Hamburg, 57. Jg., 5/2005. Robert Kee, The Picture Post Album. A 50th Anniversary Collection. With a Foreword by Sir Tom Hopkinson (London: Guild Publishing, 1989). Fritz Kempe, Vor der Camera. Zur Geschichte der Photographie in Hamburg (Hamburg: Christians, 1976). Hans Michael Koetzle, Das Lexikon der Fotografen 1900 bis heute (München: Knaur, 2002). Ralf Lange, Das Hamburger Kontorhaus. Architektur. Geschichte. Denkmal (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Verlag, 2015). Stefan Lorant, Sieg Heil! Eine deutsche Bildgeschichte von Bismarck zu Hitler (Frankfurt am Main: Zweitausendeins, 1979). Stefan Lorant, Ich war Hitlers Gefangener. Ein Tagebuch 1933 (München: List Verlag, 1985). Reinhold Mißelbeck (Hg.), Prestel-Lexikon der Fotografen. Von den Anfängen 1839 bis zur Gegenwart (München, Berlin, London, New York: Prestel Verlag, 2002). Barbara Müller-Wesemann, Theater als geistiger Widerstand. Der Jüdische Kulturbund in Hamburg 1934–1941 (Stuttgart: J. B. Metzler 1996). Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe (Hg.), Photographie zwischen Daguerreotypie und Kunstphotographie (Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe, 1977). Colin Osman, „Francis Reiss“, in Creative Camera, London, Number 161, November 1977. Colin Osman, „Der Einfluß deutscher Fotografen im Exil auf die britische Presse­foto­ grafie“, in Kunst im Exil in Großbritannien 1933–1945, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst Berlin (Hg.) (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1986). Claudia Gabriele Philipp (Hg.), Natascha A. Brunswick. Hamburg – wie ich es sah. Photo­ gra­phien aus den zwanziger und dreißiger Jahren (Hamburg: Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 2001). Francis Reiss, On the Sheep’s Back. A documentary of the life and times of a rural enterprise (Melbourne: Whitehorse Artspace, 2014).

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Rolf Sachsse, „,Dieses Atelier ist sofort zu vermieten‘. Von der ,Entjudung‘ eines Berufs­ standes“, in Fritz Bauer Institut (Hg.), „Arisierung“ im Nationalsozialismus. Volksge­ mein­schaft, Raub und Gedächtnis (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2000). Irme Schaber, „Pioniere mit Langzeitwirkung: Der Einfluß der fotografischen Emi­gra­ tion der NS-Zeit auf die englische Fotolandschaft und Bildpresse am Beispiel von Karl Hutton, Felix H. Man, Wolf Suschitzky und weiteren Fotoschaffenden“ in J.M. Ritchie (Hg.), German-speaking Exiles in Great Britain. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 3 (Amsterdam, New York: Editions Rodopi, 2001). Anna von Villiez, Mit aller Kraft verdrängt. Entrechtung und Verfolgung „nicht arischer“ Ärzte in Hamburg 1933 bis 1945 (Hamburg: Dölling und Galitz Verlag, 2009). Wilfried Weinke, Verdrängt, vertrieben, aber nicht vergessen. Die Fotografen Emil Bieber, Max Halberstadt, Erich Kastan, Kurt Schallenberg (Weingarten: Kunstverlag Wein­ garten, 2003). Wilfried Weinke, „Hamburger Foto-Flut. Zwischen Aufklärung, Information und Augen­­wischerei“, in AKMB-news. Informationen zu Kunst, Museum und Bibliothek, Jg. 22 (2016). Thomas Willimowki, „‚Ein Mann der Bilder‘. Zum Tode des Photopioniers und Histo­ rikers Stefan Lorant“, in Aufbau, New York, No. 25, 5 December 1997.

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Chapter 7

Drawing for Radio Times: the Contribution of Émigré Artists  Ines Schlenker

In memory of Milein Cosman (1921–2017)

In the 1940s and 50s Radio Times, the weekly radio programme listings magazine, was the most influential and best-selling showcase for black-and-white illustrations in the UK. Artists who featured regularly in its pages could be sure to have reached the top of their profession. A small group of émigrés belonged to this elite circle, among them Milein Cosman, Susan Einzig and Gerard Hoffnung. Based on research at the BBC Written Archives Centre and using material from the artists’ collections and estates, this chapter examines the role Radio Times played in developing émigré artists’ careers and assesses the contribution they made to the magazine.

 Radio Times, the world’s first listings magazine, emanated from a dispute. In 1922, the British Broadcasting Company had begun regular transmissions in London and the regions. When, the following year, newspapers wanted to charge the BBC for listing the radio programmes, its directors decided to start the BBC’s own publication: the first edition of Radio Times appeared on 28 September 1923. Designed to set out details of programmes and comment on them, the magazine employed illustrations as an integral part of its strategy from the start. Drawing on established artists as well as new talent to decorate its pages and covers, Radio Times quickly became a “great nurturer of artistic talent”.1 In the beginning illustrations were light-hearted and humorous and often about broadcasting itself. Soon the magazine evolved its own individual graphic idiom: line drawings which, alongside photographs, illustrated “the imaginative world of radio”2 for the listener, providing a pictorial summary of a programme. They told the reader “something he needs to know before he switches on his set, or will want to know when it is switched on”.3

1 The Art of Radio Times, radio programme broadcast on 26 September 2013, , accessed 30 March 2017. 2 Ibid. 3 R. D. Usherwood, Drawing for Radio Times (London: The Bodley Head, 1961), 8.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_009

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The decade following the end of the Second World War, which is also the focus of this chapter, has been labelled “Radio’s golden age”.4 The BBC steadily expanded its broadcasting, introducing the Light Programme and the Third Programme, so that by 1950 71% of the population listened to the radio daily.5 Radio Times developed into one of the nation’s best-selling magazines, reaching its highest weekly average of more than 8,800,000 copies in 1955. Familiar, trusted, reliable, entertaining and in everyone’s home, Radio Times became part of the nation’s cultural memory. Cuttings from the magazine were collected in scrapbooks, its covers hung on walls. As a famous national showcase for illustrations and the “journal to which all illustrators aspired” Radio Times could take its pick from the best artists of the day, among them such distinguished practitioners as Edward Ardizzone, Eric Fraser and Victor Reinganum.6 Working conditions, however, were far from ideal.7 Low pay, usually three guineas per artwork, and the challenge of producing drawings to tight deadlines and strict specifications made for onerous routines. Artists would usually receive the commission on a Friday afternoon and start sketching first ideas immediately. Saturday was taken up with improving on the draft, leaving Sunday to finish off, ready for delivery to the Radio Times offices on Monday. As there was no time to submit rough sketches for approval or to make alterations, the contributors were forced to think clearly and to work precisely which, it might be argued, contributed to the “crisp freshness evident in the drawings themselves”.8 While some artists thrived under the imposed work regime, others found the pressure of time rather stressful.9 All Radio Times illustrators were employed on a freelance basis and assigned work to which the magazine’s art editor thought them best fitted and which matched their interests. Briefed on the general aim of an illustration and its correct dimensions, later to be scaled down to its required tiny size, the way each arrived at the desired outcome was left to the artist, resulting in a variety of recognisable styles and individual techniques across the magazine as well as the decades.

4 David Driver (ed.), The Art of Radio Times: the first sixty years (London: BBC, 1981), 82. 5 Robert Silvey, Notes on Proposed Reader Interest Enquiry for Radio Times and the Listener, 13 October 1950: R9/13/39: Audience Research, Radio Times and Listener Readership 1950: BBC Written Archives Centre, Caversham Park, Reading (BBC WAC). 6 Michael McNay, “Ralph Usherwood”, The Guardian, 29 February 2000, , accessed 6 December 2017. 7 Usherwood, op. cit., 8; Radio programme The Art of Radio Times, op. cit. (see note 1 above). 8 Exhibition of Drawings from Radio Times, exh. cat., Qantas Gallery, London 1962, 1. 9 Radio programme The Art of Radio Times, op. cit. (see note 1 above).

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A small group of émigré draughtsmen and -women belonged to the elite Radio Times circle, among them Milein Cosman, Susan Einzig and Gerard Hoffnung.10 All three were born to affluent, cultured, assimilated Jewish parents in Germany in the early 1920s, and were already passionate about art as children. Leaving their native country during the late 1930s and receiving their artistic training in England, they were ready to start their professional careers in earnest by the end of the Second World War. Yet in the difficult economic climate of postwar Britain many artists found it hard to make ends meet and Cosman, Einzig and Hoffnung at first struggled to earn a living. Being hired by Radio Times was a major breakthrough: the small, yet reliable income provided a modicum of financial stability that allowed them to explore other areas of work, while their illustrations were now regularly exposed to huge audiences. 1

Milein Cosman (1921–2017)11

Born Emilie Else Cosmann in Gotha and brought up in Düsseldorf, Cosman completed her schooling in Switzerland since her parents had been worried about her continued safety in Germany. In summer 1939 she moved on to London to begin her artistic training and enrolled at the Slade School of Fine Art, which was evacuated to Oxford during the war. After graduating in 1942, Cosman eked out an existence by working on a milk float, trying her hand at teaching in secondary schools and lecturing at the Workers’ Educational Association, while attempting to start a freelance career as an illustrator. On moving to London in 1945, she showed her portfolio to countless magazine and book publishers. Although she received some commissions, her work often met with little interest and predictions of a dire future. A haughty dismissal by the young Gerard Hoffnung, whose drawings Cosman considered “decadent”, particularly rankled.12 Cosman’s luck changed when she walked into the offices of Radio Times in November 1946. The magazine’s art editor, Douglas Graeme Williams, was impressed by what he saw but worried about how the drawings, made in pencil rather than pen and ink, which was favoured by contemporary printing methods, could successfully be reproduced. A few days after her visit Cosman received a telegram from Williams, asking her to go to the BBC studios in Maida 10 11 12

The Radio Times careers of two further émigré artists, Vienna-born Fritz Wegner (1924– 2015) and Val Biro (1921–2014), a native of Budapest, still need to be evaluated. A fuller account of Cosman’s life can be found in the author’s forthcoming book Capturing Time from which the biographical information in this section is taken. Milein Cosman, diary entry for 29 May 1947: Milein Cosman archive, London (MCA).

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Figure 7.1 Milein Cosman, ‘Constant Lambert conducting’, Radio Times, 16 January 1947

Vale and draw the composer and conductor Constant Lambert. Cosman produced an animated portrait which was published in Radio Times on 16 January 1947. Despite the small scale and the somewhat stippled appearance of the reproduction, the artistic quality of the portrait convinced Williams to hire her as a freelance contributor with regular commissions. She became the magazine’s specialist for musical subjects, developing a uniquely spontaneous style that captured the immediacy of music-making. It would have been impossible to imagine a job that suited Cosman better. Working for Radio Times determined her career path and enabled her to discover her artistic identity. Later that year she met her future husband, the Vienna-born writer and musicologist Hans Keller, and from now on the spheres of art and music as well as her private and professional life were inextricably intertwined. In the wake of the Constant Lambert commission, Cosman would go to as many rehearsals and concerts as possible, producing sketches on spec and building up a portfolio of sitters. Over the coming years, she was in the privileged position of coming face to face with the crème de la crème of the musical world and would almost always seize the chance to draw their portraits. These drawings constitute a graphic eye-witness account of London’s post-war music scene, recording many major performances and assembling an unrivalled compendium of composers, conductors, singers and instrumentalists.

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While at first portraits of famous individuals dominated Cosman’s contributions to Radio Times, over the next few years her repertoire widened to include documenting musical festivals. Following on from the assignment to draw the main conductors of the Proms (Promenade concerts), Adrian Boult, Basil Cameron and Malcolm Sargent, Cosman was regularly called upon to illustrate the concerts, organised by the BBC over a period of several weeks in the summer at the Royal Albert Hall. The Proms drawings from the second half of the 1950s, in particular, encapsulate her creativity and skill for finding original variations and fresh ways of presenting an essentially unchanging theme, by capturing scenes from unusual angles and focusing on interesting details, without repeating herself. Her sketches, made at rehearsals and concerts, leave no aspect of the Proms untouched. They range from grand exterior views of the circular building to close-up depictions of individuals, groups of musicians and overviews of the entire crowded stage. The audience often features, either depicted en masse or represented by a small number of individuals, with the plush surroundings of the Royal Albert Hall allowing for unusual perspectives, spectacular views and the highlighting of architectural details. In her search for interesting subject matter, Cosman explored every corner of the concert hall and all possible viewpoints, from the gallery at the top of the building to the steps leading up to the arena in its bowels, where tired “Prommers” can rest while still being able to follow the concert. Occasionally she applies a personal touch, for example when she includes Hans Keller in the audience, intently following the music, a score in his lap. In order to open up novel perspectives on a familiar subject, she homes in on scenes that are characterised by repetition and order, such as a line of double basses or a row of singers, in the process creating almost abstract patterns. Her most ambitious drawings show a combination of conductor, musicians and audience, totally engrossed in the act of making and listening to music. On a more practical level Cosman must have been an ideal contributor to Radio Times. Her resistance to using a pen was soon overcome and the disciplining effect of deadlines, though annoying at times, helped her focus and create an immense body of work. With 233 original drawings held at the BBC Written Archives Centre, she was among the most prolific of artists working for Radio Times. Due to their often generic nature the drawings could be shown almost at random in the weekly listings or accompany special features and were used repeatedly over the years. Cosman’s habit of producing drawings on spec also meant that often the required image had already been completed before the art editor asked for it. Besides, Cosman’s inventive drawings were perfectly pitched to the Radio Times readers, who could identify with their

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Figure 7.2 Milein Cosman, ‘Sir John Barbirolli conducting at the Henry Wood Proms’, Radio Times, 27 August 1956

truthful reproductions of the events and atmosphere in the concert hall. One admirer wrote in to say how much I have appreciated & enjoyed those sketches of the Proms in Radio Times. The artist has, as far as I can see made no mistakes in the attitude style & actions of the individual players the rapt expressions & attentions of the audience, including individuals.13 Another reader pointed out a recent sketch that had particularly caught her attention: “Note this Friday July 27 sketch – the broad back of the soloist, and one can feel the very music being interpreted.”14 Right from the beginning of her career as an illustrator, Cosman faced a problem common to many émigrés: the correct spelling of her name. Her unusual first name, Milein, had been made up by her brother, who had found it impossible to pronounce the name given to his baby sister at birth. Following the attribution to “Milhein Cosman” of her very first drawing for Radio Times, over the years her illustrations published elsewhere were also often credited incorrectly. Cosman dealt with her name pragmatically: on coming to England she discarded “Emilie” for good and always used her nickname. Over the course of a few years she also simplified (and Anglicised) her second name, shedding its second “n”. 13 14

All Fisher to Art Editor, Radio Times, 5 September 1956: MCA. Ruth Lean to The Art Editor, Radio Times, 1 August 1956: MCA.

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Figure 7.3 Milein Cosman, ‘Ronald Smith at the piano, Henry Wood Proms’, Radio Times, 27 July 1956

Cosman’s association with Radio Times lasted for over two decades and provided her with a small but steady income that for many years was her main resource. In 1950 Douglas Graeme Williams was succeeded by Ralph Dean Usherwood. His time as art editor was “probably the most fruitful artistic period of the magazine”15 and coincided with Cosman’s most productive time there. Usherwood, who had lived for a while in Germany before the Second World War, particularly appreciated Cosman’s habit of drawing from life. This, he opined, imbued her illustrations with “a real respect for the music itself” and, in the case of portraits, allowed her “to give the impression of a face in motion”.16 When Usherwood retired in 1960, he thanked her “for all you have done to help me in the last years. I know I have relied very much on your forbearance and enthusiasm. But I will always be very proud of the drawings you have done.”17 A commercial artist more out of necessity than by choice initially, Cosman used her association with Radio Times to attract numerous commissions from other magazines and newspapers, both national and international. In 1958 she even broke into the new medium of television, devising and presenting Black and White, a series of schools programmes on drawing for ITV. For several years Cosman had also been developing a less well-known side of her work, book illustrations, contributing to a wide range of subjects, from volumes on music 15 16 17

Tony Currie, The Radio Times Story (Tiverton: Kelly, 2001), 84. Usherwood, op. cit., 29, 27. Ralph Dean Usherwood to Milein Cosman, 2 October 1960: MCA.

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and ballet to novels and collections of poetry. A publication of her own, Musical Sketchbook, brought together 60 of Cosman’s portraits of composers, conductors, instrumental virtuosi and singers drawn at rehearsals, concerts and operatic performances, many of which had first been seen in the pages of Radio Times. Published in 1957, it marked the beginning of a series of books that combined her drawings with texts by her husband. 2

Susan Einzig (1922–2009)18

Susan Einzig, born in Berlin as Suzanne Henriette Einzig, developed an interest in drawing when very young. Also passionate about literature, she discovered her talent for illustrating stories she had read early on, creating drawings, as she later called it, “out of my head”.19 Having left Germany on a Kindertransport in spring 1939, Einzig studied at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, first in London and, from 1940, in Northampton where it had moved to escape the Blitz. Following graduation in 1942 and subsequent war work, she received the commission to illustrate Norah Pulling’s children’s book Mary Belinda and the Ten Aunts, published in 1945. She enjoyed the collaboration and decided to become a freelance illustrator. Buoyed up by the wave of postwar optimism in Britain, she was confident that there “was quite a lot of interesting work about”, not least due to the many refugees from Central Europe, who had been book and magazine publishers [...] and who brought with them their culture of producing beautiful, illustrated books.20 Although she found the experience of carrying her heavy portfolio around publishers and advertising agencies particularly dispiriting, she soon started to receive magazine commissions. Yet the need to pay the rent forced her to accept an additional part-time teaching job at Camberwell School of Art. 18

19 20

This section is based on Einzig’s interview for Refugee Voices - The AJR Audio-Visual History Collection conducted by Marian Malet on 23 March 2006; and on Sarah MacDougall, ‛‟Meine Heimat” is in my Heart and my Head’: Women Artists in Exile: Susan Einzig (1922– 2009) and Eva Frankfurther (1930–1959)”, in Charmian Brinson, Jana Barbora Buresova and Andrea Hammel (eds.), Exile and Gender II: Politics, Education and the Arts. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German & Austrian Exile Studies, 18 (Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2017), 170–83. Martin Salisbury, “An Afternoon with Susan Einzig”, Line, no. 2, 2001, 66–73 (68). Ibid., 69.

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Among the various illustration jobs Einzig had to juggle were, from May 1947, those for Radio Times. Like Cosman, she was enlisted by Douglas Graeme Williams, who would sometimes take her out for lunch after the delivery of drawings on Monday morning, thus marking the end of an intense phase of work. Never a fast or decisive worker, Einzig had to put her private life on hold when receiving a Radio Times commission. The number of tasks to be accomplished before a drawing could even be started – organising child care, reading the script and doing library research on period costumes – forced her to concentrate. Yet she was never totally satisfied with anything she did, “forever changing everything, until someone comes and takes it away”.21 As a result her drawings were “always so thick with white paint and alterations and bits of paper cut out, glued over, that they became almost low-relief sculpture” and difficult to reproduce.22 Although preferring to draw in pencil, she found that going over her sketches in ink produced results that were “dead and dull” and she therefore “tried to work as directly as possible with a pen”, often completing the task so late that “the ink was still wet” on delivery.23 Some of Einzig’s 29 original drawings for Radio Times do carry the marks of heavy reworking; the published illustrations, however, bear no witness to their arduous creation process. Instead, they appear to be composed with casual, effortless ease. The 1950s was a decade in which many plays and operas were performed on the radio, and they became Einzig’s speciality in Radio Times. Right from the start she employed a device that, based on her intimate knowledge of theatre, turned into her trademark: stage-like compositions, contrasting the central figure or couple in the foreground with minor characters in the background. Her drawing Children of Kings (Die Königskinder), advertising the broadcast of a studio performance of Engelbert Humperdinck’s folk-tale opera on 1 December 1948, is an early example, immediately drawing in the listener, by homing in on the opera’s decisive moment. The goose-girl’s arrival at the city gates whets the appetite of the listener without giving away the coming turn of events.  Children of Kings was Einzig’s first commission for Radio Times with a German subject. The next, Iron Curtain, takes the compositional idea to its extremes. The play, broadcast on 4 February 1952, looks at the fate of refugees caught up in the political tensions between the British and Russian occupying armies in a small Austrian village near the Yugoslav frontier in winter 1946. A witness to the horror of totalitarian regimes herself, Einzig must have felt the 21 22 23

Ibid., 70. The Art of Radio Times, op. cit., 132. Ibid.

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Figure 7.4 Susan Einzig, ‘Iron Curtain’, Radio Times, 4 February 1952

subject matter very close to her heart and something that required special emphasis. Cutting out all surroundings, the drawing focuses solely on the group of main protagonists, facing and directly addressing the viewer in their plea for help. All superfluous details are avoided, thus increasing the image’s impact by highlighting the group’s plight and challenging the viewer to respond. While Einzig had signed off earlier drawings with her last name only, Iron Curtain for the first time bears also her first name, but Anglicised to Susan. For the majority of her works from now on she used ‘Susan Einzig’ as her signature. The ‘z’, however, is written in an old-fashioned German manner as if she wanted to cling on to a last remnant of her former national identity. Whilst the earlier drawings frequently displayed a light touch, Einzig’s elegant style became more detailed over the years. It was often employed in plays set in the 19th century which, according to her daughter Hetty, was the period that suited her best.24 Following her “tendency to ‘live in the past’ in terms of literature and society generally”,25 she would enjoy carrying out thorough research on details of clothing, furniture and decoration, at times featuring relevant items from her own home. Anton Chekhov’s play Ivanov about a young landowner, “bored with life in the country and out of love” with his wife who “is

24 25

Hetty Einzig in conversation with the author, 30 March 2017. Salisbury, op. cit., 71.

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Figure 7.5 Susan Einzig, ‘Ivanov’, Radio Times, 14 April 1958

desperately ill but still devoted to the man he once was”,26 is listed on 14 April 1958 with an illustration that encapsulates Einzig’s skill of transporting the listener to an imaginatively evoked earlier world. Ralph Dean Usherwood praised Einzig’s work for its maturity which exactly reflects the qualities one associates with Chekhov. The characters are not altogether good or altogether bad. [...] Their emotions are not blatant or brutal but they are none the less intense.27 All in all, Einzig enjoyed her time with Radio Times, “one of the easiest clients to work for”, who never rejected a drawing.28 She particularly appreciated the huge audiences it generated for her work and the immediacy of the production process. Results were not to be had as speedily in the other line of freelance work in which Einzig specialised: book illustrations. Not huge in number, they include one of the most cherished 20th-century children’s books, Tom’s Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce. Published in 1958, it was a popular success and won the prestigious Carnegie Medal. Einzig felt great affinity with this ghost story, which begins with Tom being sent into “Exile” to avoid his catching 26 27 28

Listing for Ivanov in Radio Times, 14 April 1958. Usherwood, op. cit., 36. The Art of Radio Times, op. cit., 132.

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the measles. Her research included a visit to Pearce from whom she borrowed family photographs of the house and its walled garden in which the story is set. The graceful, understated illustrations perfectly capture the period flavour of the novel and linger in the reader’s mind. Einzig’s skills as an illustrator, honed over the years at Radio Times, are remarkable for creatively evoking historical epochs and empathetically conveying moods and emotions while never giving too much away, thus creating interest and suspense and leaving room for the viewer’s own imagination. She imparted her enthusiasm for her profession to generations of students at Camberwell School of Art and Crafts and Chelsea School of Art, and her impact on British illustration cannot be overestimated. Not without reason has she been called “one of the most important and respected graphic artists of her generation.”29 3

Gerard Hoffnung (1925–1959)

The multi-talented Gerard Hoffnung, cartoonist, broadcaster and musical humorist, is probably the most atypical of all Radio Times illustrators. While his affiliation with Radio Times was only brief and his illustrations for the magazine were few, they nevertheless play a crucial part in his extraordinary career at the BBC – as a raconteur, regular contestant in panel games and more – all of which made him a household name. Born in Berlin and named Gerhard, Hoffnung left Germany in 1939 with his mother to escape the persecution of the Jews and settled in Hampstead Garden Suburb in London. From a very young age he had been interested in the comic drawings of famous German illustrators such as Wilhelm Busch;30 and Hoffnung’s first cartoon was published in Lilliput,31 the pocket-sized monthly magazine of art and humour, while he was still a pupil at Highgate School. After training at two art colleges, he tried variously to earn a living as a bottle washer in a dairy, a teacher of art and German and a freelance cartoonist.32

29 30 31 32

Salisbury, op. cit., 71. Richard Ingrams, “Gerard Hoffnung”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, , accessed on 24 March 2017. Lilliput was founded in 1937 by the photojournalist Stefan Lorant, who had left Germany in autumn 1933 after a period of imprisonment. Ingrams, op. cit. and Gerard Hoffnung in an interview with Roy Plomley for Desert Island Discs, broadcast on 14 January 1957, , accessed on 30 March 2017.

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Hoffnung owed his first contract with the BBC to his German origins. In September 1941, when he was only sixteen, he was employed to participate in the recording of Kurt und Willi, a feature programme for the BBC’s German Service lasting 4 minutes and 6 seconds, for which he received a fee of two guineas. For his second, slightly longer recording, Der zweitgroesste Deutsche, the following May he was paid five guineas.33 BBC documents initially state “Gerd” as Hoffnung’s first name. However, only a few months later, in a letter signed off as “Gerhard”, he expresses his interest in making more recordings, preferring the roles of villains such as an “objectionable Hitleryouth” for which he “could put on a lovely German accent”.34 In his next letter, written as “G. Hoffnung” in 1944, in addition to his wish to become a member of the BBC Rep Company, he expresses a desire to show his drawings. These he characterises as “absolutely mad”, a result of his being “fond of the macabre and the humorous”.35 Hoffnung was urged to make an appointment with Val Gielgud, Director of Features and Drama,36 who must have liked what he saw. At the tender age of nineteen, Hoffnung was enlisted as a Radio Times illustrator.37 He was only to produce nine drawings but they enabled and at the same time paralleled his career in broadcasting. From 1948 Hoffnung developed his radio persona, starting out with a trial recording of his reading of an E. A. Poe short story, followed by a talk which he – from now on referred to as “Gerard Hoffnung” in BBC correspondence – gave on 28 November 1950, entitled “Fungi on Toast”. The listing for the programme was accompanied by one of Hoffnung’s humorous drawings, showing a trio of grinning mushrooms of the imaginary variety “Polyporus Hoffnungis” holding hands. During the 1950s comedy flourished on the radio38 and gave Hoffnung ample opportunity to combine his various skills. He again made use of his unique gift to promote his radio appearances with his own illustrations in Radio Times when he became a regular contestant in the new panel game One Minute Please, the forerunner of Just a Minute, hosted by Roy Plomley, in July 1951. Hoffnung soon proved to be one of the quiz’s most famous contributors. 33 34 35 36 37 38

Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Gerhard Hoffnung to Walter Rilla, 24 August 1942 (stamp): Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. G. Hoffnung to Val Gielgud, [before 6 June 1944]: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Ethel F. Eaves to Gerard Hoffnung, 6 June 1944: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Source File: Hoffnung, Gerard: BBC WAC. Dawn Webster, Radio Times: the story of broadcasting (Carlisle: Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery, 1993), 14.

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Figure 7.6 Gerard Hoffnung, ‘Gerard Hoffnung tries to talk himself through’, Radio Times, 14 March 1952

A caricatural drawing produced by Hoffnung illustrates his “terrible nightmare” in the face of the programme’s difficult task: lying helplessly in bed, he is reminded of the passing of time by a threatening array of ringing alarm clocks, blinking lights and buzzing bees.39 Another of his drawings, accompanying the show’s listing on 14 March 1952, wittily sums up his struggle to get through the allotted time: finger-wagging and feet-wriggling, a well-turned-out, bespectacled Hoffnung squeezes through the hourglass, while managing to hold his pipe aloft (see Fig. 7.6). He was disarmingly honest about his stocky build and balding head, which made him appear older than he was, and his drawing embodies its creator’s unsparing and literal sense of humour. Although Da ist man sprachlos, a German version of the popular programme, in which Hoffnung also participated, started in July 1952, One Minute Please came off air that autumn. Disappointed listeners wrote to Hoffnung, urging him, as “a senior member of the team”, to “do his utmost” to bring it back.40 Despite television interest in the programme and Hoffnung’s much-admired

39 40

The BBC WAC did not record a date for this drawing. Sir Robert Gooch to Gerard Hoffnung, 24 September 1952: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC.

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“inspired lunacy”,41 One Minute Please only returned in July 1957, yet again featuring Hoffnung as a regular panellist. During the enforced hiatus Hoffnung took part in other Light Programme and German Programme broadcasts and repeatedly contacted the BBC with suggestions, all seriously assessed. Among them were ideas for entire series of programmes, such as discussions between cartoonists42 – not realised as deemed too visual for radio – as well as individual items, for example An Early Tale of Hoffnung, which he characterised as a funny talk to “amuse the ladies”, broadcast on Woman’s Hour in December 1953.43 In the early 1950s Hoffnung took up the tuba. Increasingly, his humour now focused on the world of music. The Maestro, the first of a series of six books of cartoons on musical themes, was published to great acclaim in 1953. Hoffnung subsequently “broke new ground in musical humour”44 with his Hoffnung Music Festival at the Royal Festival Hall in London in November 1956. For this concert of symphonic caricature at which music, both from the traditional repertoire and new compositions, was played on ludicrous instruments such as vacuum cleaners and floor polishers, Hoffnung could count on the participation of distinguished musicians, Malcolm Arnold and William Walton among them. The festival, immediately sold out, was a huge popular success and the first of a series. A BBC interview with Hoffnung was broadcast shortly afterwards, followed by a more substantial one on the prestigious Desert Island Discs.45 The direction his career had taken is summed up by Hoffnung’s last drawing in Radio Times on 23 May 1958: advertising his latest book of musical caricatures, it shows a tuba player filling a glass with beer flowing from a tap in his instrument. While most of Hoffnung’s work for the BBC was based on his “desire to make people laugh”,46 his serious side was exposed in a programme called If I had a Million in 1957. Originally invited to add “something amusing and fantastic” to 41 42 43 44 45 46

Franklin Engelman to H. V., 31 July 1953: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942– 1959: BBC WAC. Gerard Hoffnung to Richard Keen, 28 May 1956: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Gerard Hoffnung to Janet Quigley, 4 November 1953: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, ­Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Ingrams, op. cit. Contracts dated 29 October and 21 November 1956: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Roy Speer to Gerard Hoffnung, 28 November 1952: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved.

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counterbalance some of the contributors who sounded too worthy,47 Hoffnung promised to do my best to be fantastic, if you wish it, but I must tell you that there are a number of causes over which I feel strongly which I should like to spend a good deal of my million on. Naturally I would like to mention them first and foremost.48 As a recently converted Quaker and prison visitor he took the opportunity to promote some of the causes close to his heart. By the time of his early death Hoffnung had already enjoyed a long, intense, varied and extremely successful career at the BBC. Generally happy with the collaboration, he had few issues over the years. One, in 1957, concerned the question of pay: often asked to contribute to programmes in various capacities, writing, talking, playing an instrument, Hoffnung felt too much of his time was asked for.49 From then on he was never paid less than ten guineas even for small pieces. The other main issue had his foreign origins at heart and concerns a problem that Cosman also had to deal with, the various ways in which his name was rendered. In 1953 he made the following request to Radio Times: “Would you be so very kind and make certain that my name is printed as Gerard Hoffnung, and not as Gerald or Gerrard.”50 Stranded between the country he had lost and the society he had adopted, Hoffnung, like Cosman and Einzig before him, struggled to settle on a name that would help him fashion a new identity for himself. One of his last letters to the BBC expresses his joy at the long-standing battle for the correct credits finally being won: “I’ve seen the Radio Times with my little picture, It looks quite nice I think and they have got the acknowledgements right. I can’t get over that.”51

47 48 49 50 51

Marguerite Cutforth to Gerard Hoffnung, 7 August 1957: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. BBC copyright content reproduced courtesy of the British Broadcasting Corporation. All rights reserved. Gerard Hoffnung to Marguerite Cutforth, 7 August 1957: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Gerard Hoffnung to Ronald Boswell, 23 October 1957: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, ­Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Gerard Hoffnung to Miss Proven, 3 October 1953: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC. Gerard Hoffnung to Mr. Wade, 22 May [1958]: Artist’s File RCont1: Hoffnung, Gerard, Talks 1942–1959: BBC WAC.

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The End of an Era

In the 1950s a fundamental shift occurred in the media world which inevitably left its mark on Radio Times. While radio experienced a slow decline, television gradually seized the nation’s imagination, broadcasting again from 1946. The Coronation in June 1953 proved to be a turning point, watched by over 20 million, while twelve million listened to the radio coverage. Television’s growth was acknowledged when its listings were relocated from the back of Radio Times and integrated with those of radio that year. The arrival of ITV in 1955 put an end to the BBC’s television monopoly, while the launch of a rival listings magazine for ITV programmes, TV Times, caused the sales of Radio Times to decline only slightly. In the following years, television programmes increasingly dominated the cover. The end of an era finally came in 1957 when television listings became a separate section before radio listings. The rise of television was accompanied by the gradual replacement of drawn illustrations with photographs throughout the magazine, making the creators of the oldfashioned medium slowly but inexorably redundant. Yet “the golden age of drawn illustrations in Radio Times”52 in the late 1940s and early 1950s had left its mark on the lives of illustrators employed to enliven the listings’ pages. The magazine’s immense circulation not only exposed the work of Cosman, Einzig and Hoffnung to millions of readers but also to potential collaborators and employers at a crucial time at the beginning of their careers, which enabled them to establish a vast network of contacts in a number of creative professions. While learning on the job and honing new skills, all three carved out niches of their own at Radio Times and developed unique artistic personas that could transfer to other tasks. Never identified as Jewish refugees, their German origins thinly veiled, they became distinct voices in this most British of publications. I would like to thank the BBC Written Archives Centre, Milein Cosman, Hetty Einzig, Emily and Ben Hoffnung, Immediate Media, Sarah MacDougall, Hannah Ratford and The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust for kind assistance, interviews, access to family archives and permission to quote unpublished documents and reproduce illustrations.

52

John Russell Taylor, “Around the Galleries”, The Times, 5 November 1996.

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Works Cited

Tony Currie, The Radio Times Story (Tiverton: Kelly, 2001). David Driver (ed.), The Art of Radio Times: the first sixty years (London: BBC, 1981).  Exhibition of Drawings from Radio Times, exh. cat., Qantas Gallery, London 1962. Richard Ingrams, “Gerard Hoffnung”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, . Sarah MacDougall, “ʻMeine Heimat is in my Heart and my Head’. Women Artists in Exile: Susan Einzig (1922–2009) and Eva Frankfurther (1930–1959)”, in Charmian Brinson, Jana Barbora Buresova and Andrea Hammel (eds.), Exile and Gender II: Politics, Education and the Arts. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 18 (Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2017). Michael McNay, “Ralph Usherwood”, The Guardian, 29 February 2000, . John Russell Taylor, “Around the Galleries”, The Times, 5 November 1996. Martin Salisbury, “An Afternoon with Susan Einzig”, Line, no. 2, 2001. R. D. Usherwood, Drawing for Radio Times (London: The Bodley Head, 1961). Dawn Webster, Radio Times: the story of broadcasting (Carlisle: Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery, 1993).

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Chapter 8

“The Craftsman’s Sympathy”: Bernhard Baer, Ganymed and Oskar Kokoschka’s King Lear  Sarah MacDougall Drawing primarily on the Ganymed papers in the Victoria and Albert Museum archives, the Bernhard Baer papers in the Wiener Library archives in London, and interviews with Mrs Ann Baer, this chapter explores the significant but overlooked contribution to the applied arts in postwar Britain by German-Jewish émigré Bernhard Baer, who came to England in 1938: as director of the Ganymed Press in London, and, from 1961 onwards, of Ganymed Original Editions, the company set up on his initiative to print (by a variety of methods) and publish graphic works by living artists in signed limited editions. By inclination and experience, Baer was a meticulous and sympathetic craftsman, who combined technical knowledge with an acute aesthetic sensibility and oversaw every stage of production. This chapter focuses on his partnership in 1962–63 with Austria’s best-known émigré artist and the leading exponent of Expressionism, Oskar Kokoschka, whom he commissioned to create sixteen original lithographs for a deluxe limited edition of Shakespeare’s King Lear, which Kokoschka afterwards called his “most beloved work in print”. This project, commended by Kokoschka as a “great British production”, was executed in both Switzerland and England, then disseminated through Marlborough Fine Art in London by Viennese-born gallerist Harry Fischer, bringing together the final strands of this remarkable émigré collaboration.

1

Bernhard Baer

Bernhard Baer (1905–1983) was born into an assimilated Jewish family in Berlin, where his father Salli owned a clothing factory. During the First World War, Salli fought in the German army on the Russian front, returning in a “very weak emaciated state”1 to nurse his wife and young son through the flu epidemic that swept postwar Europe; Bernhard’s sister, Charlotte, was born in 1920. After leaving school in 1923, despite an inclination towards art history (which he studied “unofficially”, later publishing articles in the Berlin art magazines

1 Ann Baer, “Life of Bernhard Baer, part I”, 2, unpublished ms., Wiener Library, London.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_010

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Kunst­blatt and Kunst und Künstler2), Bernhard was persuaded to study law and economics at the universities of Berlin, Munich and Heidelberg, gaining his doctorate in Law in 1930. He practised as a lawyer until 1933 when the introduction of antisemitic legislation forced him out of this profession. In the climate of mass unemployment, he attempted to settle abroad, travelling to Holland then to France, where he met Brazilian-born émigré film director and producer Alberto Cavalcanti (1897–1982),3 to whom he “suggested scripts for films”,4 and with whom he formed a lifelong friendship. After failing to secure permission to work in France, however, Baer returned to Germany in 1934, initially working (probably secretly) as legal adviser to his maternal uncle Hugo Furth, but also experimenting with colour photography. In 1936 these experiments led him to find temporary work as a collogravure printer with the Berlin firm Rotophot. In this type of intaglio printing, suitable for long, high-quality print runs, such as for magazines, the image (comprised of small holes sunk into the surface of the printing plate) is engraved onto a cylinder. The holes are filled with ink and any excess is removed; paper then makes contact with the ink in the holes when it is pressed against the plate. Baer’s job was to “translate” colour photographs to the printing plate using the latest Duxochrome (colour prints) and Uvachrome (colour separation) processes, and in this way, he laid the foundations of his technical knowledge of printing, which would play a crucial role in his later career.5 He also had the foresight to purchase his own Bermpohl (three-colour) cameras – then still a rarity in Britain – which he had sent on to Associate Realist Film Producers in Soho Square, London, probably via Cavalcanti (then working nearby as a director for the GPO Film Unit). Baer’s considerable technical ability is also apparent from contemporaneous correspondence between a Michigan-based firm of machinery makers and Bermpohl about photographs taken by “a certain Mr Baer”, inviting him to visit the United States (although the trip was not possible without a visa).6 Under the pseudonym Stephen A Stanmore, Baer also penned an (untraced) article in English, published in 2 Both were prestigious German art magazines. Das Kunstblatt was published between 1917 and 1933 by Paul Westheim in Weimar Germany. Kunst und Künstler was produced by Bruno Cassirer in Berlin between 1902 and 1933 with high-quality reproductions of well-known paintings and graphics, as well as original graphics. 3 Alberto Cavalcanti trained as an architect and interior designer, beginning his film career as a set designer for Marcel L’Herbier in France, directing his first film Rien que les heures (Nothing But Time) in Paris in 1926. In 1933 he returned to England and spent seven years working for John Grierson’s GPO Film Unit. He was appointed acting head in 1937. 4 Ann Baer, op. cit., 3. 5 Ann Baer, op. cit., 3. 6 Ibid., 4.

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World Film News, criticising the German films produced under the Nazis.7 He also published several of his own photographs in Gebrauchsgrafîk, a commercial art magazine distributed in London by the firm of K. W. Frerk, who specialised in foreign technical journals. In August 1937, after accepting an earlier invitation to London to visit the GPO unit – known for its pioneering work in “bringing together young artists to produce socially-minded films”8 – Baer arrived on a one-month visa, staying with Cavalcanti. He visited K. W. Frerk, who gave him an introduction to the film producer Charles W. Hobson, praising Baer’s “outstanding black and white photographs”, his specialism in “natural colour photography” and stating that he owned several cameras and had “his own process for producing colour prints”.9 But when no job offer was forthcoming, Baer made “innumerable” applications to printing firms, while simultaneously applying for a visa to the USA. In October 1938, this ‘ad hoc’ existence came to an end when Baer was offered a job with Harrison and Sons Ltd, a London firm of collogravure printers with premises in St Martin’s Lane. Before starting in December, he worked fleetingly at the GPO, where he encountered the young poet W. H. Auden and the composer Benjamin Britten, who had recently collaborated on one of its best-known films, Night Mail (1936), before both departed for the USA in 1939.10 He also moved to Hampstead, noted for its sizeable German-speaking émigré and refugee community. At Harrison’s, probably on the strength of his equipment (confiscated upon the outbreak of war because of his new status as an ‘enemy alien’, but afterwards returned since his livelihood depended on it), he was employed as a colour photographer in the collogravure department and paid £5 a week. He continued to renew his visa monthly and, with the help of the Jewish Aid Committee, applied successfully to bring his family over to England, although only his sister, Charlotte, managed to escape before hostilities began. The war also brought Baer’s official employment to an end and he scraped a meagre living as a freelancer until, following Churchill’s famous directive to “collar the lot”, he was arrested and interned as an ‘enemy alien’ in July 1940 – a 7 8 9 10

Ibid., 3. See John Gray, “Soho Square and Bennett Park: The Documentary Movement in Britain in the 1930s”, , accessed 19 December 2017. Ann Baer, op. cit., 4. See Rachel Beaumont, “Britten and W. H. Auden: A brief but bright creative partnership”, , accessed online 19 December 2017.

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development he greeted as his “economic saviour”.11 He was held first at Prees Heath in Shropshire, “where the weather was marvellous and he did not suffer”,12 and then on the Isle of Man, where conditions were “spartan” but “not intolerable […] enlivened by the company of erudite and civilised compatriots” including future members of the famous Amadeus Quartet,13 and occasional visits to his sister (Charlotte), who was interned in Rushen Women’s Camp. Upon release in December 1940, he joined an engineering firm making precision components for armaments, then (with Home Office permission) the Sun Engraving firm in Watford, where, working a six-day week and firewatching at night, he printed maps for use by the RAF. In 1942, via the Red Cross, Baer learned that his parents and paternal aunt, trapped in Germany, had been sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp, where Salli died in July 1943. His mother, Edith, was transferred to Auschwitz in 1944 and gassed; his aunt survived and returned to Berlin, where after the end of the war, Bernhard tried to assist her with food parcels via the Jewish Refugee Committee. After the war ended, he married in October 1945 Ruth Heine (d. 1963), a fellow German refugee (non-Jewish), with whom he had two children: Susan (b. 1946) and James (b. 1955), whom they raised as English-speaking; Bernhard was naturalised in 1947. In 1946, after failing to obtain a job through Cavalcanti at Ealing Studios,14 Baer benefitted from a chance introduction through his sister to Noel Carrington, publisher and originator of Puffin Books, then pioneering the use of auto-lithography in illustration. Carrington introduced him to Penguin Books’ owner Allen Lane, and editor Nikolaus Pevsner,15 and Baer was subsequently 11 12 13

14

15

Ann Baer, op. cit., 6. Ibid. Norbert Brainin (1923–2005, first violin), Siegmund Nissel (1922–2008, second violin) and Peter Schidlof (1922–1987, viola), all of Jewish origin, met first at Prees Heath and then were interned together in Onchan Camp on the Isle of Man. They formed the Amadeus Quartet with Martin Lovett (cello) in 1948. Baer’s camp is not known, and no records have been traced for the Baers in the Manx Museum archive. Cavalcanti had joined in 1940, as an art editor, producer and director, under the producer Michael Balcon. His films (many of them propaganda pieces) included Went the Day Well? (1942), Three Songs of Resistance (1943) and Dead of Night, which he co-directed in 1945. After a financial dispute Cavalcanti left Ealing in 1946, directing three further films in the UK, before returning to Brazil in 1950. After being blacklisted as a Communist, he moved between Europe and Israel for the rest of his career. Architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (1902–1983), was of Russian-Jewish descent and, after immigrating to Germany with his family as a child, later fled to England in 1933. He edited the ‘Pelican History of Art’ series, launched in 1953, and became celebrated for his 46-volume ‘Buildings of England’ series (1951–74).

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employed to carry out general photography, as needed, for various publications; to supervise the production of ‘Penguin Prints’ (the series which Baer had himself suggested to Lane), and to produce new colour photography for the ‘Pelican History of Art’. He also worked part-time for the Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) in Piccadilly until 1947,16 and as a photographer for the Council of Industrial Design. This combined experience meant that Baer was ideally placed when, in 1949, the young collotype printing firm Ganymed Press, sought a new works manager for their printing arm at Yeading, near Hayes in Middlesex. In 1950 he was appointed director with responsibility for all aspects of printing, a position he retained until his retirement in 1980.17 2

Ganymed: Berlin and London

The firm of Ganymed was itself of German émigré origin, as Baer later related in his article “Ganymed Berlin / Ganymed London”,18 commenting that both firms had been: born in the aftermath of war, the Berlin firm in 1920, the London one in 1948. It is perhaps not surprising that the misery, destructiveness and greyness of the war years fostered the urge to have a new growing point for creating civilised values through a unique workshop printing for the arts.19 The idea of the German Ganymed had originated with the printer Bruno Deja (dates unknown) and the highly influential art historian and writer Julius ­Meier-Graefe (1867–1935), co-founder of the art and literary periodical Pan, and the author of an authoritative volume on the German nineteenth-century painter Hans von Marées. After returning from war service, Meier-Graefe had approached the Munich publisher Reinhold Piper about founding “a Society

16 17 18 19

Established by William Emrys Williams (1896–1977), educationalist and Editor-in-Chief of Penguin Books (1936–65), to educate and raise morale among British servicemen and servicewomen during the Second World War and including an education component. Ann Baer, op. cit., 6. Bernhard Baer, “Ganymed Berlin/Ganymed London”, 174–192, downloaded from , accessed online 12 December 2017. Ibid.

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for the publication of portfolios of facsimile reproductions of the highest quality, as well as original graphic work”, using the collotype process.20 Between 1917 and 1920 the Marées-Gesellschaft published some 42 titles including a Cézanne portfolio with ten facsimile watercolours,21 the Shakespeare Visionen portfolio of prints on the theme ‘Visions of Shakespeare’ by mainly German artists, but also including the Austrian Oskar Kokoschka, and a port­ folio of drawings and watercolours by Van Gogh.22 The firm’s logo was a design based on Marées’ final work, in which Ganymed, cup-bearer to the Gods, is carried off by Zeus in the form of an eagle. By 1920 however, Piper’s enthusiasm had cooled as the skill required for the collotype process made production complicated and expensive, and Deja and Meier-Graefe conceived the new firm, Ganymed (using the Ganymed logo). This not only took over the Marées-Gesellschaft facsimile work but also produced original graphic work, commissioned from artists including Kokoschka, Max Beckmann, Lovis Corinth, Paul Klee and Alfred Kubin, sold all over Germany, France and England.23 Between 1920 and 1925 five Ganymed Yearbooks were produced whose notable contributors included Heinrich Mann.24 After production slowed in line with the fluctuating German economy, and a bitter dispute over reproduction methods, Meier-Graefe and Piper parted company in 1928. Following the final publication, a Renoir portfolio, in 1929, Meier-Graefe retired to the south of France, where he died in 1935. “It would have been unthinkable”, Baer later commented, “for this civilised European to survive in Germany under the Hitler regime. This was the end of an era.”25 It was not the end for Ganymed, however, as Deja retained both the printing press (awarded a prize at the 1937 Paris World Exhibition) and a “nucleus of craftsmen”,26 though working on a much-reduced scale. Miraculously, the firm survived until February 1945, when the printing works were bombed, and Deja relocated to Austria to recuperate. Returning to Berlin a year later, to find the city occupied by the Allies and the presses buried beneath the rubble, he determined to save something from the ruins and applied for a licence from the Allied Control Commission. During his interview, his Ganymed samples 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

Ibid. Ann Baer produced A catalogue of Marées Gesellschaft and Ganymed Press facsimiles (London: Medici Society, 1994) in a limited edition of 30 copies; one of which is in the V & A Library. Produced in an edition of 200 in 1918. Kokoschka contributed an illustration to The Tempest, plate 20, The Dream (lithograph). Ann Baer letter to the author, 29 February 2018. In 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922 and 1925. See Bernhard Baer, op. cit., 181. Ibid. Ibid.

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impressed the young officer, Michael Hodson, who interviewed him, who himself had printing experience and knew of Deja by reputation. Deja then offered all the technical assistance needed to any firm in England interested in setting up a similar works.27 Back in London, John Roberts, manager of the left-wing political and cultural review The New Statesman, had decided in 1945 to set up a bookshop. This quickly turned into a plan to establish a book publishing firm, Turnstile Press, to publish books by New Statesman authors. Michael Hodson, now ‘demobbed’, again played a vital role since his prewar publishing experience entitled him to a paper ration (part of a Government scheme for re-establishing ex-army men in their previous professions in civilian life) and “A paper ration was essential for any new publisher”.28 Hodson was appointed manager and Ann Sidgwick,29 a young woman who had responded to Roberts’ advertisement for bookshop staff, was appointed his assistant.30 Born in 1914, the daughter of the publisher Frank Sidgwick (1879–1939) of Sidgwick and Jackson fame, Ann had grown up in a literary household, recalling that “the world of printing was known to me from childhood”.31 She went on to study design part-time at Chelsea School of Art, where she became familiar with layouts and typography, and won the Samuel Courtauld Prize for the 1933–34 session.32 Afterwards, she took weekly photography classes at the short-lived Reimann School of Art and Design in Pimlico, the first commercial design school in London, which had been founded in Berlin in 1902 by Albert Reimann,33 relocating to London in 1936 and re-opening in January 1937.34 One tutor, the English painter and collage artist Richard Hamilton (1922– 2011), recalled “the Reimann Studios” as: 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34

After meeting Ronnie Sterck, a young British officer in the Army of Occupation, who in peacetime ran a block-making firm in Brighton and knew of Deja’s reputation. Sterck told Michael Hodson, who told John Roberts, who in turn involved Lund Humphries. Ann Baer letter to the author, 29 February 2018. The day she accepted the post Ann simultaneously turned down an offer to work at Bernard Leach’s pottery in St Ives (Interview with Ann Baer by the author, August 2016, London.). Ann Baer, “Ganymed”, Matrix 19: A Review for Printers and Bibliophiles, Winter 1999, 111–118. Ibid. Among the tutors were Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland, who both later worked with Ganymed Original Editions. By coincidence, as she learned in the 1960s, Albert Reimann was the uncle of Ann Sidgwick’s future husband, Bernhard Baer (interview with Ann Baer by the author, August 2016, London). Ann recalled creating a spoof Surrealist photograph with a friend to impress the Reimann teachers and was surprised to find it was “taken dead seriously”, cited in the film ‘Refuge Britain: Stories of Émigré Designers’, Director Robert Sternberg with Anna Nyburg, 2017.

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a slightly commercialised version of the Bauhaus that moved from Germany [...] The Studios were based on the idea that you had high-quality practitioners in a practical environment; there was a display studio, a fashion studio and a photography studio. […] but the main quality of the place was that I met people who were exceptionally talented in their field.35 Among the London alumni were crime novelist Agatha Christie, émigré designers Dorrit Dekk (1917–2014) and H. A. Rothholz (1919–2000), as well as Anneliese Brauer (1914–2006), afterwards better known as gallerist Annely Juda. Closed at the outbreak of the war, the building was subsequently destroyed by bombing in 1941. Through her friendship with Michael Croft, collector and later Trustee of the Tate Gallery, whose sister Diana was married to the German-Jewish artist Fred Uhlman (1901–1985), Ann Sidgwick was introduced to several German refugee artists whom Croft had befriended and financially supported. These included the “shy, quiet” Communist John Heartfield (1891–1968),36 famed for his anti-Nazi photomontage propaganda, and the troubled Jewish Expressionist painter Ludwig Meidner (1884–1966), whom she sat to (reluctantly) for her portrait in the winter of 1939, later destroying the drawing.37 Croft also commissioned Kokoschka to make portraits of him (Croft Castle, Herefordshire) and his sister Posy (on loan to the National Galleries of Scotland).38 Ann Sidgwick was present when Hodson put to Roberts Deja’s suggestion of starting a collotype printing firm in England. Roberts, “at once interested”,39 consulted Lund Humphries’ directors Eric Humphries and Peter Gregory, the latter a friend of art historian Herbert Read, who sought representation of the 35

36 37

38

39

Hans Ulrich Obrist, “Pop daddy: The great Richard Hamilton on his early exhibitions”, 1 April 2003: , accessed January 2018. See also Yasuko Suga, The Reimann School: A Design Diaspora (London: Artmonsky Arts, 2014). Interview with Ann Baer by the author, August 2016, London. Ann Baer, “The Meidner Portrait”, in Iain Sinclair (ed.), London: City of Disappearances (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2006), 283–285. “The drawing […] was life-size, mostly in brown chalk, with bits of red chalk on the face and collar and bits of blue-grey for eyes and shadows. […] I never liked it. I was about twenty-five at the time and not ill-looking. The portrait made me look about sixty, a person who had tried and failed to find consolation for a wretched life in oceans of alcohol.” See also Anna Müller-Härlin, “Rebellious and Supportive: the collector Michael Croft and artists in exile in Great Britain”, in Andrew Chandler, ‎Katarzyna Stokłosa, ‎Jutta Vinzent (eds.), Exile and Patronage: Cross-cultural Negotiations Beyond the Third Reich (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006), 45–54. Ann Baer letter to the author, 29 February 2018.

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new generation of rising artists such as Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth and Ben Nicholson.40 They provided the funding and travelled to Berlin (with Board of Trade assistance), met Deja and offered to help excavate and restore his presses, buying four of them to start a similar plant near Heathrow in London.41 “Deja, surprised and delighted, grasped at the chance and so the seed of Ganymed London was sown”.42 In return, Deja advised on the establishment of the London firm, offering technical help and providing trained craftsmen – a key component in the firm’s success. In gratitude, he also offered “the use of the name of Ganymed for the new enterprise”.43 Once the Ganymed presses had finally been located and retrieved from Berlin – Ann recalled food parcels destined for the diggers piling up in the New Statesman’s office44 – it fell to her to organise the launch party. This took place on 15 June 1949 at Lund Humphries’ plush office at 12 Bedford Square – complete with a rug by designer Marion Dorn45 – and attended by the ‘crème de la crème’ of the British art and publishing worlds. Guests included the Uhlmans, Nikolaus Pevsner, the New Statesman’s editor Kingsley Martin, leading rival art historians Sir Kenneth Clark, Herbert Read and Clive Bell, the German-Jewish émigré typographer Hans Schmoller, J. M. Richards (Architectural Press), C. M. Joad (Tate Gallery), Aneurin Bevan (Minister for Health), Myfanwy Piper (librettist and wife of artist John Piper), artist Patrick Heron, Jack Beddington, Dorothy Morland, Maxwell Fry, Sonia Braun (George Orwell’s wife), and the art critics Raymond Mortimer and Douglas Cooper, who had a memorable “bout of fisticuffs” and had to be physically separated.46 She also noticed Baer, not yet on the staff,47 with “glasses pushed up”, intently examining the facsimiles lining the walls, while other guests stood chatting, oblivious to the pictures. The couple later married in 1964 (after the sudden and unexpected death of Baer’s first wife). Under Baer’s tenure, the reputation of Ganymed as the “only collotype printing establishment in this country with its own publishing house”,48 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48

In 1946, chairman Peter Gregory helped found the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). Ann Baer, “Life of Bernhard Baer, Part II”, unpublished ms., Wiener Library, London, 18. Bernhard Baer, op. cit., 181. Ibid., 182. Western Allies organised the Berlin airlift (26 June 1948 – 30 September 1949) to carry supplies to the people of West Berlin. One of the Reimann School tutors though not herself an émigrée. Interview with Ann Baer by the author, August 2016, London. During the winter of 1949, the original works manager, Ronnie Sterck, ran into difficulties and Baer was appointed. Bernhard Baer in interview, “The World of Fine Art Reproduction”, The British Printer, March 1961, Ganymed Archive (hereafter GA).

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Figure 8.1 Unknown photographer, Retrieving the Ganymed Presses, Berlin, 1949

steadily rose; eventually, the Ganymed list amounted to around 100 titles. One of the most prestigious was a direct commission from the Indian government in 1960 to print 40 watercolour facsimiles by Rabindranath Tagore (published 1961). Ganymed’s success was due to its ability to produce such high-quality reproductions in facsimile, “formerly only available on the Continent”, thus attracting the co-operation of high calibre collections, among them The British Council and the Tate Gallery who, remarkably, were prepared to lend the originals for photography. Baer recalled that “[t]he most precious of these loans was the self-portrait by Rembrandt from Kenwood, one of the greatest of his last years”.49 Baer further claimed that if Ganymed could “lay any claim on distinction [sic]”, it was because each work was treated “as an individual”, wherein “the collotype process, as practised by us and the process itself by its very nature” could only be “worked successfully by the full and continuous co-operation” of the highly-trained craftsman.50 He described collotype as “the one surviving printing process in which – to borrow Eric Gill’s felicitous phrase – the result 49 50

Bernhard Baer, op. cit. (online), 182. See note 20 above. Bernhard Baer, “Printed Reproductions”, typescript, 1–7, with note by Ann Baer “This essay written by Bernhard Baer, Director and Manager at the collotype printing works of Ganymed Press London, probably in the mid-1950s”.

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depends on the craftsman’s sympathy”.51 But he had also to admit that its labour-intensive nature and reliance on trained craftsmen, made it “not so much a trade as a vocation”.52 But it was with the publication of original graphic work that Ganymed made a new contribution to the field of applied arts, produced, from 1951 onwards, using a variety of printing methods, including collotype, and in partnership with a stable of high calibre artists. Most notably, with Henry Moore, with whom Baer, also working closely with the printer, developed the original “collograph”.53 After the closure of the printing works in 1963 the Ganymed Press continued to publish and was taken over by the Medici Society in 1979. In 1980 the Victoria & Albert Museum mounted an exhibition celebrating both Ganymeds.54 3

Ganymed Original Editions and Kokoschka’s King Lear

In 1961–2, with the support of Lund Humphries and Cyril Reddihough (a director of both London Ganymeds),55 and with himself and Ann Sidgwick as directors, Baer established on his own initiative a sister firm, Ganymed Original Editions (GOE), to publish original graphic works, commissioned direct from living artists in signed limited editions. The impressive list of contributing 51 52 53

54 55

Ibid., 6. Bernhard Baer, op. cit. (1961). This term was invented by the Baers to describe “colour prints made for us by Henry Moore, which we [sic] NOT reproductions of his existing work, but were made by him drawing on sheets of clear plastic – a separate drawing in black for each colour he wanted. These were then used (as photographic negatives were used) to make the gelatine printing plates which collotype use [sic]. Each plate would be rolled over with the appropriate colour ink – as chosen by Moore, and printed, one on top of another on a sheet of paper, Bernhard and Henry Moore standing over the printer of Ganymed’s works, checking the procedure. I do not think this process has been done before, or after. We called them ‘Collographs’ as a simplification of ‘auto-collotypes’ which we had called them, on the analogy of ‘auto-lithographs’. We published 3 such, in editions of 75, numbered and signed. At the time Henry Moore produced 2 or 3 others, some monochrome, which never went beyond proof stage”. (Ann Baer, letter to Anna Nyburg, 11 July 2016). After her husband’s death, Ann Baer compiled a catalogue raisonné of the facsimiles produced by both Ganymed Berlin and Ganymed London (copies in the V & A and British Museum). Cyril Reddihough was a Yorkshire solicitor and amateur artist who befriended and championed the artist Ben Nicholson, becoming a major supporter of Nicholson’s work, as well as that of his first wife, Winifred Nicholson, and second wife Barbara Hepworth, and other British modernists including Henry Moore, Christopher Wood and Alfred Wallis. His collection of paintings was sold at Bonhams in London in June 2016.

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artists included Kokoschka, Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson, L. S. Lowry, Graham Sutherland and Sidney Nolan. Baer’s first GOE project was directly inspired by the Kokoschka retrospective organised by the Arts Council at the Tate Gallery in autumn 1962.56 Despite spending his war years in England, a 1947 retrospective in Basel and Zürich, a 1948 showing at the Venice Biennale, and a subsequent travelling exhibition in the USA, Kokoschka had never previously been given a major UK show. Alongside the Expressionist paintings for which he was best known, a wide range of Kokoschka’s graphic work encompassing drawings, lithographs, stage designs and books was also exhibited. In fact, Kokoschka’s early work, which included posters, postcards and ‘ex libris’ designs, had been mainly graphic, influenced by Klimt and other artists of the Viennese Secession. After embracing Expressionism, he had carried out two major graphic projects: Der gefesselte Columbus (1913) and a lithographic cycle accompanying the Bach cantatas (1914).57 These struck Baer as among “the greatest graphic works of the century”,58 and the exhibition proved “a revelation”.59 By 1962 Kokoschka had been resident in Switzerland for nine years, having left his native Austria in 1934 to embark upon “a veritable odyssey through the war-torn Europe of the 20th century [sic]”.60 He had first aroused Nazi antipathy by publishing a defence of the German-Jewish Impressionist Max Liebermann, who had been forced to resign from the Prussian Academy of Arts in 1933. As he continued to speak out, Kokoschka’s work was increasingly suppressed or confiscated from German public collections, culminating in 1937 in his inclusion within the notorious ‘Entartete Kunst’ (‘degenerate art’) exhibition in Munich. His famous riposte was the ironically titled Portrait of a “Degenerate Artist” (1937, National Galleries of Scotland); the following year, Kokoschka was himself dismissed from the Prussian Academy. 56 57

58

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‘Kokoschka: A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, Lithographs, Stage Designs and Books’, organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain (London: The Tate Gallery, 14 September–11 November 1962). This included “Traveler in a Thunderstorm (‘Der Wanderer im Gewitter’)”, plate 3, from 1914 portfolio of eleven lithographs illustrating Bach’s Cantata no. 60 “O Eternity – Thou Word of Thunder” (“O Ewigkeit – Du Donnerwort”) (Fritz Gurlitt: Berlin, 1916). Now part of MoMA collection: see . “BB’s summing up of the publishing of King Lear, written after it was published”, handwritten note by Ann Baer on typescript, Bernhard Baer, print director: papers, 1947–1985, Bernhard Baer – Ganymed Press and Ganymed Original Editions Ltd Archive, V & A, Blythe House Archive & Study Room SC/AAD Special Collections: Archive of Art & Design AAD/1985/1. Bernhard Baer, op. cit. (online), 183. “Oskar Kokoschka Exile and New Home 1938–1980”, Art History News, 19 June 2013.

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Between 1934 and 1938 Kokoschka was exiled in Prague, meeting his future wife Olda Palkovská (1915–2004), a young law student, and gaining Czech citizenship. In the wake of the Munich Agreement of September 1938, the couple fled to London, arriving in October. They moved to Cornwall the following August, returning in the summer of 1940 and settling among the North London émigré community.61 They were married in 1941. Ironically, Kokoschka was not well known in Britain, despite his inclusion in the exhibition ‘Twentieth Century German Art’ in July 1938.62 Politicised by his enforced exile, he continued to be a vocal anti-Nazi, active within émigré organisations, particularly the Freier Deutscher Kulturbund (1939–45), of which he served as Honorary President from 1941, and with whom he also exhibited, including in 1939 in the ‘First Group Exhibition of German Austrian Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors’ at the Wertheim Gallery.63 Kokoschka was also active in the campaign against internment. After the war, despite gaining British nationality in 1947,64 he reconnected with wider Europe via portraits of Theodor Körner, mayor of Vienna and later president of Austria, and the German chancellor Konrad Adenauer. In 1953 the Kokoschkas moved for the last time, to Switzerland, where he remained until his death.65 In the run-up to the fourth centenary of Shakespeare’s birth, matching artist to subject, Baer felt that Kokoschka should again be given the: opportunity to tackle a great dramatic subject as illustrator. King Lear suggested itself – Shakespeare’s greatest play, which should tempt Kokoschka through its wild passions, range of characters and profound feeling.

61 62 63

64 65

Their home from the winter of 1946–47 until 1953 at no. 120 Eyre Court, Finchley Road, London NW8, is marked by a blue plaque. See Lucy Wasensteiner, “The Reception of German Modernism in 1930s London: Case Study Twentieth Century German Art”, in Sarah MacDougall (ed.), Refugees: Artists from Nazi Germany, forthcoming (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2019). His dealings with the FDKB have been documented in detail by Marian Malet in “Oskar Kokoschka and the Freie Deutsche Kulturbund: The ‘Friendly Alien’ as Propagandist”, in Anthony Grenville and Andrea Reiter (eds.), “I didn’t want to float; I wanted to belong to something”: Refugee Organizations in Britain 1933–1945. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 10 (Leiden: Rodopi, 2008), 49–66. See also Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove (eds.), Politics by Other Means: The Free German League of Culture in London, 1939–1946 (Leiden: Rodopi, 2010). Kokoschka was made a CBE in 1959 and was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Oxford in 1963. A further retrospective was held in Zurich in 1966, and another in Vienna in 1971.

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 A first approach to the master elicited a sympathetic reply – he had just read the play again, he would like to talk the idea over with me.  My visit to Kokoschka took place in January 1963, when the severe winter was at its height and I had difficulty approaching the master’s snowbound house at Villeneuve. After a long discussion during which I submitted a scheme for the Kokoschka and suggestions for the illustrations, Kokoschka said, “King Lear, that excites me very much. Come back in three days’ time.”  When I saw Kokoschka again he showed me the first drawing: Edgar disguised as a beggar. Six weeks later we met at the lithographer’s studio in Zurich to look at sixteen lithographs freshly pulled from the stone. A seventeenth lithograph, ‘Lear on the heath during the storm’, was added after another week. The seventy-eight year old master had completed the work in less than two months.66 This elegant account neatly summarises a narrative which is further registered in the three-way correspondence between the two men and Olda in the Ganymed papers.67 These letters also track the deepening friendship between the two men through the progress of the project, beginning formally, but ending on a note of warmth and intimacy. The initial introduction was made by a mutual friend, Helga Greene, of the eponymous Literary Agency in London, who wrote to “Dear Olda and O.K.” on 22 November 1962, to introduce the Baers and their interest in commissioning a series of King Lear lithographs. Assuring the Kokoschkas that Ganymed “would treat you royally, and it would be done on handmade paper and so on”,68 she highlighted the personal and professional care which characterised Baer’s handling of the project from the start, drawing attention to the quality of craftsmanship observed at all levels that Kokoschka came to admire. Clearly, Baer’s practical approach was not only informed by his in-depth technical knowledge, but also distinguished by a marked aesthetic sensibility. Baer outlined Ganymed’s ambition: “Our idea is nothing less than the attempt to bring together the work of the greatest living artist with that of the greatest dramatist of the past”. Explaining that the illustrations would not be “literal but rather […] evocations of the feeling [sic] tensions and passions of this great tragedy”, he concluded that there was “no other artist alive”, who

66 67 68

See fn. 60. Now housed in the V & A Archive: AAD 1–1985, GA. Helga Greene to Olda and Oskar Kokoschka, 22 November 1962, GA.

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would have “the power and humanity” to evoke the lines spoken by Lear during the storm in graphic images.69 Baer’s first letter apparently went astray, but after he telephoned “Mme Kokoschka” – gatekeeper to the great man – on 17 December 1962, she promised to discuss the project with her husband.70 Replying shortly afterwards that “in principle” Kokoschka was interested, she also mentioned that he had recently re-read the play so that the project did not come “entirely out of the blue”.71 Baer wrote back encouragingly that “since Delacroix illustrated Goethe’s Faust none of the great painters has been associated with a masterpiece of literature. Kokoschka’s ‘Lear’ will be another milestone”.72 Both men were inspired by the Royal Shakespeare Company’s recent critically-acclaimed staging of King Lear at London’s Aldwych theatre, directed by Peter Brook and starring Paul Scofield (whose performance Baer considered “magnificent” in both “conception and execution”).73 Olda observed that Kokoschka had also read the “wonderful” reviews with great interest. The theatre critic Irving Wardle praised this ground-breaking staging – “as simple in conception as the production is complex” – with its pioneering use of white backdrops and strong white light, together with “a prevalence of rusty metal props” suggesting abstract sculptural shapes which heightened the play’s “psychological clarity”.74 This clearly struck a chord with Baer, who saw a parallel between this bold staging foregrounding Scofield’s psychologically intense performance and Kokoschka’s excoriating graphics. His vision is borne out by the memorable title image showing the king alone, wearing his crown and holding a sceptre, which provides the frontispiece to the book. The project was a collaboration from the start. When he visited the Kokoschkas at Villeneueve in the new year, Baer took with him ‘a list of possible subjects’ from King Lear for drawings, as well as ‘a bit of cardboard with an oblong hole in it the size the drawings should be, and some bits of litho[graphic] chalk in his pocket’.75 Despite a winter of unparalleled harshness throughout Europe, which Kokoschka complained had “more or less paralysed” him and frozen his fingers,76 he set to work immediately after Baer departed.77 By early February the first 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77

Bernhard Baer to Oskar Kokoschka, November 1962, typescript, GA. Bernhard Baer note, dated 17 December 1962, GA. Mrs O. Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, December 1962, GA. Bernhard Baer to Mrs O. Kokoschka, 29 December 1962, GA. Ibid. Irving Wardle, ‘The New Lear’, Plays and Players, January 1963, n.p. Mrs Ann Baer, letter to Dr Anna Nyburg, 8 May 2017. Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 4 February 1963, GA. Ibid.

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Figure 8.2 Oskar Kokoschka, Frontispiece, King Lear, 1963

drawing of Edgar was sent to Zurich for proofing by J E Wolfensberger, a firm of highly regarded lithographic printers. The professional support of Baer’s team of craftsmen kindled Kokoschka’s growing enthusiasm. After receiving the transfers – “very satisfying” – he instructed Wolfensberger to print the Edgar drawings “with suggestions how to do it [sic]”. Once the weather improved, he promised to devote himself “exclusively” to “our Lear”.78 Indeed, Baer observed that Kokoschka’s “own enthusiasm inspired all connected with the production of the book”.79 Olda was also an essential member of the team: approving the Edgar print from the Zurich workshop, admiring the “really very good” paper handmade by Barcham Green – Crispbrook for the text and Crispbrook Waterleaf for the lithographs – and requesting more “ ‘en reserve’ ”.80 Ann Baer recalled that the 78 79 80

Bernhard Baer, handwritten note, 4 February 1963, GA. Bernhard Baer, op. cit. (online), 183. Olda Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 11 February 1963, GA.

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paper had been so stiff that they had had to damp it by procuring an old tin bath; years later this was still referred to as “King Lear’s bath”.81 By 23 February, Kokoschka had sent nine new drawings to Wolfensberger and planned to visit Zurich in person with the intention of making “small corrections” directly upon the lithographic stones. Baer’s suggestion to increase the size of the page was also approved and Olda advised on the layout: “the lack of margin worried me, Kokoschka does not care (wrongly), as long as his drawing satisfies him, about the ‘mise en page’”. Clearly, the project also provided a boost to the ageing artist, helping him ‘to get over the long winter, there is nothing like concentration to forget what goes on out of doors”.82 When the prints arrived in early March, Olda observed that they were “on the whole very good”, but had to be “carefully balanced”; Kokoschka proposed some “minor corrections”, Olda advised on the colour of the final paper, and Wolfensberger assembled as many elements of the final composition of the book as he could in time for Kokoschka’s arrival in Zurich.83 Upon the arrival of the proofs in early April, Olda declared them an “enormous success”; Kokoschka decided to exhibit them at the Munich Haus der Kunst (in whose annual summer exhibition he traditionally participated) and ordered a dummy of the final book to be shown in a vitrine.84 In June, Kokoschka also wrote to Baer to confirm his delight at “everything regarding our King Lear”. He particularly commended Vivian Ridler (1913– 2009), Printer to the University of Oxford, who handset the Fell typeface (at that time belonging exclusively to Oxford University Press),85 whom he called: probably the last great craftsman. I never saw such a clear, well-cut printed page in a modern edition, unique indeed. Please congratulate him, when you again meet him, in my name. Adding, “I cannot wait to see our King Lear published!!!”,86 he signed off, “Your devoted Oskar Kokoschka”.87 Kokoschka created sixteen lithographs in total. The announcement for the edition described them as having “a unique place in his own work and in the 81 82 83 84 85 86 87

Interview with Ann Baer by the author, August 2016, London. Olda Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 23 February 1963, GA. Ibid., 3 March 1963, GA. Ibid., August 1963, GA. Vivian Ridler (1913–2009), printer to the University of Oxford 1958–78, was named as ‘The last great figure in 500 years of Oxford University printing’. Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 11 June 1963, GA. Ibid.

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Figure 8.3 Copy of the text on page 62 in the Fell typeface

graphic work of this century. They are magnificent responses to Shakespeare’s play and re-create in visual terms its passion, wildness and profound imagination”.88 The edition was limited to 275 signed and numbered copies and four copies marked A, B, C and D which were not for sale. In August Olda acknowledged receipt of the prospectus and in September Kokoschka expressed joy at the choice of the “simply delightful” marbled endpapers, once again commending “an outstanding example of good taste and craftsmanship as it was alive in England and on the continent when I was 88

Announcement of the King Lear edition.

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Figure 8.4 Oskar Kokoschka,  Lear with the dying Cordelia, 1963

young. Thank you, my dear friend, thousand [sic] times for all your loving devotion spend [sic] on our ‘King Lear’!”89 Again, on 14 November 1963, after receiving a copy bound in full vellum by Wigmore Bindery, Kokoschka sent a telegram to Baer summing up the project as a: “splendid inspiring document of British craftsmanship”.90 A week later he wrote that he and Olda had “still not stopped admiring” King Lear, which was shown to all visitors to Villeneuve, after taking due precautions: Olda handles it herself and puts white gloves on, nobody else is allowed to touch the book. They only (and it is a favour!) may sleep [sic] the hand in the casing in order to feel the softness of the slip-case.91

89 90 91

Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 2 September 1963, GA. Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer [telegram], 14 November 1963, GA. Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 22 November 1963, GA.

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Kokoschka and King Lear

It has been suggested that Kokoschka “relate[d] his personal story of war, displacement, and anger toward an unjust world to the story of King Lear”.92 In his introduction to Kokoschka’s letters, art historian and fellow émigré Ernst Gombrich stressed above all the artist’s “human warmth”.93 His close emotional involvement with the play was so strong that, Olda explained, “He cannot do the blinding of Gloucester, […] he says ‘es graut ihm zu sehr’ [he finds it too horrible] !”. Kokoschka had a profound admiration for Shakespeare: in May 1944, he had written to the Shakespearean actor-manager Donald Wolfit, celebrated for his touring wartime Shakespeare productions, to congratulate him on his recent performances, regretting missing Wolfit’s performance of Lear (the role for which the actor was best known).94 In another letter to the pianist Wilhelm Kempff in 1960, Kokoschka had numbered Shakespeare among: the demigods – Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Michelangelo, Titian, the Greeks and Shakespeare – these transform even our span of life into an eternity, often in the twinkling of an eye. When it happens to me it’s as if angels have appeared, a gentle draught from beating wings sends a shiver down my spine.95 But in a letter to Marion Rosenlewe, written in April 1963, just after completing the Lear lithographs, Kokoschka went further, making it clear that he also identified personally with his subject: “Next time you read King Lear, think of me with all the drawings, which you will see here one day, and with the stories I wrote about my life, […] and then perhaps you’ll believe that Lear’s story is mine too.” He continued: I can only draw and paint what I have lived myself, which is why I wear the visible scars on my skin […] Lear was a proud man, and measured people by his own yardstick. Finding them too small, he flew into a rage, and tried to force them to be like him, but they only laughed, mocked him, and drove him away. Still he believed that they only misunderstood 92 93 94 95

Sheila McVey, ‘Finding Shakespeare.co.uk’ [only summary available; article no longer ­accessible]. E. H. Gombrich, foreword, Oskar Kokoschka Letters 1905–1976, Selected by Olda Kokoschka and Alfred Marnau (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 7. Oskar Kokoschka to Donald Wolfit, 4 May 1944, ibid., 167. Oskar Kokoschka to Wilhelm Kempff, 23 September 1960, ibid., 231.

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him, until finally it dawned on him that they did not want to understand him, because it was not given to them to do so by destiny. Then he was alone and old, and the jewels in his crown were replaced by thorns.96 5

Harry Fischer and Marlborough Fine Art

In June 1963 Kokoschka introduced the final player in this émigré collaboration, when he proclaimed in a letter to Baer, in his characteristically warm manner that Harry Fischer of Marlborough Fine Art: “loves you now since he saw your King Lear” and that they both hoped to interest Baer in supervising Kokoschka’s lithographs of Homer’s Odyssey, for which they would again employ the services of Wolfensberger.97 Heinrich Robert Fischer (1903–1977), known as Harry Fischer, was born in 1903 in Vienna into a middle-class Jewish family. Establishing himself as a book dealer, by the mid-1930s he was running one of Vienna’s largest bookshops and, together with the publisher Walter Neurath (later to set up Thames & Hudson with his wife Eva in London in 1949), also co-invented the concept of book packaging.98 Following the Anschluss in March 1938, Fischer fled to England, and later secured his release from internment by volunteering for the Pioneer Corps (AMPC), the British Army’s auxiliary unit, serving alongside many fellow Austrian and German refugees. In 1946 Fischer co-founded Marlborough Fine Art with fellow Viennese émigré Kurt Levai (later Frank Lloyd), who hailed from three generations of antique and picture dealers, whom he had met during internment. In 1948 they were joined by David Somerset, Duke of Beaufort. Located in Albemarle Street in London’s West End, Marlborough was one of many émigré galleries whose English name disguised its continental roots, which flourished in this period. Marlborough introduced Britain to the major Expressionists of Die Brücke and Der Blaue Reiter, also supporting many exiles and émigrés by exhibiting their work.99 Fischer, like Baer and Kokoschka, was naturalised in 1947.100 96 97 98 99

100

Oskar Kokoschka to Marion Rosenlewe, 8 April 1963, ibid., 238. Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 11 June 1963, GA. Anna Nyburg, Émigrés: The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain (London: Phaidon, 2014), 22, 73–74. After Fischer’s death his widow established the Fischer Collection at the V & A, which includes the ‘Entartete Kunst’ typescript inventory of works of art removed from German museums and art galleries by the Nazi government. Prior to this, it was believed that most of this information had been lost. Marlborough Fine Art and the current Marlborough Gallery should not be confused with the original Marlborough Gallery founded in 1888 by Martin Henry Colnaghi (1821–1908)

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There was a natural kinship between GOE and Marlborough Fine Art, which held mixed exhibitions of works on paper by artists from the Ganymed stable, including in 1962 ‘Watercolours and Drawings by Oskar Kokoschka, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland’. Many of the artists were modern British and GOE and Marlborough Fine Art also collaborated on projects including Ben Nicholson’s ‘Architectural Suite’ (1966). In December 1963, however, a misunderstanding arose after Fischer proposed to sell single, unbound sheets of lithographs from the King Lear suite, and Kokoschka, protesting strongly, dashed off a furious three-page protest in German.101 Baer’s papers include his own typed summary of the issue: O.K. greatly disturbed and upset that Marlborough proposed to sell their part of the edition in sheets. All copies sold by Ganymed were bound. O.K. feared that dealers would sell single lithographs.102 After Fischer appealed to Baer, he wrote to Kokoschka sympathising with his position – “Indeed books ought to be bound. Sheets of paper, text, lithographs should become one between the covers and made inseparable”, but, he explained “the whole trend of selling modern luxury editions has gone against it”, with collectors wishing to acquire sheets to have them privately bound and public collections wishing to display several sections of the book simultaneously, which was only possible with unbound copies. He concluded with an elegant personal plea: I think I have shown in the past that I am most deeply concerned to present your great work in a manner worthy of it and if I now ask you to accept, [sic] what we are doing, it is with the conviction that your work will come to no harm and will remain undisturbed in its unsewn state.103 Kokoschka replied immediately to “my very dear Dr. Baer”, apologising and acknowledging not only the confidence he placed in Baer’s “wisdom and experience”, but also “your great sympathy for the book which owes its existence only

101 102 103

of the art-dealing Colnaghi dynasty at the premises of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours at 53 Pall Mall, which closed in 1908. Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 10 December 1963, GA. Bernhard Baer, typed summary headed “Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 10 December 1963”, GA. Bernhard Baer to Oskar Kokoschka, 9 December 1963, GA.

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to your great love and effort”.104 He was further placated by Fischer’s agreement to sell only half the series initially and keep the remainder for a further two years. In the same month, Marlborough included several of the King Lear lithographs in an exhibition showcasing Kokoschka’s recent lithography, prompting Guardian critic Eric Newton to admire: the impulsive power that is the essence of all Kokoschka’s work – a giant making his way against a high wind – and for that reason the titanism [sic] of Shakespeare’s Lear brings out the essence of him. This book was conceived by a big man meeting an even bigger challenge.105 Following the success of King Lear, Marlborough Fine Art went on to co-publish with GOE Kokoschka’s suite of lithographs to The Odyssey (1965) and Saul and David (1969).106 Further projects included a collaborative publication between Marlborough Graphics Ltd and Weidenfeld & Nicolson Ltd of Kokoschka’s Jerusalem Faces (1973), with Baer supervising the production and design. Marlborough published Kokoschka’s Hellas and Apulia lithographic suites, with prospectuses produced in both English and German, and Baer, once again, supervising the production and design. In 1971, Kokoschka was alarmed that Fischer’s decision to split from Marlborough would break up this émigré partnership. In a telegram to Baer (in German), he lamented “the sad news”, professing himself “stunned […] that such a sudden catastrophe could cause one such despair”.107 But in the event, after establishing the highly successful firm of Fischer Fine Art with his son

104

105 106

107

His anxiety arose partly, he explained from “a letter written by Marlborough to a friend of ours in Vevey”, in which “the price for the II category had been put too low. It was a mistake by the typist and Mr. Fischer corrected the misunderstanding immediately”. Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 18 December 1963, AD 1/2011–1985 to AAD 1/2014–1985, GA. The Guardian, December 1963: “Around the London Galleries by Eric Newton”, V & A Archive. In an edition of 50 copies; see Bernhard Baer Ganymed: Printing, Publishing, Design (­London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1980). For further histories of Ganymed, see also Bernhard Baer in Librarium III (Switzerland: 1982), 174–200, and Ann Baer, “Ganymed”, in J & R Randle (ed.), Matrix 19 [A Review for Printers and Bibliophiles], Number Nineteen, Winter 1999 (Risbury: Whittington Press, 1999). Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 27 May 1971 (e) and 22 October 1971 (e), GA. I am grateful to Marian Malet for her translation from the German.

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Figure 8.5 Page of text describing this edition in detail as published by Ganymed Original Editions Ltd

Wolfgang,108 Fischer’s relationship with Kokoschka resumed, lasting until the former’s death in London in 1977. Yet despite these later successful graphic projects, it was the first of them, King Lear, initiated by Baer, and afterwards referred to by Kokoschka as his “most beloved work in print”,109 which instigated this late flowering of graphic 108 109

Exhibited artists included John Hubbard, Michael Sandle, Ken Kiff, Leon Kossoff, Ansel Krut and Liliane Lijn. Oskar Kokoschka to Bernhard Baer, 13 November 1963, GA.

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Figure 8.6 Oskar Kokoschka’s telegram to Bernhard Baer

work and formed a memorable tribute to this highly successful émigré partnership. I would like to thank Mrs Ann Baer, Dr Anna Nyburg and Dr Marian Malet for their invaluable assistance and for translations from the German, and the ­Fondation Oskar Kokoschka, Vevey, for permission to quote from Kokoschka’s unpublished correspondence.

Works Cited

Anon., “The World of Fine Art Reproduction [Bernhard Baer in interview]”, in The British Printer, March 1961. Anon., Kokoschka: A Retrospective Exhibition of Paintings, Drawings, Lithographs, Stage Designs and Books, organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain (London: The Tate Gallery, 1962). Ann Baer, A catalogue of Marées Gesellschaft and Ganymed Press facsimiles (London: Medici Society, 1994). Ann Baer, “Ganymed”, in J & R Randle (ed.), Matrix 19: A Review for Printers and Biblio­ philes, Winter 1999 (Risbury: Whittington Press, 1999).

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Ann Baer, “The Meidner Portrait”, in Iain Sinclair (ed.), London: City of Disappearances (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2006). Ann Baer, ‘Life of Bernhard Baer’, unpublished ms., Wiener Library, London. Bernhard Baer, Ganymed: Printing, Publishing, Design (London: Victoria & Albert Mu­ seum, 1980) Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove (eds.), Politics by Other Means: The Free German League of Culture in London, 1939–1946 (Leiden: Brill, Rodopi, 2010). E. H. Gombrich, Foreword, Oskar Kokoschka Letters 1905–1976, Selected by Olda Ko­ kosch­ka and Alfred Marnau (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992). Marian Malet, “Oskar Kokoschka and the Freie Deutsche Kulturbund: The ‘Friendly Alien’ as Propagandist”, in Anthony Grenville and Andrea Reiter (eds.), “I didn’t want to float; I wanted to belong to something”: Refugee Organizations in Britain 1933–1945. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 10 (Leiden: Rodopi, 2008). Anna Müller-Härlin, “Rebellious and Supportive: the collector Michael Croft and artists in exile in Great Britain”, in ‎Andrew Chandler, Katarzyna Stokłosa and Jutta Vinzent (eds.), Exile and Patronage: Cross-cultural Negotiations Beyond the Third Reich (Münster: Lit Verlag, 2006). Anna Nyburg, Émigrés: The Transformation of Art Publishing in Britain (London: Phaidon, 2014). Yasuko Suga, The Reimann School: A Design Diaspora (London: Artmonsky Arts, 2014). Lucy Wasensteiner, “The Reception of German Modernism in 1930s London: Case Study Twentieth Century German Art”, in Sarah MacDougall (ed.), Refugees: Artists from Nazi Germany (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2018, forthcoming).

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Chapter 9

Typographers in Exile  Pauline Paucker Though few in number, the émigré typographers who worked in Britain were markedly influential in the printing world of the time. Jan Tschichold, Hans Schmoller, and Berthold Wolpe in particular, as well as Elizabeth Friedlander and Imre Reiner enlivened the scene with their very contrasting individual styles. Tschichold and Schmoller brought the elegance of Private Press printing to mass-produced paperbacks and the soundness of the German design schools’ training also gave Wolpe, Friedlander and Reiner the confidence and adaptability which enabled them to try their hand at other crafts. That the work of this group was known outside Germany assured them of employment elsewhere when forced to leave.

Typographers of Jewish origin working in Germany when the National Socialists came to power left the country in the early 1930s, forbidden to work in their field and dismissed from whatever teaching posts they held, as were others known to be opposed to the Nazis. All designers had to register with the Minister of Culture. The formal letter of dismissal received by those of Jewish origin was sent out from the Reichskammer der Bildenden Kunst, dated 28 February 1935. It stated that “as you are non-Aryan and as such do not possess the necessary reliability to create and spread German values, I forbid you to further practise your profession as a graphic designer”. Other, non-Jewish, opponents of the regime such as E. R. Weiss, the teacher of Elizabeth Friedlander, were stripped of their official positions in German art schools but were able to continue as designers if they found someone to employ them. Those forced to leave sought a country with an established printing industry: Switzerland, Italy, Britain, the USA. Francisca Baruch, a type designer who in Germany had been an official calligrapher to the Weimar government, fled to Palestine, where there was little printing of quality, and found little or no work until the foundation of the State of Israel, when she was needed to design the new country’s official documents. Until then she had been making and selling sweets in fancy packaging to earn money. A graphic designer, unlike an artist or a sculptor, whose work is not easy to transport, can carry a portfolio of work across frontiers for display to possible employers, and graphic designers, trained to be versatile, could try their hand

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_011

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at many branches of their trade; they were employable. More importantly, their work was often known in printing circles abroad, having been discussed in printing journals such as The Penrose Annual, Imprimatur or Philobiblon with a European readership. Fine artists working in Germany or Austria were less likely to be well known abroad: German Expressionism found few admirers in the Britain or America of the 1930s. But those designers who were able to come to Britain found a welcome and a ready appreciation of their skills, the excellence of their training in Germany was recognised. 1

Jan Tschichold

The highly influential German typographer, Jan Tschichold, was born in 1902.1 Though not Jewish, he too had been quickly removed from Germany in 1933. Accused of ‘Cultural Bolshevism’, he and his wife were arrested soon after the Nazi takeover, and spent time in prison. He must have been on a list of those to be persecuted for their opposition to Nazism. Soviet posters were found in his house; he had expressed his admiration for the new, inventive graphic designs of those first revolutionary years in Russia and so was seen as a Communist sympathiser. By August 1933 the Tschicholds were helped to leave for Switzerland, where he was a welcome immigrant, well known as a master typographer. Son of a sign painter, Tschichold had received an early training in calligraphy which marked his work in print. But after seeing the revolutionary work at the Bauhaus exhibition in Dessau in 1923, he had begun to design in an off-centre, asymmetric style in the manner of Russians such as El Lissitzky, whom he had met in person, and felt that only sans serif type was acceptable for the new mode. Tschichold’s book promoting this style, Die neue Typographie,2 was an instant success and is still widely read. It was not only the underlying theme of socialist ideals but even more, the promotion of Grotesk, as sans serif is called in German, which especially enraged the new cultural dictators for whom Fraktur or Gothic type best expressed the spirit of the German people.3 Typography can indeed be dangerous, when linked to nationalist notions. It would seem that for the Nazis typography was regarded as a dangerous art: they were opposed to the modern, explosive new style which had been promoted by 1 Biographical details from Ruari McLean,   Jan Tschichold: Typographer (Boston: David R. Godine, 1975, and paperback edition London: Lund Humphries, 1990), 48–49. 2 Jan Tschichold, Die neue Typographie (Berlin: Verlag des Bildungsverbandes der Deutschen Buchdrucker, 1928). 3 On the so-called ‘Frakturstreit’ see, for example, , accessed 14 August 2017.

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Figure 9.1 Jan Tschichold, designs for Sabon Type, mid-1960s

Tschichold with such enthusiasm. He is, rightly, regarded as the most influential typographer of the 20th century. His later re-thinking on the new approach which he had so enthusiastically adopted showed a dramatic change: by 1932 he had returned to classic style, types and centred layout, ironically enough declaring the Bauhaus-influenced style he had promoted to be “fascist” and authoritarian. He had visited England before the war, invited by the forward-looking art publishers Lund Humphries for the promotion of modern design, but it was postwar, in the short period of 29 months starting in March 1947,4 that he revolutionised the printing of mass-produced books in Britain, bringing accuracy and elegance to the Penguin paperbacks. Allen Lane, the founder owner of Penguin, was unhappy after the war with the look of the cheaply-priced books he sold (“good books sold cheap” was his aim) and asked Oliver Simon, who ran the stylish Curwen Press, whom he could employ for a makeover. “Jan Tschichold,” was the reply, and Simon, who spoke German, was asked to go and bring him over from Switzerland, accompanied by Allen Lane.5 Tschichold came; he brought order to the scattered printing centres, imposed discipline on the unruly English typesetters, re-designed the covers, chose Eric Gill Sans and Bold for titles and devised the Penguin Composition 4 See McLean, op. cit., 147, for length of stay and ibid., 87, for arrival date. 5 Ibid., 87 including footnote 1.

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Rules which are still in use today. He gave the mass-produced paperbacks the look of fine press printing. His attention to detail and his own skills impressed everyone who worked with him, though there were grumbles about so-called ‘German’ regimentation. Details such as the colour of the paper to be used (he chose an off-white, rather than the more popular bright white, for easier r­eading), clear type, page size, good proportions and margins all came under Tschich­old’s rule. He abhorred bad composition, poor spacing, mean margins, so much of which one sees today. He had designed several types over the years: the delicate Saskia dates from 1931, his last, Sabon, 1960, is a modern type design adapted to machine processes.6 He believed, with Penguin’s founder, Allen Lane, that great works of literature should be available in a handy size at a fair price – here one thinks of the Tyndale translation of the Bible in its small format for secret distribution – and designed to the highest standards. But he could not afford to stay with Penguin: he had to return to Switzerland, due to the devaluation of sterling.7 Who could follow such a striking figure? Hans Peter Schmoller, from the Curwen Press, was Tschichold’s suggestion. 2

Hans Schmoller

Hans Schmoller’s background was that of a working printer rather than an art student or calligrapher.8 He was born in Berlin in 1916, the only son of a cultured middle-class family, his father a well-known paediatrician, his mother artistically gifted. He had wanted to study art history but under the Nazi regime his Jewishness prohibited this. He applied to join the group working with the outstanding typographer Rudolf Koch whose lettering studio at that time still included one or two Jewish designers, such as Berthold Wolpe, but Koch liked his disciples to have had a previous craft training.9 Schmoller then took on an apprenticeship in the Jewish printing firm of Siegfried Scholem, father of Gershon Scholem, the renowned authority on Kabbala. Someone who was Jewish was allowed to work for a Jewish employer, Jewish printing firms were 6 John Dreyfus, “‘Sabon’: the first ‘harmonised’ type” (London: The Penrose Annual, 1968, vol. 61), 63–76. 7 See McLean, op. cit., 104. The devaluation took place on 5 August 1949. 8 Gerald Cinamon, The Monotype Recorder, n. s., no. 6, 64 pp. (London, April 1987), consists of a detailed survey of Schmoller’s career. Biographical details in this essay are taken from that volume. 9 Gerald Cinamon, Rudolf Koch (New Castle, Delaware and London: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 2000), 99–100.

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not yet banned and Schmoller was able to complete his four-year training as a printer with great success in all departments. He had already visited Britain in 1933 where a cousin of his was studying, and Schmoller applied to take the Autumn course (October 1937 – February 1938) at the Monotype Technical School in London.10 It was through Monotype that in 1937 he applied for an advertised post in Basutoland, now Lesotho, to take over the Morija Printing Works, a missionary press. Though a Christian would have been preferred, Schmoller’s recommendation overrode his Jewishness. There was no possibility for him to return to Germany to live with his parents or to remain in England. He had to emigrate and never saw his parents again.11 The Morija Press offered printing facilities to other missions in Africa and under Schmoller’s direction began to turn out remarkably good-looking publications in the style of the Curwen Press. These were also to be seen and noted favourably in London and New York, where Schmoller had sent examples of his work. This led to a commission to design a book for the Limited Editions Club. He organised exhibitions, trained local students, and published work promoting fine printing and typography. He was appointed Production Manager in late 1942,12 all was going well with his career, and he tried hard to bring his parents out of Germany, but then came the war. As he later learned, his parents perished in Auschwitz and Theresienstadt. In 1940 Schmoller was interned as an enemy alien, the only one in Basutoland, but was released in 1942. He had been well-supplied with books, kept a journal, and made sketches of the internment camp, but this must have been a weary time. During this period, Schmoller noticed the incorrect usage of Baskerville type in a Curwen Press book he was reading and wrote to Oliver Simon, pointing out the error. Eventually his application for naturalisation came through and then, as a British subject, he could return to England after the war’s end, embarking in February 1947.13 In London, Director of the Curwen Press Oliver Simon, who admired his work, offered him a job as his assistant. Schmoller worked there for two years, from July 1947,14 designing elegant book jackets and catalogues for important clients. Then in 1949 came the offer of replacing Tschichold at Penguin, as Typographer, a position of importance. He was to spend the rest of his working life at Penguin, becoming Head of Production in 1956 and Director from 1960 until his retirement in 1976. He kept strictly to the rules laid out by Tschichold 10 11 12 13 14

The Monotype Recorder, April 1987, 1. He arrived in Cape Town by boat on 7 March 1938, ibid., 3–4. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 10. Ibid.

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Figure 9.2 Hans Schmoller, corrected title page, 1963

and added some of his own. He stood out for his knowledge of type, design and production; his expertise meant that he was highly respected by his fellow workers and could demand the highest standards from them, and all aspects of the trade were overseen by him, from book covers to advertising flyers. He was jokingly known as “Half-Point Schmoller”. His sharp eye for detail, for a wrong type face, a wrong space, or a broken letter, his distress and anger when something was not quite right, was ruefully accepted by those who worked with him. Triumphs of Penguin production were carried out under his rule: working with the émigré art historian Nikolaus Pevsner they produced ‘The Buildings of England’ and ‘The Pelican History of Art’ as well as ‘The Complete Pelican Shakespeare’. These are beautiful, serious books, not cheap paperbacks. Here Allen Lane was aiming high. There were the charming instructive Puffin books for children and ‘The Penguin Modern Painters’: these, paperbacks with style, are all well-designed and pleasing to the eye, all overseen by Schmoller.

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He engaged young illustrators at the beginning of their careers, later collecting examples of their work in a Penguin book he edited. He approached fellow émigrés Berthold Wolpe and Elizabeth Friedlander, who were commissioned to design ornaments, motifs, titling, patterned papers for the music scores, and roundels for the covers of Penguin Classics. The very attractive King Penguin series, started in Tschichold’s reign, had been an imitation of the German Insel books, with their patterned-paper covered boards. These are small illustrated books on a variety of subjects, especially suitable for the giving of small presents, the German ‘Gastgeschenk’. Often the King Penguin texts are more scholarly than the German equivalent, and the designs more varied, all scrutinised in detail by Schmoller himself. It is not surprising that Penguin books of this period, of all kinds, are sought after by collectors.15 Schmoller and his wife, Tanya, gave their own collection of about 15,000 Penguins, every title published in its first 50 years, to the London School of Economics. There is an exchange of letters in the archive of the designer Elizabeth Friedlander16 who, as she notes, was tired of doing the title lettering for the Penguin series on art for little pay, and writes to Schmoller excusing herself by saying that her sight is no longer what it was. Schmoller replies understandingly: “we are all getting on, aren’t we?” He retired when he was 60, the recipient of many honours, remaining with Penguin as a consultant. After retirement he and Tanya travelled the world to add to their collection of patterned papers, ‘Buntpapier’ or ‘carta decorata’, now held by Manchester Metropolitan University. He died in 1985. 3

Ralph Beyer

A letter cutter and type designer, too young to have had an established career in Germany behind him, Ralph Beyer came alone to Britain as a boy of sixteen in 1937. He was born in Berlin in 1921, to a Jewish mother who later died in Ausch­witz. His father was an art historian and Ralph had met many artists. He very much admired the work of the typographer Rudolf Koch and was drawn to letter design. It was a family friend who had earlier come to Britain, the architect Erich, who introduced him to Eric Gill, in whose workshop at Piggotts Beyer learned the art of carved lettering in the Gill style. Wartime brought internment and later service in the British Army. After the war he worked as a mason and a teacher before setting up as a freelance letter carver, and was engaged for the carving of the highly original lettering in Coventry Cathedral. 15 16

See the publications of the Penguin Collectors’ Society. Elizabeth Friedlander’s (uncatalogued) archive is in The Boole Library, University College Cork, Ireland.

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Type design was one of his many skills; his style of work was modern and informal, his teaching influential. 4

Imre Reiner

The designer Imre Reiner could be seen as almost a professional émigré, moving from country to country in his early years, originally by choice, but later, with the rise of Nazism, by necessity. A Hungarian Jew born in 1900, he had tried his luck in several countries: Yugoslavia, Romania, the USA, England, France and Germany, ending up as a Swiss citizen in the country where he had finally found refuge. On his way he had gained several skills. He had studied in German art schools and, more importantly, had worked with the typographer F. H. Ernst Schneidler and his Juniperus-Presse in Stuttgart for whom he was later to illustrate many fine books. It was Schneidler who introduced him to type design and he designed a dozen or so typefaces, among them Neuland, a heavy black type, and Corvinus, 1934 (known as Skyline in the US), for the Bauersche Gießerei in Frankfurt am Main, a narrow, distinctive type still popular today as a display face. He was a skilled calligrapher delighting in hand-drawn letters of a quirky, witty kind and devising many such alphabets. They often appeared on the covers of 1950s’ printing journals. Today they seem to be very much of their time, restlessly jumping about on the page. One of Reiner’s stays in Britain was at the request of the Monotype Corporation, 1942–43, where he was employed as an adviser. His work was admired here, and he too worked for Penguin Books. But it is his exquisite wood engravings, delicate and inventive, illustrating more than 40 classic books for which he will be especially remembered, not only for his lettering. He died in Lugano in 1986, an acknowledged master of his craft. 5

Berthold Wolpe

Many people would recognise the sturdy letters of Berthold Wolpe’s Albertus type17 without knowing the name or that of its designer. Albertus has been used on London street signs, as TV programme titling, on book jackets, and for 17

See Berthold Wolpe. A Retrospective Survey (London: Victoria & Albert Museum and Faber and Faber, 1980), n. p., item no. 49. [BW1980]. His masthead for The Times (in use 1966–70) and those for the quality comics Eagle (from 1950) and Girl (from 1951) also deserve mention in this context.

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notices of all kinds. It is a very convincing type, suggesting reliability and strength, hence its popularity. Wolpe, born in 1905, was from a long-established Jewish family in the neighbourhood of Offenbach am Main. A great-uncle, the scholar and Reform rabbi Salomon Formstecher, had been awarded the freedom of the City of Offenbach in the 19th century. The name Formstecher (‘chiseller of forms’) pointed to his father, who had made woodcut illustrations for the local almanacs, hence the surname, one of which Wolpe was proud. In his last year at school he decided he wanted to join the lettering workshop of Rudolf Koch, which was run with something of the intensity of Eric Gill’s Ditchling community in England. Wolpe accepted the master’s demand for his disciples to have had a previous craft training and took on an apprenticeship with a firm of metalworkers as a metal chaser, and worked also as a smith with gold and silver. He made some fine pieces. From 1924 to 1928 he was a pupil of Koch at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Offenbach and then became an assistant in his workshop. German typographers had been inspired by the work of William Morris in the 19th century and also by other printer-designers such as Emery Walker and Cobden-Sanderson, so much so that Koch, as late as 1934, was writing with enthusiasm in the print journal Philobiblon that Morris “belongs to we Germans”.18 He tried to create a sort of Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood, a mediaeval workshop of dedicated craftsmen consecrated to the Letter. This went along with a fervent nationalism: Wolpe described him, rather mockingly, as “sehr Deutsch”. Koch’s enthusiasm for the Nazi takeover was not to lead to disillusionment, however, as he died in 1934. Saying goodbye to his Jewish associates when they were forced to leave Germany, he supplied them with glowing testimonials. Koch was involved with more than one German Jew. His workshop was commissioned by Siegfried Guggenheim to produce the handsome Offenbach Haggadah, published in 1927. Wolpe provided some of the Hebrew lettering for what Koch described as a happy joint undertaking. Guggenheim was a steady patron of Koch, and Wolpe designed some embroidered lettered tapestries for him, carried out in the workshop. Important types were produced at this time by Berthold Wolpe when still in Germany though already with contacts in Britain. In 1932, Wolpe met in London one of the outstanding figures in the world of print, designer of Times New Roman and long-time consultant to the Monotype Corporation: Stanley Morison. He asked Wolpe to design a printing type for Monotype, one of capital letters based on the lettering designed for bronze inscriptions. Those of the kind that Wolpe had already cut had been raised, not incised, so that they were more crisp, with the serifs reduced in size. This is 18

Rudolf Koch, “Zu uns Deutschen gehört er”, in Philobiblon, Jg. VIII, Heft 4, 1934.

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what distinguishes the Albertus type. It first appeared in a Monotype publication in 1935; the name was suggested by Morison and is still very much with us today, even in America. It was in February 1935 that Wolpe received the standard letter forbidding him to work at his profession. At his retrospective exhibition of 1980 he displayed it together with a testimonial from Rudolf Koch under the sardonic title: Two Tributes.19 Now he had to leave Germany, and it was Francis Meynell, founder of the Nonesuch Press and a leading figure in the printing world, who organised his entry into Britain. Wolpe began working for a major publisher, Faber and Faber, for which he was to design well over 1500 very attractive and eye-catching books, bindings and jackets in the postwar period. Prewar he worked for the Fanfare Press, designing many of the book jackets for Gollancz. These were cleverly done, with letters only, yet they conveyed a sense of excitement or sensation. He designed a type named Tempest, cut by Fanfare, for a Gollancz novel, The Pursuer by Louis Golding, letters which gave a feeling of flight, a pointer to the future. The war and the fall of France led to panic in Britain and the rounding-up and internment of aliens; Oliver Simon describes how Wolpe was among those shipped off to Australia, a perilous journey in time of war.20 Fortunately, enough people spoke for him and he was permitted to return the following year. Other types he designed for Monotype are the refined Hyperion (1932, but only available after the 1950s), and Pegasus (1938). The history of another of Wolpe’s designs, Sachsenwald Gotisch is a curious one. It is a very readable black letter type, originally named Bismarck Schrift. In 1937 Monotype, wishing to sell a Gothic, black-letter type to the new Germany where Fraktur was being promoted as the truly German type, gave Gothic type pride of place in an issue of the Monotype house journal, with a lengthy, unsigned leading article, “Black Letter: its Origin and Current Use” to mark the first showing of Sachsenwald Gotisch.21 This was ironic in view of the fact that its designer had been forbidden to work in his craft, being regarded as unfit to promote German values. Wolpe still felt uncomfortable about this years afterwards. He was an influential teacher, both in Germany as a young man and in England22 as an older man of wisdom; he published many articles on the his19 20 21 22

BW1980, item no. 177: Two Tributes. Oliver Simon, Printer and Playground. An Autobiography (London: Faber and Faber, 1956), 135. BW1980, item no. 63: Sachsenwald. See also The Monotype Recorder, vol. 36, no. 1, Spring 1937, 1–14. Wolpe confided to the author that the unsigned article was by Stanley Morison. The issue’s front and back covers both display examples of the new Sachsenwald Gotisch. He taught at Camberwell School of Art from 1948 until 1953, and at the Royal College of Art 1956–57.

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Figure 9.3 Berthold Wolpe. Hyperion type, 1932, available after 1950s; Albertus type, 1935; design for Stefan Zweig, ‘Der begrabene Leuchter’, 1988

tory of printing, he received many honours and, above all, he impressed everyone who knew him by his charm and individuality of character, and his love of the Letter. 6

Elizabeth Friedlander

The experiences of the designer Elizabeth Friedlander were rather different from those of other émigré artists described here, for she was a woman in a profession dominated by men.23 She was probably the only woman in Germany to have designed a commercial type, ‘Elizabeth’, so named because after 1933 the original name of ‘Friedlander Type’ was considered to point to the Jewish origin of the designer, and thus would be difficult to promote. The Elizabeth type, based on a calligraphic model, was much admired in printing journals in Britain, and it became her calling card when she was forced to leave Germany after receiving the official letter of rejection.

23

For a survey of her career see Pauline Paucker, New Borders. The Working Life of Elizabeth Friedlander (Oldham: Incline Press, 1998).

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Born in Berlin, she was a student of E. R. Weiss. It was he who introduced her to the head of the type-founding firm, the Bauersche Gießerei, run by Georg Hartmann, a man supportive of his designers in difficult times. They were to become close friends. On leaving art school she worked for the Ullstein Press, and for their upmarket women’s journal Die Dame, where she was responsible for all the hand-drawn titling. She freelanced, designing books and her fine Elizabeth type, but this promising career came to a halt with the advent of the Nazis. She too received the letter denouncing her as a non-Aryan forbidden to work in her profession so she had to leave. The question of the naming of her type had been a disturbing one. Hartmann wrote to her, obviously very distressed and speaking of terrible pressures, asking her to agree for it to be named Elizabeth rather than the too obviously Jewish ‘Friedlander’. She kept the letter and others he wrote to her in Italy telling her of the successful placing of the type he so admired.24 A bold version of Elizabeth was planned but never carried out, and the Italic was popular for high-class advertising. She chose Italy as her place of refuge, a precarious one as it turned out.25 Leaving Germany with her folder and her Klotz violin, she soon found work with the magazine Domus and with a leading publisher, Mondadori, turning out book jackets and promotional material of a more lively kind, readily adapting to the different style of the new country, signing her work ‘Elisabetta’. She learned Italian, made friends and settled down, appreciative of the beauty of Italy and the charm of its people but in 1938 Mussolini’s vicious Racial Laws meant that she was again endangered and had to leave. Despairingly she applied to whoever she knew or knew of in the USA and in Britain: including the Toscanini family, and even Noel Coward, who wrote a letter in her favour. Georg Hartmann recommended her to the Bauer foundry people in New York, but finally she came to Britain on a Domestic Service permit in February 1939, to work as a cook-housekeeper for a North London family, determined to do her best even in this role. It was more difficult for a woman to make essential contacts, but one name she knew, Francis Meynell, founder of the Nonesuch Press and a leading figure in the printing world, to whom she went with her folder. He knew and admired the Elizabeth type which had been featured in English print journals and here was its designer, seeking work. At the time he was running a high-class advertising agency and was able to offer her a job, so she could escape the drudgery of domestic service. She very much enjoyed the challenges of designing 24 25

Preserved in her archive, see note 16 above. See Klaus Voigt, Il rifugio precario – gli esuli in Italia dal 1933 al 1945 (Scandicci: La Nuova Italia, 1996).

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Figure 9.4 Elizabeth Friedlander. Elisabeth Antiqua type, between 1927 and 1933

packaging, logos and sophisticated advertising, displaying her versatility and sound training and Meynell became a friend.26 War brought other challenges. Ellic Howe, an expert on type, had been asked to set up a Black Propaganda unit in Bush House and was looking for someone skilled in Gothic script to forge material aimed at Nazi Germany and the German forces. Meynell suggested Friedlander, and she appears as “Fraulein [sic] Elizabeth” in Ellic Howe’s book The Black Game.27 He calls her a highly-skilled letterer, trained in Germany and a “demure spinster in her thirties”. She enjoyed her war work, faking and forging surprisingly well-designed propaganda material. She made friends with the Italians working in Bush House and it was there that she met her Italian-Irish life companion, Alessandro Magri MacMahon. (A firm anti-fascist, he was working for the BBC, broadcasting to Italy.)

26 27

See Francis Meynell, My Lives (London: The Bodley Head, 1971), 181 and 251–52. Ellic Howe, The Black Game (London: Michael Joseph, 1982), 204.

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At the war’s end Friedlander set up as a freelance designer. By then she had many contacts in the printing world, Stanley Morison being among the most important. He was able to give her worthwhile commissions for Monotype and recommend her work to others. She also had an offer to return to Germany from her friend Georg Hartmann of the Bauersche Gießerei, who had supported her in hard times. She kept the draft of her reply among her papers, a letter politely turning down his offer of a well-paid job in Frankfurt, pointing to her contacts in Britain, her British citizenship, her many commissions, her friends, her nice flat and only at the end does she say how can she return “after so much has happened”, and how can she change countries yet again?28 It was the cry of one who has been ejected from her homeland and a country of seeming refuge, an émigrée. Jan Tschichold had also written her a letter, immediately after the war ended, this one saying how much he admired her Elizabeth type, especially the Italic, and would she do some patterned papers for Penguin Music Scores? She was to work for Hans Schmoller, over several years. Among the commissions were Penguin Classics roundels, a calligraphic Penguin symbol and the titling for many series. Her range was wide: trade­marks, book designs, book jackets, patterned papers (some of these are still on sale) and printers’ ornaments. The ‘Friedlander Borders’ for Monotype are particularly pleasing, as are ‘Frost and Fir’ – a set of Christmas ornaments for continental distribution – and a set of swash capitals, her only type design at this time, for Winston Churchill’s History of the Second World War to go with Bembo. She became the official calligrapher for the Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst, which must have pleased her as a sign of acceptance. Later, retiring to Ireland with her companion, she found commissions were less frequent and she was to some extent forgotten. She made a study of the Irish Uncial script and of Hebrew script for which she had some commissions but was distressed by contemporary printing styles. She felt these broke the rules she had worked with all her life: readability and, above all, clarity –“la chiarezza” – as she had stressed in a book she had designed for illiterate Italian prisoners of war in 1945. Her work is of a “Classic Simplicity”29 and its quiet charm remains. She died in 1984. Her extensive archive is to be found in the Boole Library, University College Cork, and her early 18th century Klotz violin has been given to the Cork Music School, and renamed the Friedlander violin. 28 29

The draft of EF’s reply to Hartmann is preserved in her archive, see note 16 above. See Tanya Schmoller, ‘Roundel Trouble’, Matrix 14, The Whittington Press, 1994, and The Penguin Collector, No. 43, December 1994, Miscellany 9.

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Works Cited

Anon., “Black Letter: its Origin and Current Use”, in The Monotype Recorder 36 (1), 1937. Gerald Cinamon, Hans Schmoller, Typographer: His Life and Work, no. 6 in ‘The Mono­ type Recorder’ series (London, Monograph Typography, 1987). Gerald Cinamon, Rudolf Koch (New Castle, Delaware, and London: Oak Knoll Press and The British Library, 2000). John Dreyfus, “‛Sabon’: the first ‘harmonised’ type”, in The Penrose Annual 61, 1968. Ellic Howe, The Black Game (London: Michael Joseph, 1982). Rudolf Koch, “Zu uns Deutschen gehört er”, in Philobiblon, Jg. VIII, Heft 4, 1934. Ruari McLean, Jan Tschichold: Typographer (London: Lund Humphries, 1990). Francis Meynell, My Lives (London: The Bodley Head, 1971). Pauline Paucker, New Borders. The Working Life of Elizabeth Friedlander (Oldham: Incline Press, 1998). Oliver Simon, Printer and Playground. An Autobiography (London: Faber and Faber, 1956). Jan Tschichold, Die neue Typographie (Berlin: Verlag des Bildungsverbandes der Deut­ schen Buchdrucker, 1928). Berthold Wolpe. A Retrospective Survey (London: Victoria & Albert Museum and Faber and Faber, 1980).

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Chapter 10

Making Animation Matter: Peter Sachs Comes to Britain  Fran Lloyd This chapter focuses on the distinctive work of the German-born film animator and art director Peter Hans Richard Sachs (1912–1990), who was permitted entry to Britain in June 1939 to work as a domestic servant, aged 27. Trained in the animation studios of two of Weimar Berlin’s most highly regarded experimental film animators in the early 1930s, the Hungarian-born George Pal and the German artist and filmmaker Oskar W. Fischinger, Sachs first fled in 1934 to Eindhoven in Holland, where he worked on the experimental animated advertisements produced by Pal’s studio for Philips Radio and Horlicks, brands which were known to British audiences. The first in-depth study of Sachs’ contribution to animation in Britain, this essay identifies the specific conditions that facilitated his career, the particularities of the powerful and innovative modernist animations he produced for government agencies and advertising companies through the Larkins Studio in London from 1943 to 1955, and his contribution to professional training and education.

On 18 April 2005, BBC Four television broadcast the first episode of Animation Nation, a three-part documentary series on the history of British animated film since its inception in 1899. Entitled “The Art of Persuasion”, the episode focused chiefly on advertising and propaganda from the 1910s to the mid-1950s and included the work of the German-born animator Peter Sachs (1912–1990), who came to Britain as a refugee in June 1939, aged 27.1 On 19 April 2012, the FILMFEST DRESDEN International Short Film Festival hosted a retrospective tribute to mark the 100th anniversary of Sachs’ birth by screening nine of his short animation films produced from 1934 to 1961. These two major events, held respectively twelve and 22 years after his death in London, represent significant milestones in the re-discovery of Sachs’ work and the acknowledgement of his contribution to animation.2 While such a time lapse between achievement and re-recognition seems extraordinary in the 21st century, it highlights the 1 Animation Nation: The Art of Persuasion (Bristol: BBC, 2005). 2 FILMFEST DRESDEN, German Institute for Animated Film (DIAF), Dresden in collaboration with the British Film Institute National Archive, London.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_012

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specific historical, cultural and material challenges that frequently obscure the work of artists and designers engaged in areas of commercial production and, in turn, researchers of these little-documented practices and often precarious artefacts. This is particularly marked in the over-looked and, until recently, under-researched area of short animation film discussed here.3 As various writers have ob­served, film histories predominately focus on feature-length productions or live-action documentaries for cinema distribution. They rarely refer to short animations. Animated film is also largely absent within the histories of 20th-century modern art and design. This lack of visibility is striking when, as Esther Leslie persuasively argues, animation was perceived as presenting new forms of modernity and potential freedoms of great interest to modernist artists, designers and critical thinkers in Europe from the late 1920s.4 Recent invaluable research on the contribution of the estimated number of 400 German-speaking émigrés and refugees who worked in the film industry in Britain from 1927 to 1945 has substantially expanded our knowledge beyond the ‘auteur’ frame by encompassing cinematographers, set designers, composers, actors and writers.5 Nonetheless, those working on short animated films remain largely absent from these histories.6 Echoing the frustrations of Leslie, this essay foregrounds this continuing lack and the precarious positioning of short animated films that frequently fall through the gap between subject classifications (film, art, design) and definitions of independent, commercial or commissioned animation.7 Paradoxically, Sachs’ short animated films were highly visible from the mid1930s through to the early 1960s in cinemas and other screening venues in Britain, and abroad. Well-known within animation circles, Sachs was also held in great esteem by the many animators whom he trained at Larkins Studio in London from the 1940s, and who later became significant leaders in the field.

3 See Giannalberto Bendazzi, Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation (Hertfordshire: John Libbey, 1994), Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (New York and London: Routledge, 1998), and ‘Animated Britain’ launched in January 2018: . 4 Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-garde (London, New York: Verso, 2004). 5 Tobias Hochscherf, The Continental Connection: German–speaking émigrés and British cinema, 1927–45 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011), 2. 6 See Florian Scheding, “‘An Animated Quest for Freedom’: Mátyás Seiber’s score for The Magic Canvas”, in Tim Bergfelder and Christian Cargnelli (eds.), Destination London: Germanspeaking Émigrés and British Cinema, 1925–1950 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008), 230–42. 7 See Suzanne Buchan (ed.), Pervasive Animation (New York and London: Routledge, 2013), 1–21.

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Yet, as Claire Kitson notes,8 the majority of these short films, sponsored by government agencies and commercial companies rather than being featurelength cinema films or entertainment shorts, have been largely inaccessible until recently. Moreover, unlike Halas & Batchelor, the other major UK animation studio of the time, Sachs did not focus on promoting or preserving his work or on publications. The increasing success of contemporary British animation worldwide since the 1980s, and the growth of animation studies from the 1990s, has resulted in the slow process of identifying and unearthing Sachs’ work. Sachs, a dapper figure who always retained a German accent, has been described by those who worked with him in London as a charismatic individual with a precise and analytical mind, a passion for animation, art, music, and experimentation, and above all, for design quality. Born Peter Hans Richard Sachs in September 1912 in Allenstein, East Prussia (now Olsztyn in Poland), he was the son of a Jewish architect from Berlin (Hans Richard Sachs, 1878–1915, who was temporarily working in the city) and a Lutheran mother (Martha Margarete Sachs, née Miller, 1875–1934,) from Königsberg, also in East Prussia. Following his father’s death in France in January 1915, just three weeks after volunteering, his mother returned to Berlin where Sachs and his three sisters grew up.9 Leaving school at eighteen, Sachs worked for a brief period in a ceramics factory before training in the animation studios of Weimar Berlin in 1931–32. Surrounded by the 1920s experimental films of László Moholy-Nagy (1895– 1946), Walter Ruttman (1887–1941) and the short silhouette animations of Reni Reiniger (1899–1981, usually known as ‘Lotte’), Sachs’ choice of animation was inspired by viewing a Walt Disney “Mickey Mouse” cartoon.10 A sense of the interest that the first Berlin screenings of this black and white, hand-drawn cartoon figure generated are evident in Walter Benjamin’s short unfinished Berlin fragment on Mickey Mouse of 1931,11 and the public presentations by

8 9 10

11

Claire Kitson, “Tribute 1: Peter Sachs” in 24 FILMFEST DRESDEN, International Short Film Festival, Festival Catalogue (Dresden, 17–22 April 2012), 68. Private archive, London. Mickey Mouse first appeared in The Barn Dance (1929), screened in Berlin’s Kino Universum, 17 January 1930: Leslie, op. cit., 31. See Kevin Gough-Yates, “Peter Sachs: George Pal’s animating friend who came in from the cold of Nazi Germany”, Obituary, in The Guardian, 5 January 1991, 21. Walter Benjamin, “Mickey Mouseˮ (1931), in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith (eds.), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, Volume 2: Part 2, 1931–1934, (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005), 545–46.

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Figure 10.1 Peter Sachs, Berlin, black and white photograph with ink and pencil drawings, c. 1933

the film critic and radio broadcaster Bernhard Diebold in 1931 and 1932.12 For Sachs, the freedom of animation is captured in an early 1930s photograph where he surrounds his smiling, youthful image with drawings representing the art and technologies of animation: the camera, the spotlight, and the large extended artist’s brush balanced on the finger of the early Disney-like cartoon figure. The image succinctly evokes animation as an art of joyous invention and movement, combining technical and artistic skill. Sachs trained with two of Berlin’s most highly regarded experimental film animators: the Hungarian-born George Pal (György Pál Marczincsak: 1908– 1980) and subsequently the German artist and filmmaker Oskar W. Fischinger (1900–1967). Pal had headed the cartoon studio at UFA (Universum Film-A G), Germany’s principal film studio, before founding his own studio.13 In Pal’s studio, Sachs experimented with the craft of both hand-drawn cartoon animation 12 13

See Bernhard Diebold and Richard George Elliott, “The Future of Mickey Mouse (The Animated Film as a New Cinema Art)”, in “Special Issue, Cinematographic Art”, Art in Translation (2016), 8:1, 53–61. Pal established his own company in Berlin with Paul Witte, a Berlin businessman, in October 1931. Rolf Giesen and J. P. Storm, Animation Under the Swastika: A History of Trickfilm in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Co, 2012), 6.

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(where each drawing, set against a background, is photographed frame by frame by a rostrum camera to produce the illusion of movement on film), and innovative stop-motion techniques using three-dimensional models to create consecutive movements.14 Working during an exhilarating age of synchronised sound film (a technology dating only from the late 1920s) and producing a new form of mass advertising, the studio’s short animated black and white films with their innovative, dynamic and stylised modernist forms were in great demand. Mitternacht (‘Midnight’) of 1932, for example, commissioned by the Oberst tobacco company, presented cinema audiences with the stunning visual effects of orchestrated ‘cigarettes’ marching to the rhythm of the music.15 The situation in Weimar Berlin changed dramatically with the appointment of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933. The next evening, Pal secretly fled to Prague and Sachs was jobless.16 In July 1933 Sachs was hired by Fischinger (a close friend of Diebold) to produce an animation of graphics and maps for a tedious but well-paid educational documentary, Eine Viertel­ stunde Groẞstadtstatistik (‘A Quarter Hour of City Statistics’).17 Fischinger was working on two experimental animations in colour: Kreise (‘Circles’) commissioned by the Tolirag advertising agency (often claimed to be the first European film made with the Gaspar three-colour separation system), released in December 1933,18 and the legendary three-minute stop-motion Muratti Greift Ein (‘Muratti Gets in the Act’), featuring animated real cigarettes, released in April 1934.19 These experiments with vibrant colour animation were a further technological milestone that informed Sachs’ subsequent work. With the creation of the Film Chamber of the Reich in September 1933 that officially excluded Jewish filmmakers from all German studios, Sachs, although 14

15

16 17 18 19

Sachs and Pal are recorded as co-producers on the two-minute advertisement with animation sequence produced by Trickfilm-Studio GmbH Pal u. Wittke (Berlin), released 1 January 1932: Wieviel ist Ihnen Ihre Gesundheit wert? (‘How much is your health worth to you?’): . For Pal’s early work in Hungary, Berlin, Prague, Paris and Eindhoven see Orosz Márton, Vissza a szülöföldre! / Back to the Homeland!. 10th Kecskeméti Animáció Film Fesztivál (KAFF, 2011). Accessed 10 June 2017. Ken Clark, “George Pal Puppetoons – the early years”, in Animator Magazine (1985) 14: 1. .. A 35-minute educational film commissioned by Toni Attenburger of Cabinet Film, Munich: see William Moritz, Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger (Herts.: John Libbey Publishing, 2004), 217, 447; Giesen and Storm, op. cit., 208. Ibid. 220. Ibid. 222.

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brought up as Lutheran, was forced to leave Berlin. On 21 July 1934 Sachs arrived in Holland on the invitation of Pal to join his new studio in Eindhoven to work on a series of short animated stop-motion colour films for Philips Electrical. In total, with Sachs as studio-manager covering all aspects of the production, Pal’s Eindhoven studio produced at least ten stop-motion animated films advertising the sound quality of the company’s radios using the time-consuming and elaborate ‘Puppetoon’ system of replacement wooden parts to animate the puppets, a system Pal had patented as “Pal-Dolls” in Berlin.20 Sachs describes the process in detail in a rare published interview of 1985:  The Ship of the Ether was the first film we made. Because of my previous experience I knew how to animate puppets and I was put in charge of the rostrum camera. Pal manufactured his puppets in the round, one for each fractional movement in the same way cartoon animators draw in-betweens. […] Arms and legs were pliable and could be bent into position. Heads could be changed and re-arranged for different actions, a most convenient way of effecting repeat movements.21 Writing for the British magazine Sight and Sound in the summer of 1936, the film critic Marie Seton describes the film as “an enchanting fantasy […] in which the doll artistes go through dreamlike antics and ships in twisted glass sail over fantastic seas”.22 In keeping with the promotion of the Pal studio, only George Pal’s name and that of the musician appear on the films although photographs from the Philips Company archive in Eindhoven show the major role that Sachs played in all aspects of the studio. This included animating the figures for the films that were shot in at least fourteen languages for cinemas worldwide.23 Philips’ commercial use of Gaspar’s three-colour system to advertise in an age of predominately black and white film was highly significant and reported widely in the trade press and national newspapers. As World Film News reported in October 1936, companies such as Philips, Cadbury and Euthymol Toothpaste could reach audiences of over 400,000 in a year “outside the ordinary cinema public” with screenings “in schools, institutes and at lectures.”24 20 21 22 23 24

The films included Radio Valve Revolution (1934); The Ship of the Ether (1934); The Little Broadcast (1935); Philips Cavalcade (1934); Sleeping Beauty (1935); The Magic Atlas (1935); World’s Greatest Show (1935); In Lamp Light Land (1935) and The Big Broadcast of ’38 (1937). Clark, op. cit., 1. Marie Seton, “George Pal”, in Sight and Sound (Summer 1936), 5: 18, 13. See Mette Peters, “Het animatie maakproces in het archief”, . “Big Audiences for Gasparcolor” in World Film News, 1, no. 7 (October 1936), 36.

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Moreover, The Ship of the Ether, as the article observed, was the animation that brought Gasparcolor to the notice of British advertising departments.25 Bela Gaspar, the originator of this colour process (known previously to Sachs through Fischinger in Berlin) had already sought refuge in Britain and set up an agency in London by 1934.26 The extensive transnational connections that existed within the relatively small world of advertising and film prior to the Second World War meant that Sachs’ work was also known in Britain through short animated films advertising Horlicks Malted Milk. These films, commissioned by the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, were produced by Pal’s studio from 1936 to 1938 specifically for British audiences. The first, On Parade (1936), used Gasparcolor and What Ho, She Bumps (1937) marked the studio’s change to Technicolor.27 These prewar animations, coming from a central European modernist trajectory that valued imaginative use of different materials, demonstrated the persuasive power of animation to British audiences. More than that, they also offered a significant aesthetic alternative to the increasingly naturalistic, ‘speaking’ characters of Disney’s animated cartoons that dominated the cinema worldwide by the late 1930s. The increasing threat of Hitler’s advances in Europe forced Sachs and Pal to flee Holland. Pal left for America in 1939: a farewell photograph taken at the train station shows Sachs present.28 He subsequently signed a contract with Paramount. Sachs and his Hungarian-born wife arrived in Britain on 21 June 1939, at the height of the refugee crisis, with an entry visa to work as domestic servants to two elderly women in Worthing, Sussex.29 This “joke”, as Sachs described it,30 was further compounded by his subsequent internment in midJune 1940. Initially classed as ‘Category C’ at the local tribunal (i.e. offering “no threat” to Britain),31 Sachs was sent to Huyton Camp, near Liverpool, and then to the Isle of Man. 25 26 27 28 29 30 31

Ibid. Gasparcolor was one of three major companies competing in this new market. See Philip C. Logan, Humphrey Jennings and British Documentary Film: A Re-assessment (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2011), 61–74. See Neil [sic], “George Pal in Holland: Horlicks for Britain”, The Lost Continent (28 January 2013,  . Reproduced in Clark, op. cit., 2. Gough-Yates, op. cit., 21. Kevin Gough-Yates interview with Sachs, 11 May 1989, in “The European Film Maker in Exile in Britain 1933–1945” (PhD thesis, The Open University, 1990), 30, n. 4. Sachs is listed in the “Schedule of Aliens from the West Sussex District Aliens Tribunal, 1939–1945” as Category C. POL/W/HQ15/6, West Sussex Archives, Chichester, Sussex.

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Sachs offered little comment on his internment except that he “took up drawing and painting, taught by a fellow internee”.32 Through archival research, oral history accounts and recently discovered artwork, it is evident that Sachs continued to develop his graphic skills and preoccupations with animation. A drawing by the young Viennese internee Ernst Eisenmayer (1920-2018) depicts the capped figure of Sachs seated on a mound, absorbed in the production of a watercolour in Central Promenade Camp in Douglas (opened on 14 June 1940).33 Sachs was relocated to Onchan Camp (just north of the town) on 27 February 1941 when Central Camp closed, and, in addition to portrait drawings,34 he produced a series of humorous drawings of camp life for the Onchan camp magazine, The Onchan Pioneer, from May 1941 until his release in July 1941. In internment he met the eighteen-year-old Kurt Weiler (1921– 2016), whom he inspired to take up animation and later employed in London.35 Arguably the most experienced and inventive animator in Britain, alongside the Hungarian refugee John Halas (born János Halász, who trained with Pal in Budapest),36 Sachs re-entered the animation industry through a chance meeting in late 1941 in London with William Larkins (1901–1974), a former art director at the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency that had commissioned the Horlicks films. Initially trained as an etcher at Goldsmiths College of Art in the 1920s, at the start of the war Larkins moved into the animation industry, realising the Ministry of Information’s need for a visual means of conveying information effectively and succinctly. After a brief partnership with Anson Dyer, Britain’s most successful animator at the time,37 Larkins formed the W. M. Larkins Studio in 1940 at 51 Charles Street, Mayfair, producing films and animations on tank and aircraft recognition for the Ministries of Defence and Information. Ironically, the first films that Sachs worked on were for the newly formed government’s Directorate of Army Kinematography (AKS), established in April 1941, with overall responsibility for all films required by the Army at 32 33 34 35

36 37

Gough-Yates, op. cit., 30, n. 4. Ernst Eisenmayer, Portrait of Peter Sachs (1940), black ink drawing, private collection, London. Peter Sachs, Portrait of Arthur Kiel (1940) watercolour, private collection, Isle of Man. Fellow internees included Nuremberg-born graphic designer F.H.K. Henrion (1914–1990); Austrian film-maker George Michael Hoellering (1897–1980), director of the Academy Cinema in Oxford Street from 1944–1980; and Cologne-born artist and cinema poster designer Peter Strausfeld (1910–1980), who produced posters for the Academy Cinema from 1945 until his death. See Onchan Pioneer (No. 47, 20 July 1941) 7. See Vivien Halas and Paul Wells, Halas & Batchelor Cartoons: An Animated History (London: Southbank Publishing, 2006). See Denis Gifford, British Animated Films, 1895–1985: a filmography (Jefferson: McFarland, 1987).

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home and abroad.38 In 1943, Larkins provided animation for two AKS films on army aircraft recognition: Aircraft recognition – Marauder (part 31), released in March, and Skymaster, in July 1943. Both instructional films employed live-action film with inserts of cartoon animation that helped immediate shape recog­nition. In Skymaster, for example, the superimposed diagram of the Sky­ master’s outline likens its silhouette to a fish and contrasts it with a Sunderland and a Hurricane.39 While such mundane animation was far removed from the inventive, highbudget work Sachs had produced in prewar Eindhoven, four letters from Larkins to Sir Kenneth Clark from February 1943 to May 1944 offer an insight into the studio’s approach to animation. As the then Director of The National Gallery (whose collection had been safely stored outside London) Clark had joined the newly reformed Ministry of Information (MoI) in 1939, first as Director of the Film Division, and then as Controller of Home Publicity until 1941. Clark was also chairman of the MoI’s War Artists’ Advisory Committee that commissioned work from artists throughout the war. In the first letter of 25 February 1943, Larkins introduces the studio as one of “art directors engaged in making drawings for a specialised type of film” for the MoI and the armed forces. Asking if Clark could suggest artists who could no longer be “protected” from being called up, Larkins stresses that no knowledge of film is necessary. Instead, he states: “It has immense possibilities as the artist has absolutely full control over the medium.”40 Larkins elaborates on the studio’s approach fifteen months later in a two-page letter, dated 24 May 1944, as follows: Although we animate drawings, our practice is not the same as in the average cartoon studio where a few skilled artists act as “keys”, and seventy five per cent of the rest of the work is carried out by hack artists [...] We are anxious […] to produce the best possible effect on the screen and we know that this can only be achieved by attracting the best type of artist. Although we use film as a medium to photograph our drawings, we have no film technicians as such in the studio. Our staff consists only of artists.41

38 39 40 41

“Army Kinematography”, WO 165/96, The National Archives, Kew. Aircraft recognition - Marauder (part 31), March 1943, AMY 759; Skymaster, July 1943, DRA 513, Imperial War Museum Film Archive, London. W. Larkins to Sir K. Clark, 23 February 1943, Tate Archive, London, TGA 8812/1/1/27/29. W. Larkins to Sir K. Clark, 24 May 1944, TGA 8812/1/1/52/8.

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As the other two letters to Clark show, Larkins recruited students from London art schools and was in touch with Helen Roeder of the Artists’ Refugee Committee, whom Clark had worked with since the outbreak of war to prevent the internment of artists and to secure their release.42 In a letter dated 15 April 1943, Larkins notes that Roeder had advised him that Clark would put forward a case to the Ministry of Labour and National Service regarding Suzanne Einzig’s application to join “our cartoon studio”. Larkins makes no reference to Einzig’s prior experience as an illustration student at the Breuer School of Design in Berlin and later, in 1939, at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, after arriving in the UK on a Kindertransport.43 He simply describes her as “a very talented young person” whose skills they could use, and adds: I understand that you are prepared to make the point that talent and skill applied in a studio such as ours, is likely to be a greater help to the nation than directing an artist into a purely mechanical job. Larkins concludes by asking (rather boldly) if Clark could also support another talented artist, a Miss King, sent to Larkins by Wimbledon School of Art.44 Clark’s response is unknown, but Einzig’s application for a labour permit was accepted as her grateful letter to Clark records,45 and in a follow-up letter to Clark, Larkins confirms that Einzig “may join our staff”.46 Although Einzig’s appointment did not work out, of particular interest here is the studio’s approach outlined to Clark.47 The emphasis on artistic quality and freedom of expression were key to Sachs’ approach to animation, and by 1943 he was effectively leading the Larkins studio. Sachs understood the power of animation to capture the audience’s attention through a contemporary ­visual vocabulary that imaginatively conveyed information in a condensed and often unexpected manner. The MoI also recognised the advantages of 42 43 44 45 46 47

See Helen Roeder letters in the Tate Archive. Larkins probably first knew Roeder (1909– 1999) through his links with Goldsmiths College where she studied painting in the early 1930s alongside Carel Weight, her partner and later husband. Later known as Susan Einzig (1922–2009). See Julia Eccleshare, “Einzig, Susan Henrietta (1922–2009), illustrator”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 2013). W. Larkins to Sir K. Clark, 15 April 1943, TGA 8812/1/1/27/31. S. Einzig to Sir K. Clark, 9 May 1943, TGA 8812/1/1/52/9. See also Ines Schlenker in this volume; and Sarah MacDougall in Yearbook 18. W. Larkins to Sir K. Clark, 7 May 1943, TGA 8812/1/1/27/32. Susan Einzig, “‘Refugee Voices’: transcript of Interview by Association of Jewish Refugees”, the AJR Audio-visual History Collection, tape 120, conducted by Marian Malet, 23 March 2006.

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animation over much live-action film as a means to convey information to a wide range of audiences without the obvious signs of class through dress, environment and accent.48 The inventiveness of Sachs’ approach is evident in the range of work he produced at Larkins. The studio’s wartime commissions included the black and white, two-minute public information animation Summer Travelling (1945). Commissioned by the MoI, and sponsored by the Ministry of War Transport, the film stresses the need for patience when travelling during the summer period immediately following the declaration of the end of war in Europe on 8 May 1945. Released on 6 July in the newsreel ‘Pathé Gazette’, it would have been seen in numerous UK cinemas and non-theatrical venues.49 As a quick, low-cost response, this fastmoving short with a jaunty female voiceover deftly captures the excitement and potential chaos of holiday travel after a five-year period of war. The sharply delineated drawings of trains crowded with smiling passengers of all classes and ages, the close-up details of piles of luggage, crowded taxis, long queues, timetable delays, and the strident animated marching forms of returning soldiers convey the message in a succinct and light-hearted manner, far removed from the experiences of wartime evacuation, dislocation and, for some, forced transportation. Other short black and white animations include The Big Four or What to Eat (1946), commissioned via the MoI for the Ministry of Food and available for free loan through the Central Film Library (then at the Imperial Institute in south-west Kensington). Focusing on four main elements of diet – calcium, protein, iron and vitamins – it was released on 3 July 1946, with music by the Romanian-born composer and conductor Francis Chagrin (1905–1972), who was to become a close collaborator and friend of Sachs.50 Listed in the Monthly Film Bulletin under the heading “Public Health and Hygiene”, the ten-minute cartoon with voiceover is described as follows: In an old-time musical-hall show we are introduced to Man, the Amazing Species, Nature’s Masterpiece, from the days when the stork brings him to those of leopard-skinned strong-manhood, a state which is successfully reached thanks to the balanced diet.51 48 49 50 51

See James Chapman, British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda 1939–1945 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998). “Summer Travelling,” Documentary News Letter (1946, 6: 53) 47. Born Alexander Paucker, Chagrin produced scores for Larkins and Halas & Batchelor. See the Chagrin Collection, British Library. “The Big Four,” Monthly Film Bulletin (April 1947, 14: 160) 56.

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Figure 10.2 Summer Travelling, film still, Art Director Peter Sachs, 1945

This précis (presumably provided by Larkins Studio) captures the imaginative scenario and humour of the animation that focuses visually on the growth spurts of the child and the flat cut-out figure of the nurse presenting food on an ever bigger serving dish. The minimal modernist design, free of extraneous decoration, led the magazine’s “viewing committee” to reluctantly observe: “It would […] supply a little light relief in a programme of heavier shorts.”52  T for Teacher (1947), sponsored by the Tea Bureau and the National Council for Hotel and Catering Education, by contrast, was used to advise trainee catering and domestic science students on how to make the most of tea during postwar rationing. Released in December 1947, the six-minute black and white film was classed as a documentary. Here Sachs’ modernist language is given full expression in the angular stylised forms of the flat figures amidst the animated flames of the tea urn and objects rendered in different sizes and perspectives against a richly textured, floating background. Through the strong visual language, its unexpected changes of tempo, the abrupt movement between spaces of the teahouse and the kitchen, and the use of spoken rhyming couplets, it totally engages the viewer in the drama of British tea-making, a subject of popular interest as George Orwell’s 1946 essay reveals.53 The Documentary News Letter credited Sachs as the animator and described it as offering “useful hints about how to make a good cup of tea”. Curiously, perhaps as a way of connecting Sachs with a German animation tradition well-known in Britain, the listing notes: “a cartoon in the Lotte Reiningerr [sic]

52 53

Ibid. George Orwell, “A Nice Cup of Tea,” Evening Standard, 12 January 1946.

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Figure 10.3 The Big Four, film still, Art Director Peter Sachs, 1946

tradition, the figures being in silhouette form”.54 A more accurate retrospective assessment by Amid Amidi, in his history of American animation of the 1950s, sees the short as “an incredible exercise in graphic animation and equals (if not exceeds) the level of graphic maturity of UPA [United Productions of America], and other American studios during the same period”.55 By 1947, the studio had become part of The Film Producers Guild (a larger consortium able to tender for work), and Sachs’ increasing reputation for high quality, groundbreaking animation was further enhanced by the release of Men of Merit (A Lantern Lecture) in 1948, the year Sachs was granted naturalisation.56 The five-minute colour animation focuses on fuel economy and the promotion of electricity for the Central Council of Information (CoI), the successor of the MoI. An ambitious production, combining animated cartoons and puppetry, Men of Merit opens with a stop-motion sequence of the puppet 54

55 56

“New Documentary Films,” Documentary News Letter, (January 1948, 7: 61) 6. Reiniger’s work was well known in the UK from the early 1930s. In December 1933 she sought refuge in Britain, working briefly for the G.P.O. Film Unit. Unable to secure residency, it was only in 1948 that she and her husband Carl Koch returned to England. See Grace Whitney, Lotte Reiniger: Pioneer of Film Animation (Jefferson, North Carolina and London: McFarland & Co Inc., 2017). Amid Amidi, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006), 58. 20 April 1948, HO 334/209/41750, National Archive, Kew.

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Figure 10.4 T for Teacher, film still, Art Director Peter Sachs, 1947

lecturer delivering a talk on the development of electricity with the lecturer’s blackboard revealing an alternative world of cartoon drawings. Interrupted by a power cut, the lecture continues by candlelight, and stresses the need to avoid use of electrical equipment at peak times. Jack Beddington (who had taken over from Clark as director of the MoI Film Division from April 1940 to 1946) wrote enthusiastically to Sachs on 21 December 1948, immediately after seeing the film: we were both absolutely enchanted with it and send you our most hearty congratulations. This is one of the rare occasions when I can speak without any misgivings or withdrawals. I really love it.57 This was clearly echoed in audience responses for, as the film writer John Huntley notes, “the popularity and inventiveness of this animated short led to its general release by the National Screen Service in 3,000 cinemas in Britain with 602 copies printed by Technicolor.”58

57 58

Private collection, London. John Huntley, “Animation in Britain”, in Journal of the British Film Academy (1956), 6.

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Figure 10.5 River of Steel, film still, Director Peter Sachs, Art Director Oscar Dominquez, 1951

Other CoI commissions included Local Government: A History in Pictures (1949), sponsored by the Ministry of Health. An elaborate eleven-minute, black-and-white animation, it narrates over a thousand years of local governance, from the Saxons to the present. Employing Norwich as a case study, and working with the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, it opens with cubo-futurist inspired drawings of a densely populated modern city and unfolds developments through simplified, hand-drawn maps and stylised illustrations referencing manuscripts, tapestries, prints, paintings and architecture.59 The style could not be more different from Sachs’ next production, Balance 1950 (1951), a Paul Klee-inspired commercial animation that visualised and sang the 1950 annual accounts of I.C.I. for its employees.60 The maturity and boldness of Sachs’ art-inspired modernist approach to animation are perhaps best represented by two colour productions of the early 1950s. The first, River of Steel (1951), was produced for the British Iron and Steel Federation, and, as Jez Stewart notes, the first part in particular employs Sachs’ bold, modernist forms to represent the production of steel from iron ore where “line, perspective and colour fire across the screen with a clear cubist influence”.61 59 60 61

, . BFI Collection, London. Jez Stewart, “Animated visions: the Larkins Studio and River of Steel”,  .

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Figure 10.6 Without Fear, film still, Art Director Peter Sachs, 1952

The second film, Without Fear (1952), was commissioned under the US Marshall Plan to address Europe’s postwar economic condition and the continent’s future during the Cold War years.62 As commentators have noted, Sachs appears to offer a more personal vision of Europe in this painterly animation that moves from representations of postwar devastation and divisions to highly charged images of a Europe dominated by the power of the totalitarian state, concluding with calls for working together for freedom (“Europe’s heritage”) and prosperity. The frequent juxtaposition of dramatic urban forms, monumental figures and strident expressive colour alongside brightly painted, rich pastoral landscapes powerfully conveys the message. This is particularly evident when compared with the more sedate Halas & Batchelor animation, The Shoemaker and the Hatter (1952), also commissioned under the Marshall Plan. Sachs elected to leave Larkins in 1955, the year that saw the launch of commercial television in the UK. Denis Gilpin, Beryl Stevens and Richard Taylor, the younger animators who worked on Balance 1950, River of Steel, Without Fear and the award-winning short Shippam’s Guide to the Opera (1955) directed by

62

See Al Hemsing, “The Marshall Plan’s European Film Unit, 1948–1955: A Memoir and Filmography”, in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 14 (1994), 269–97.

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Sachs,63 took over artistic control of the studio. Nonetheless, the continuing impact of Sachs on the studio style was recognised within the industry. For example, in 1957 a special issue of the Journal of the British Film Academy published reports on the international animation industry. In his UK overview, Huntley discussed the guild-like structure of the British units compared with the major American studios. Referring to four animation studios, he commented upon Larkins as follows: The studio’s style is still, perhaps almost unconsciously, influenced by the work of Peter Sachs, notably by his angular figures, clear-cut lines and sharply defined backgrounds, in which detail is reduced to a minimum […] There are seventy people in the Unit which turns out about 30,000 feet of final-cut material a year. Personnel tends to remain static, and the Unit’s tradition in training can be gathered from the fact that, on a recent prize-winning film, the average age of the production team was 23.64 Sachs’ contribution to animation, arguably for “democratic purposes”,65 is indeed evident in the sheer number of animators that he inspired, trained and collaborated with in his 14 years at Larkins. For the refugee Weiler, who joined Larkins in 1947, Sachs provided a link back both to the innovative period of prewar cartoon and puppet animation in Weimar Germany and to its interlinked history of experimental abstract art animation.66 Introduced to classic drawn or painted animation and to stop-motion animation, Weiler chose to return to the newly founded German Democratic Republic in 1950. He later joined the new DEFA Studio for Animation Film (Trickfilme) in Dresden and established his reputation as the foremost innovator in puppet animation, becoming studio director from 1977 to 1989.67 Several animators trained by Sachs were to lead the post-1955 expansion of the industry in the UK and abroad through award-winning innovative animation shorts predominantly for television audiences. Each with their own distinctive style, these included Bob Godfrey MBE (1921–2013), who joined Larkins 63 64 65 66

67

Screen Archive South East, University of Brighton, . Huntley, op. cit., 6. Halas and Wells, op. cit., 158. Fran Lloyd, “Forging artistic careers in exile: Ernst Eisenmayer and Kurt Weiler in 1940s Britain,” in Burcu Dogramaci and Karin Wimmer (eds.), Netzwerke des Exils: Künstlerische Verflechtungen, Austausch und Patronage nach 1933 (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 2011), 243–60. Kurt Weiler interview, in Muratti & Sarotti: Geschichte des deutschen Trickfilms 1920–1960, Gerd Gockell, DVD, 80 mins. (absolut medien: Berlin, 2000).

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in 1950, and went on to set up Biographic Cartoons Ltd in 1955 in London with two fellow Larkins’ trainees, Keith Learner (dates unknown) and Jeff Hale (1923–2015). Known for his humorous and risqué animations, Godfrey later created the popular animated TV series Roobarb and award-winning shorts, such as Kama Sutra Rides Again (1972), while Hale established himself as a leading animator and director in Canada from 1956, and then in San Francisco from 1964. Richard Taylor (1929–2013) left Larkins in 1965 to found Taylor Cartoons, producing the popular 1973 Charlie Says public information series for the CoI, and several of the less well-documented women animators, including Vera Linnecar (b. 1923), Nancy Hanna and Beryl Stevens, became art directors.68 In turn, these animators trained others and, in the case of Godfrey and Taylor, they established the first specialist animation courses in the UK.69 Sachs continued to work on at least a further twenty animated films after leaving Larkins in 1955, either as director, animator, scriptwriter, or storyboard producer. These included co-writing the script for Mr Finley’s Feelings (1956), directed by Taylor, sponsored by The Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and widely distributed in America; animation shorts for the Halas & Batchelor studio; company information films for Derek Stewart Productions, and storyboards for three early episodes of Halas & Batchelor’s first television cartoon series Foo Foo, the first British animated series to be syndicated and broadcast in the USA in 1961.70 Alongside this, Sachs taught at various London art schools, including the Slade School of Art and Goldsmiths College, and continued to produce design work, as the pages of the international Art Directors Annual of Advertising Arts and Graphics show. In conclusion, Sachs made animation matter in Britain through the distinctive range and quality of work he produced both in Eindhoven and London. As a refugee in Britain he brought with him substantial technical and professional experience of working in both the smaller studios of Berlin and Pal’s commercial studio in Eindhoven, and through former advertising links was able to enter a newly founded studio, shaping its style and reputation as one of the two leading UK animation studios. If this was achievable because of the MoI’s wartime demand for information films, the accompanying shortage of experienced animation personnel, and the continuing role animation played in 68 69 70

See Jez Stewart, Accessed 10 June 2017. In 1985, Taylor established the first UK postgraduate animation course at the Royal College of Art, in collaboration with Godfrey. Godfrey later taught at West Surrey College of Art & Design (now University for the Creative Arts). For a filmography of Sachs see Accessed 10 June 2017.

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Britain’s postwar recovery for government and commercial advertising alike, it was also because of Sachs’ ability to observe the particularities of life in Britain and to find inventive ways of subtly embedding these within the overall design concept, tempo and strong visual language of animation. The same openness to experimentation and humour fostered at least another two generations of animators and resonates with contemporary audiences encountering his increasingly visible work.

Works Cited

Anon., “Army Kinematography.” WO 165/96, The National Archives, Kew (n.d.). Anon., “Schedule of Aliens from the West Sussex District Aliens Tribunal, 1939–1945.” POL/W/HQ15/6. West Sussex Archives, Chichester, Sussex. Anon., “Big Audiences for Gasparcolor,” World Film News 1, no. 7 (October 1936). Anon., “Summer Travelling”. Documentary News Letter 6 (1946). Anon., “The Big Four”. Monthly Film Bulletin 14 (April 1947). Anon., “New Documentary Films”. Documentary News Letter 7 (January 1948). Amid Amidi, Animation Nation: The Art of Persuasion (Bristol: BBC, 2005). Amid Amidi, Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in Fifties Animation (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006). Giannalberto Bendazzi, Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation (Hert­ fordshire: John Libbey, 1994). Walter Benjamin, “Mickey Mouse”, in Michael W. Jennings, Howard Eiland and Gary Smith (eds.), Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings, 1931–1934, Volume 2: Part 2 (Cam­ bridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005). Tim Bergfelder and Christian Cargnelli (eds.), Destination London: German-speaking Émigrés and British Cinema, 1925–1950 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008). Suzanne Buchan (ed.), Pervasive Animation (New York, London: Routledge, 2013). Chagrin Collection, British Library, London. James Chapman, British at War: Cinema, State and Propaganda 1939–1945 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998). Ken Clark, “George Pal Puppetoons – the early years”, in Animator Magazine (1985) 14: 1, . Kenneth Clark, Kenneth Clark Papers. Correspondence (London: Tate Archive, 1943– 44). Bernhard Diebold, “The Future of Mickey Mouse (The Animated Film as a New Cinema Art)”. Translated by Richard George Elliott. Art in Translation 8, no. 1 (May 2016). Julia Eccleshare, “Einzig, Susan Henrietta (1922–2009), illustrator”, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, January 2013).

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Susan Einzig, interview by Marian Malet. 23 March 2006, in Refugee Voices, The AJR Audio-Visual History Collection. Rolf Giesen and J. P. Storm, Animation Under the Swastika: A History of Trickfilm in Nazi Germany, 1933–1945 (Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Co., 2012). Denis Gifford, British Animated Films, 1895–1985: a filmography (Jefferson, North Caro­ lina, and London: McFarland & Co, 1987). Gerd Gockell, Muratti & Sarotti: Geschichte des deutschen Trickfilms 1920–1960, DVD (Berlin: absolut medien, 2000). Kevin Gough-Yates, The European Film Maker in Exile in Britain 1933–1945, PhD Disser­ tation (The Open University, 1990). Kevin Gough-Yates, “Peter Sachs: George Pal’s animating friend who came in from the cold of Nazi Germany”, obituary, in The Guardian, 5 January, 1991. Vivien Halas and Paul Wells, Halas & Batchelor Cartoons: An Animated History (London: Southbank Publishing, 2006). Al Hemsing, “The Marshall Plan’s European Film Unit, 1948–1955: A Memoir and Filmo­­graphy”, in Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 24, no. 2 (1994). Tobias Hochscherf, The Continental Connection: German–speaking émigrés and British cinema, 1927–45 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2011). John Huntley, “Animation in Britain”. Journal of the British Film Academy (1956). Claire Kitson, “Tribute 1: Peter Sachs”, in 24 FilmFest Dresden, International Short Film Festival, Festival Catalogue (2012). William Larkins, Aircraft recognition – Marauder (part 31) March 1943, AMY 759; Sky­ master, July 1943, DRA 513 (London: Imperial War Museum Film Archive). Esther Leslie, Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-garde (London, New York: Verso, 2004). Fran Lloyd, “Forging artistic careers in exile: Ernst Eisenmayer and Kurt Weiler in 1940s Britain”, in Burcu Dogramaci and Karin Wimmer (eds.), Netzwerke des Exils: Künst­ lerische Verflechtungen, Austausch und Patronage nach 1933 (Berlin: Gebrüder Mann Verlag, 2011). Philip C. Logan, Humphrey Jennings and British Documentary Film: A Re-assessment (Farnham and Burlington: Ashgate, 2011). Orosz Márton, (2011). Vissza a szülöföldre! / Back to the Homeland!, 10th Kecskeméti Animáció Film Fesztivál (KAFF) (2011), . Onchan Pioneer. No. 47, 20 July 1941. George Orwell, “A Nice Cup of Tea”, in Evening Standard, 12 January 1946. Mette Peters, “Het animatie maakproces in het archief”, .

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Florian Scheding, “‘An Animated Quest for Freedom’: Mátyás Seiber’s score for The Magic Canvas”, in Tim Bergfelder and Christian Cargnelli (eds.), Destination London: German-speaking Émigrés and British Cinema, 1925–1950 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2008). Screen Archive South East, (Brighton: University of Brighton, 2017). Marie Seton, “George Pal”, in Sight and Sound 5, no. 18 (1936). Jez Stewart, “Animated visions: the Larkins Studio and River of Steel”, . Lon­ don: BFI Film Forever (updated 2013). Jez Stewart, “Staff Snapshot – 1946: Part 1”, . Kurt Weiler, Interview (2000). See Gockell, Gerd. Paul Wells, Understanding Animation (New York and London: Routledge, 1998). Grace Whitney, Lotte Reiniger: Pioneer of Film Animation (Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Co Inc., 2017). Moritz William, Optical Poetry: The Life and Work of Oskar Fischinger (Hertfordshire: John Libbey, 2004).



Filmography

 Summer Travelling (1945); The Big Four or What to Eat (1946); T for Teacher (1947); Men of Merit (A Lantern Lecture) (1948); Local Government: A History in Pictures (1949); Balance 1950 (1951); River of Steel (1951); Without Fear (1952). BFI National Archive, London.

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Chapter 11

Textile in Exile: Refugee Textile Surface Designers in Britain  Anna Nyburg The focus of this article is the German-speaking refugees who made a contribution to the British textile trade as designers. Some of them had trained at major art schools such as the Bauhaus, although such training was not a guarantee of success: timing was important too. Some individual British companies were quick to use the talents and skills of refugee designers, in at least one case having former knowledge of German and Austrian design traditions. The Ambassador magazine was not only created by refugees but employed others to produce the attractive ultra-modern journal which was so important to the post-war export drive. In fact, the refugees seem to have been particularly active in the exporting of British textiles, several of them winning national awards for their achievements. Hans and Elsbeth Juda, respectively the editor and photographer of The Ambassador were not alone among the refugees in influencing British life through education, through their promotion of the visual and performing arts and most importantly, through creating employment.

Britain’s wool and cotton industries are centuries old and the raising of sheep in particular has both shaped the landscape and enriched the English vocabulary, from the Wool Sack of Parliament to the street names such as Lamb’s Conduit Street in London, which tell of the role played by this industry in the past. In Central Europe, the Jews had played a major role as traders and producers in this sector: as in the Middle Ages, Jews, banned from so many economic activities, had been forbidden to buy and sell new cloth which forced them instead to travel on foot through the land, selling second-hand clothes and lengths of fabric. This meant that by the time of their emancipation in the 19th century, through generations of experience, they had acquired specialist knowledge of both their materials and their customers’ needs. This is one contributory factor to the significant representation of Jewish owners in the new phenomenon that was the department store in early 20th-century Germany, for example, the Schocken Brothers state-of-the-art shops in Chemnitz and elsewhere. Similarly, many Jewish families in the Austro-Hungarian Empire worked as tailors or as producers of uniforms to the Court or the Army which meant that there are several examples of successful textile businesses created or

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_013

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continued in Britain by refugees whose family background was in this trade, providing them with expertise and knowledge which stood them in good stead on emigration. One such was Tibor Reich (1916–1996) (see below), an outstandingly successful textile designer and manufacturer in Britain, whose grandfather had established Reich Adolf Fia, a company just outside Budapest making braids and ribbons for traditional Hungarian costumes and military uniforms. Tibor’s father Jeno took over the firm and Tibor spent time there, noting and admiring the brilliant colours which he would later use himself in his own career in a different way.1 The production of textiles is a wide subject, and the distinction between industry and applied art not always clear, however the emphasis in this study will be on the surface decoration of fabrics, rather than the design of the structure of fabrics (weaving or twisting together yarns and fibres to create different strengths, textures and thicknesses) although, in fact, many of the subjects of this paper were engaged in both forms of design. Some artists saw textile design as an art form rather than a craft, and in one book on the subject of artists’ textiles (see below), there is a comment on its particular importance in the mid-20th century: It was not until the 1940s, in the aftermath of the Second World War, that a more liberal and inclusive society emerged which encouraged a new social and cultural climate that enabled the work of artists, many of international fame, to be integrated directly through the medium of textile design, in the daily lives of ordinary people.2 German, Austrian and Hungarian refugees from Nazism in this country made a disproportionate contribution to the local textile industry, aiding the postwar export drive, employing literally thousands of British workers, and often injecting colour and foreign traditions of pattern into the more sober British palette. More than that, they brought innovation in different forms to the field. The textile expert Lesley Jackson explored a history of cross-pollination in textile, going back at least to the Huguenot silk weavers of the 17th century who brought new skills and techniques to Britain. She reflected that foreign designers here now could celebrate elements of their own design culture while including British elements, citing the example of the German-born furniture 1 Sam Reich (ed.), Sue Prichard, , Mary Schoeser, Tibor Reich: Art of Colour & Texture (Tibor Publishing: London, 2015), 14. 2 Geoffrey Rayner, “Introduction”, in Geoffrey Rayner, Richard Chamberlain, Annamarie Stapleton (eds.), Artists’ Textiles: 1940–1976 (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 2013), 10.

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designer Gitta Geschwendtner’s “cool intellectual rigour” along with “purity and clarity”, while embracing the more British “lateral thinking and covert wit”.3 Several were rewarded by being made Royal Designer for Industry4 for their services to export, while others were honoured by receiving commissions for prestigious establishment orders. Not for the first time did refugees feature heavily in “British” events such as ‘Britain Can Make It’ (1946) or the Festival of Britain (1951). Inevitably, for this reason, some of the more celebrated textile designers have already been the subject of study, notably Elisabeth Tomalin5 and Jacqueline Groag.6 What were the factors which determined the success or otherwise of the German-speaking designers here in the 1930s and after the war? For by no means all of those who were well qualified, experienced and talented made their way in Britain in their chosen field, indeed, some never worked at all and others still met a far worse fate. Good training in textile design at one of the leading art schools in Germany or Austria would seem to be the passport to success. In this context, two of the most important schools of the German-speaking pre-war world should be singled out. The first is the Kunstgewerbeschule [KGS] in Vienna, founded in 1867, which later modelled itself to some extent on the Central School of Arts and Crafts [Central] established in London in 1896. The British Arts and Crafts Movement seems to have been the starting point for a reappraisal of training in the applied arts. The KGS was closely allied to the Wiener Werkstätte [WW] whose studios they used and whose staff taught at the KGS, a practice followed at Central, with its teacher-practitioners. The second school was the Bauhaus, established in 1919 and being situated first in Weimar, subsequently in Dessau and finally in Berlin where it was forced to close by pressure from National Socialist authorities. In a history of the Central, one textile scholar points out that “It has been said that without the Central School there would have been no Bauhaus”, pointing to the great range of applied arts on offer, and to the emphasis on practical work and respect for materials.7 3 Lesley Jackson, Import Export (London: British Council, 2005), 32. 4 For example, Jacqueline Groag and Margaret Leischner. 5 On Elisabeth Tomalin see Rachel Dickson, “Elisabeth Tomalin: Ēmigrée Designer 1912–2012 ‘The only joy in life is being creative. Everything else is more or less pain’”, in Charmian Brinson, Jana Barbora Buresova, Andrea Hammel (eds.) Exile and Gender II. Politics, Education and the Arts. The Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 18, 2017, 154–169. 6 On Jacqueline Groag see for example, Jacqueline Groag: Textile and Pattern Design: Wiener Werkstätte to American Modern (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 2009). 7 Mary Schoeser, “Spreading the Word”, in Sylvia Backemeyer (ed.), Making Their Mark: Art, Craft and Design at the Central School, 1896–1966 (London: Herbert Press, 2000), 109.

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But the Bauhaus was innovative too, for example introducing a foundation year, the Vorkurs, which in turn would be adopted by art schools in Great Britain and is still common practice today. Textile design entered a new and experimental phase at the Bauhaus, largely under the leadership of Gunta Stölzl. On the whole, surface pattern was rejected by the Bauhaus where it had been mainly woven in, while at the WW, surface printed design was encouraged. Yet education and training even at these most prestigious colleges did not mean automatic success, as the tragic example of Otti Berger illustrates. Berger (1898–c.1944), like Margaret (Margarete) Leischner8 (1908–1970), was a graduate of the Bauhaus and both fled Germany, coming to England after the rise of National Socialism, if for different reasons. Leischner, who was not Jewish but a convinced anti-Nazi, made her name as a structural designer, inventing new yarns, heading the weaving department at the Royal College of Art in London and having a satisfying freelance career. Berger having completed the Vorkurs during which time she was taught by the celebrated photographer László Moholy-Nagy, actually took over the de facto headship of the Bauhaus weaving department on the recommendation of Gunta Stölzl, probably the best-known of Bauhaus textile artists and also the only female ‘Meister’. Although less celebrated, Berger was the only ‘Bauhäuslerin’ credited with taking out her own patent for her woven designs. One critic assessed them thus: Her textiles are highly modernist and appear to be a product of refined design. She sometimes includes smaller patterns, sometimes creates textile by organising colors on a color scale shaped of lines of color. The influence of Bauhaus is obvious in the clarity, simplicity and abstraction of the main lines of expression.9 The company she created in Berlin in 1932 was closed down in 1936 when she received a ‘Berufsverbot’, a work ban, because of her Jewish origins and she came to England. She was successful in obtaining work from the prestigious company Helios,10 but it was only a short-term position. Her disadvantage was that she spoke little English and besides this had a hearing impairment. After 8

9 10

Information here on Margaret Leischner from Burcu Dogramaci, “Bauhaus-Transfer. Die Textildesignerin Margaret Leischner (1907–1970)”, in Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Wolfgang Thöner, Adriane Feustel (eds), Entfernt: Frauen des Bauhauses während der NS-Zeit – Verfolgung und Exil (Munich: edition text + kritik im Richard Boorberg Verlag, 2012), 95–116. , accessed 17 January 2017. On Helios, see, for example Lesley Jackson, Twentieth Century Pattern Design (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007), 85.

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this source of work had dried up, and also because she had heard that her mother was seriously ill,11 Berger had to return to Croatia to await her visa for emigration to the USA. This, however, never arrived and Berger was deported with her family to Auschwitz, where she died. The Victoria and Albert Museum archives hold the records of several refugee designers,12 among them the papers and samples of Bertha Sander (1901– 1990). Although she was not a graduate of that other influential design powerhouse, the WW, she studied textile design in Cologne under a former student of Josef Hoffmann, one of the co-founders of the Viennese movement. Samples of her fabric are typical of the small fine prints of the WW. In 1924 she established her own interior design company, creating furniture and wallpaper as well as furnishing fabric for libraries, nurseries and flats. As a Jewish woman whose life and livelihood were in danger under National Socialism, she needed to escape, and her biographical note continues: “In 1936 she emigrated to England where she was denied a work permit and was therefore unable to continue with her career.”13 One can only speculate about the disappointment she must have felt at being denied the right to work in her thirties, tinged with the relief no doubt at having escaped certain death. Also in the V & A archive are the papers of Trude Neu,14 who was born in 1912 in Nuremberg, emigrating to Northern Ireland in 1939. After studying textile design she worked as a designer for York Street Flax Spinning Mills in Belfast which transferred to Manchester in 1945. Her curtain fabric designs were exhibited at the ‛Britain Can Make It’ exhibition (known popularly as ‛Britain Can’t Have It’, an allusion to the post-war difficulties in acquiring raw materials) an achievement to which a certain amount of kudos would have been attached. She also exhibited drawings and paintings at Gibbs Bookshop in Manchester in 1948. However, for some reason, she did not pursue her career as a textile designer turning instead to occupational therapy, returning to Germany till 1951 for more training. Certainly it is clear from her diary that she had a longstanding interest in mental health, and here shared an experience with Elisabeth Tomalin, née Wallach (see above), head of printed textiles at Marks & Spencer, who abandoned her successful career as a textile designer, retraining as an art therapist. Perhaps Neu, like Tomalin, felt the need to address the trauma of exile through the practice of therapy. 11 12 13 14

Inge Hansen-Schaberg, “Die Bildungsidee des Bauhauses”, in Entfernt: Frauen des Bauhauses während der NS-Zeit-Verfolgung und Exil, op. cit., 30. V & A Archive of Art and Design: Design Archives Online: Jewish Emigré Designers in Britain. V & A Archive of Art and Design: AAD/1986/10, AAD/1988/3. V & A Archive of Art and Design: AAD/2001/7.

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Timing, then, was a significant factor in the designers’ success, and here the war played a part also: Olaf Burton (born Otto Bassell, 1913–1998) had worked in his father’s textile company in Vienna, where his father before him had been a tailor at the Imperial Court.15 Otto had trained at the Bundeslehranstalt für die Textilindustrie as well as having work experience at a weaving mill, and created his own business in the mid-1930s. However, driven out of his family firm by “Aryan” employees who had betrayed them and by trumped-up charges of fraud which had led to a brief incarceration in Dachau, Otto Bassell fled to England with his family, the parents on a domestic visa. Otto would have been interned as an enemy alien in 1940 but instead volunteered for the Pioneer Corps and spent the entire war with them, eventually being dropped into occupied Norway to train skiers. Once demobbed, after one experience of setting up a factory, he never found work again in his chosen field, contenting himself instead with work in the family’s jewellery business. He remained unembittered about his treatment and the loss of his own business, finding comfort in his family and his Jewish faith. However, many refugees from Central Europe could and did find work in textile design here, and were successful, despite not being perhaps celebrated, like for example Julius Frank (1897–1985) who created Frank Designs.16 Born in the Hunsrück in Germany, and following his First World War military service, Frank studied art in Bonn and other universities, as was the custom in Germany, then worked at design studios in Paris and Budapest before setting up his own Berlin textile design company. He travelled regularly, selling his designs abroad, and as his daughter recalled: After 1933, when the National Socialists came to power, he was still allowed to travel, despite tightening restrictions on Jews, because he was earning much-needed foreign exchange […] He sent some of these earnings to Switzerland. Another method used for currency when it was obvious he needed to make contingency plans was to conceal banknotes in between a thickly painted textile design and a plain mount, gluing only the borders together so that the notes were secure inside.17

15 16 17

All information here on Bassell from an interview by the author with his daughter Katherine Shock in July 2016. The author is grateful to her for the information and for showing the author the family archives. Thanks are due to Celia Frank for information about her father and for showing his private and professional archives to the author, August 2016. In an interview by the author with Celia Frank in August 2016.

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Figure 11.1 Julius Frank, design, 1960s

In 1936, he moved to London with his family, establishing his studio in Hendon and a larger one in Manchester where he employed some 25 designers, including at least one other émigrée, an Austrian, Alice Friedler, who was in charge of sales. Two designers and a secretary worked at the London studio, with some others on a freelance basis, so that Frank was a not unimportant provider of work. Perhaps this is one reason, together with the fact that he was providing textile designs for the export market, that Frank was not interned as an enemy alien in 1940, continuing instead to trade, although living on and off in Wales to avoid the bombing. During the war, he designed both dress and furnishing fabric for Tootal, a textile company established in the 18th century and famous for their vertical production (that is to say, an arrangement whereby all processes from spinning to finishing take place within the same company). Regarding Frank’s design style, his daughter was in no doubt, remembering that while versatile and wide-ranging in the ‘look’ of his collections, he preferred a plain, more Scandinavian aesthetic in his own home, as Celia said, for example, buying Swedish furniture from Heal’s. Plain white walls and linen curtains could not be dated to a particular season’s design collection and were a good backdrop for his many paintings.18 Although he loved flowers and natural patterns, he himself chose an unadorned aesthetic, criticising his wife and daughters if they wore patterns by saying that they looked like wallpaper, which he also designed. While Frank loved flowers, both real and as represented in paintings, he did not want the printed version in his home or worn by his family, again preferring not to have 18

Ibid.

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a look which might date. He did have a wide knowledge of the pattern traditions of different countries, which was not just a product of his travels but also of his visits to museum and gallery collections. Like his fellow émigré and colleague Tibor Reich (see below),19 he took much of his inspiration from nature: taking close-up photographs of bark, stone pebbles or rippled sand on a beach as a starting point. He was a keen photographer, travelling everywhere at first with a Leica and then with his German Rolleiflex. But the possibilities of new technology also appealed to him: he experimented with the patterns that could be created from repeated dots on typewriters, ordering a typewriter with special pattern keys.20 Frank’s designs were part of the all-important export drive to help pay for the phenomenal costs of warfare and to bring in foreign currency. After the war, there was an urgent need to both replenish the empty coffers and to create a new positive identity for a victorious but ravaged country. A small number of British textile companies were instrumental in employing refugee designers and disseminating their work. One such was Edinburgh Weavers: “one of the most important textile companies of the twentieth century, not just in Britain but internationally”.21 The firm Edinburgh Weavers was founded in 1931 by Alastair Morton as an offshoot of the family weaving and dyeing firm, Morton Sundour Fabrics. Morton’s idea was to champion artists’ textiles and this is where he first came across German and Austrian textile designers. Noting that the modern movement had had little impact on the British textile industry before 1930, the author of a book on the history of this company chronicled Morton’s research trips where he got to know the work of designers, some of whom would later flee to Britain. Morton adopted the new German design in the early 1930s. One for example, Lugar, a tartan net, the author notes, “has a somewhat Bauhaus flavour”.22 In 1936 Morton visited Vienna’s Kunstgewerbeschule, where he lunched with Professor Josef Hoffmann. He and his party noted the talent, fine work and the hand weaving.23 Over the next two years, two designs were used by Edinburgh Weavers by a student of 19 20 21 22 23

Celia Frank recalls that Julius had in his possession some of Tibor’s pointed ashtrays which were made for special customers, not for sale. A film showing the process from photographing to print making can be seen in a film online of Tibor Reich, a different designer using the same technique: , accessed 2 March 2017. Lesley Jackson, Alastair Morton and Edinburgh Weavers: Visionary Textiles and Modern Art (London: V & A Publishing, 2012), 10. Ibid., 43. Ibid., 99.

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Hoffmann’s, Marianne (later Marian) Mahler (1911–1983), who fled to Britain in 1937, establishing her own studio and enjoying popularity for her decorative designs for fabrics and other materials. She did much work for Edinburgh Weavers after the war, and for David Whitehead (see below). The next trip was to Cologne in 1937, where Morton visited the Deutsche Werkstätte and where he noted the new, subdued atmosphere under the Nazi regime. The annexation of Austria into the German Reich in March 1938 (referred to as the Anschluss in German) saw a sudden increase in the influx of refugees fleeing to safety in Britain. Two such, formerly of the KGS in Vienna, were Jacqueline Groag (1903–1986) and her assistant Karin Williger (1919– 2008), both of whom designed for Edinburgh Weavers once in Britain.24 One of Morton’s major collaborators was German-born Hans Aufseeser (1910–1997), who changed his surname to Tisdall (his mother’s maiden name) and who came to Britain in 1930. His father, Professor Ernst Aufseeser (1880– 1940), a painter and graphic artist who had trained at the celebrated Steglitzer Werkstätte in Berlin from 1900–1903, also spent time in England, including a period of study at the Slade School of Art. Back in Germany, his teaching career was cut short in 1933 because of his Jewish origins.25 Hans Aufseeser, who worked in Paris as a painter in the 1920s, came to England in 1930, remaining here, designing and teaching in textiles and graphic work. His early arrival, predating the National Socialist regime, would seem to indicate that he was not a true refugee, and yet, because he was half Jewish, he would not have been able to return to the country of his birth with impunity.26 His great talent was ­noted: A designer of great resourcefulness and versatility, his style and subject matter were in constant flux, as indicated by Tibet (1937), a geometric interlace pattern, and an elegant calligraphic design, Cleo (1938) composed of cascading ribbons and shell-like scrolling motifs.27 David Whitehead’s firm also employed several émigré designers after the war, having produced conservative fabrics pre-war. This change came about because their new architect director, John Murray, saw the need to visit exhibitions and studios all over Europe and to commission new designs for a new

24 25 26 27

On Groag and Williger, see also , accessed 3 March 2017. , accessed 17 February 2017. His daughter Angela Grant denied that he was a refugee in any sense of the word, in a phone conversation with the author, 2016. Lesley Jackson, op. cit., 95.

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era.28 In a catalogue accompanying an exhibition of Whitehead designs, the author noted that the post-war boom was due in part to the need to replace destroyed households, but also to the lower costs of screen-printed curtain fabrics with which young couples could brighten up their new but small houses. Several enterprises were created to help develop a sense of taste in British consumers, one such being the Manchester-based Colour, Design and Style Centre, established before the end of the war. Later followed ‛Britain Can Make It’ and the Festival of Britain, both of which showcased designs for Whitehead by people such as Marian Mahler and Jacqueline Groag, “acid colours, bold abstracts and whimsy”.29 This new style then filtered through The Ambassador magazine (see below) down to more mainstream magazines and into the shops. Two of the most influential makers and designers of fabric were the two most closely associated with bringing colour and style to Britain ̶ the Hungarian Tibor Reich (1916–1996) and the Serb Bernat Klein (1922–2014), both Jewish émigrés to Britain. Because their work has been justly celebrated in books, exhibitions and with awards, and because of limited space, it is not possible to examine their careers in great detail here.30 Both studied textile at Leeds University and set up their own companies. While still a student in 1941, Reich made the headlines in a newspaper, featuring in an article entitled “Brilliant Student Aids Trade Drive” that reported on his innovative mixing of Harris Tweed with a Cellophane strip that caught the light.31 Similarly, his use of Cellophane mixes for lampshades was found to be both original and brilliant. Defying any limitations to his design work, Reich moved on from developing yarns to making patterns to print, for which process he invented his own felt pens, only one of his inventions. Success came early: his new white wool weave with an aluminium highlight was used for a Coronation gift to Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, and his designs were used by couturiers such as Molyneux, as furnishing fabrics in embassies and for the first Concorde aeroplane interior, to name only a few. In the mid-1950s, he invented Fotexur,32 a method of producing prints from photographs of bark, cracked mud and so on, creating deeply

28 29 30 31 32

Terence Conran, “Foreword”, in Alan Peat, David Whitehead Ltd: Artist designed textiles 1952–1969 (Oldham: Oldham Leisure Services, 1993), 7. David Whitehead Ltd: Artist designed textiles 1952–1969 (Oldham: Oldham Leisure Services, 1993), 8. Information on Reich from Tibor Reich: Art of Colour and Texture and from an interview with his grandson Sam Reich, 25 November 2016. Tibor Reich: Art of Colour and Texture, op. cit., 34, and interview with Sam Reich, as above. Tibor Reich: Art of Colour and Texture, ibid, 92.

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Figure 11.2 Tibor Reich, Lubiana design, 1958

textured exciting new effects. His company closed down as late as 1984, an achievement in itself, given the decline of the British textile trade in the 1970s. His friend Bernat Klein’s career too was largely based on strong colours where, traditionally, such colour had not been used in Britain. One article on Klein summed up his influence: Praised by Vogue for having “revolutionised traditional English fabrics to win them new recognition abroad” the Serbian born Bernat Klein played a huge part in reviving Scotland’s weaving and cloth making industries after the war. Klein’s approach to colour meant that his tapestries, tweeds and paintings stood out from the ‘earthy colour schemes of the 1950s’ and were soon picked up on by fashion houses such as Chanel, Dior and Yves Saint Laurent.33 The last major name, without which no study of refugee textile designers would be complete, is that of the Aschers, Zika and Lida. This Czech couple were on honeymoon skiing in Norway in 1939 when they heard their country had been occupied. They escaped to England where they set up a textile company, eventually not only selling other designers’ work but creating their own print works. Lida designed the fabrics and ran the company while Zika was in the British Army during the war. Once demobbed, Zika oversaw the printing and selling of these enormously successful textiles. In 1945, the couple commissioned the leading artists of the day, including Picasso and Henry 33

, accessed 14 February 2017.

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Moore, to design scarves, yet another aid to export and boost to morale after the suffering of wartime. Couturiers like Dior, Molyneux and Schiaparelli chose their fabrics, and in the 1960s, it was the Aschers who were credited with being the first to use mohair. Their contribution has been recognised in books and exhibitions, and there is a collection of their work in the V & A Museum.34 While there were many British textile companies, strong in exporting textiles abroad, who were only too pleased to take on the Continental designers, it was one outstanding German refugee enterprise which singlehandedly did more than any other regarding the commissioning, display and promotion of British textile exports: The Ambassador journal.35 Hans Juda (1904–1975), a German Jewish refugee journalist from Berlin, re-created this avant-garde trade magazine in 1946 from the existing version that he had produced unfailingly during the war, receiving paper allocations from the government, such was its importance to export. Originally entitled International Textiles, its story is comprehensively recounted in the book on the subject published by the Victoria and Albert Museum, who also hold the extensive Ambassador archive. Hans was well placed for this position: he had worked in textiles in Berlin prewar and was a competent designer in his own right, producing, for example, fabric designs for Heal’s in the 1960s.36 He had the vision and entrepreneurial flair as well as the outsider’s ability to see British trade and culture in a different light from those born in Britain, and the original idea of creating a journal to promote British textiles at home and abroad. His ethos is outlined in a chapter on the Judas: Hans coined the mantra “Export or Die” as the magazine’s motto, believing strongly that it was only by earning foreign exchange that Britain would get back on her feet after the devastation of her infrastructure and public morale. He believed that the British garment and textile industries could compete on the world stage.37 It was Hans Juda who realised that it was essential to attract buyers to Britain, if the competition from Paris and Milan was to be overcome but he was aided in this initiative by his German wife, Elsbeth (1911–2014). 34 35 36 37

On Ascher, see for example, Valerie Mendes and Frances Hinchcliffe, Ascher: Zika and Lida Ascher (London: V & A Museum, 1987). On The Ambassador, see Christopher Breward, Claire Wilcox, The Ambassador Magazine: Promoting Post-War British Textiles and Fashion (London: V & A Publishing, 2012), and V & A Archive of Art and Design, AAD/1987/1. Artists’ Textiles, op. cit., 287. Annamarie Stapleton, “Hans and Elsbeth Juda”, in Christopher Breward, Claire Wilcox (eds.), op. cit., 23.

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Figure 11.3 Elsbeth Juda aged 101 years, 2012

While László Moholy-Nagy, formerly a teacher at the Bauhaus, had been the art director on the original International Textiles, his ex-wife, Lucia, also of the Bauhaus, was responsible for teaching photography to Elsbeth, who embarked on her own freelance career in the field, using the name ‘Jay’. Her work, which was featured in Vogue and Harper’s Bazaar, was essential to the look of The Ambassador, for which she arranged textiles so as to show their texture and weight, learning to create still-life tableaux. That the journal became known for its attractive, modern presentation as much as for its message was also due to the work of Trude Ettinger, called ‘Ett’, a Czech refugee whose “encyclopaedic knowledge” of art and whose graphic design skills were put to good use in the creation of covers, illustrations and the typographical input.38 One other émigrée who also helped contribute to the success of The Ambassador and who drew the cover for one issue of the journal was Jacqueline Groag. Like Sekers, refugee rayon producers who built their own theatre in Cumbria on finding none there, the Judas played their part in enriching British life, commissioning British artists including Graham Sutherland and John Piper to create work which could be translated into textile, only one of their many art initiatives. Lovers of music and ballet too, the Judas devoted one issue to the English Ballet, with the dancers modelling British clothes suitable for their professional tours. In later life, Elsbeth Juda created a collaboration with ICI to help forge closer links between art and industry and both she and Hans served as governors on the boards of major art schools, including the Central School and the Royal College of Art, part of their commitment to improved art education in Britain.

38

It has not so far proved possible to find out more about this significant contributor to The Ambassador.

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As in other applied arts, in textile design émigrés taught at British art schools, instilling new design ideas and skills. The Central School of Arts and Crafts employed several39 and was unusual in that its lecturers sometimes worked in more than one department, leading to a fruitful cross-pollination of ideas. In any case, there is much common ground between, for example, letter press printing and the woodblock printing of textiles. One such lecturer was the aforementioned Hans Tisdall.40 He had an important career as a book artist – designing jackets for various publishers and at Central teaching both painting and book arts as well as textile design,41 while the printmaker Eduardo Paolozzi (1924–2005) was also active in the ceramics and photography sections.42 The author of a chapter in the house history of Central School noted also that “Many in the college at large participated in the philosophical discussions in the dye room where Anton Ehrensweig held court with students and staff.”43 Ehrensweig (spelled elsewhere as Ehrenzweig), who joined Central in 1949, features again in Alan Powers’ chapter on graphic design at Central as an Austrian Jewish émigré whose book The Hidden Order of Art was seen as an important design text, ranked with works by Rudolf Arnheim.44 Ehrensweig also taught art education at Goldsmiths College and shared his surname with Oskar Ehrenzweig (1906–1988), another Viennese refugee textile designer. The latter had had had a successful career in Austria and Germany before the Anschluss, continuing to work on a freelance basis in Britain for a number of other manufacturers in Germany, Switzerland and Britain, from the 1940s through to his retirement in 1965. His archive is held by the V & A, and contains samples of his small geometric patterns, which could well be influenced by WW style.45 One refugee artist, Francis Carr, born Géza Spitzer (1919–2013) in Budapest, was responsible for the innovation of silkscreen printing in textile design for which at least two successful textile designers, Dorothy Carr and Eduardo Paolozzi were indebted to him.46 Spitzer, who changed his name to Carr when he joined the Pioneer Corps in 1941 as a volunteer, had fled anti-semitic Buda39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46

Mary Schoeser, “Following the Thread: Textiles”, in Sylvia Backemeyer (ed.), op. cit.., 53. , accessed 22 February 2017. On Tisdall’s book covers, see for example Alan Powers, “William Johnstone and the Central School”, in Making their Mark, op. cit., 69. Ibid., 53. Ibid. , accessed 13 February 2017. V & A Art and Design Archive AAD/2007/11: AAD/2009/17. Information on Francis Carr from a series of interviews with him by the author, 2011–2012, and from the Archive of Francis Carr at the Central Saint Martins Museum & Study Collection.

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pest for London in 1938, enrolling at Central School of Arts and Crafts, anxious to embrace every aspect of both art and craft and to avoid any categorisation as an artist. His personal archive shows his existing skills as a draughtsman and illustrator even before his art school training. In 1946, Carr enrolled at Bolt Court School in London where he was taught to make screen prints, a method commonly used to print posters and other forms of advertising. But Carr took this method a step further: Pioneers of serigraphy […] are Francis and Dorothy Carr, husband and wife, who as practising artists and teachers have done much to make popular this attractive and economic medium.47 Like her husband Francis, the British-born artist Dorothy Carr (also working as Sarah Firmin) is not just prolific but also versatile, working in many media, but her textile design is outstanding. In a letter to the author, she outlined how she learned the process from Francis in the 1950s, but pointed out that all the inspiration for the patterns came from her own imagination.48 Explaining Francis’s contribution to the process, she wrote: “He made my photographic screens for my textile designs as he had direct access to the equipment at the then St Martins School of Art.” When asked whether she had been taught by any of the other émigré teachers at Central, she said that she had not, but when she attended the Hornsey School of Art in the 1970s, she had met Ernst Hartman, a German designer in charge of the postgraduate department of design.49 Using her newly acquired silk-screening skills, she designed the first new style textile designs for Heal’s furnishing fabrics for their 1958 range and represented Heal’s at the Brussels World Fair in the same year. Seminal fabrics also followed for leading companies like Hull Traders and her piece Moiré was exhibited at the V & A exhibition “British Design 1948–2012: Innovation in the Modern Age”.50 The high-profile printmaker Eduardo Paolozzi (see above) had been taught silk-screening by Carr, a medium which Paolozzi then used for art and textile printing. Francis Carr was very proud of having passed on this new technique to an artist who had made it his own so successfully. 47 48 49 50

A.S. Millett, The Studio, October 1951, 108–109. Letter from Dorothy Carr to the author, dated 5 July 2016. It has not so far been possible to find more about this teacher. See more on this exhibition, for example , accessed 5 February 2017.

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Figure 11.4 Francis and Dorothy Carr, 1964

Textile design is sometimes referred to as a combination of art and science. The strength of German science in the 1930s is often associated with its exploitation by Nazi authorities for destructive purposes, and yet there is at least one example of the beauty of science making its mark in an unexpected way in fabric design: this was due to Max Perutz (1914–2002), who shared the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1962 for his work on haemoglobin and myoglobin. The Festival of Britain exhibition explored the creations of the Festival Pattern Group, a project instigated by Dr Helen Megaw and featuring diagrams of atomic structures inspired an attractive range of patterns for dress and furnishing fabrics.51 Perutz’s diagram of horse methaemoglobin was used for dress fabric, which his wife, Gisela Perutz, another Jewish refugee had made into a dress and modelled proudly. It might be thought that, apart from their teaching the next generation, the refugees who designed textiles disappeared from the cultural landscape. However, Tibor Reich’s legacy lay not only in his creativity and his technical innovation but also in his capacity for professionalising the trade. Just one example is 51

Information here is from Lesley Jackson, From Atoms to Patterns: Crystal Structure Designs from the 1951 Festival of Britain (London: Wellcome Collection, Wellcome Trust, 2008).

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his introduction of a graded storage system for Tootal when he worked there during the war.52 It is gratifying then that his fabrics have risen from the ashes, now recreated and on sale again (as are those of fellow refugee Zika Ascher), for Tibor Reich’s grandson, Sam Reich, has re-launched Tibor Ltd to great acclaim, recognising that these outstanding designs by his grandfather have as much appeal today as they did when they first appeared and brought Hungarian colour and Viennese pattern to the somewhat drab British interiors of the 1940s.

Works Cited

Sylvia Backemeyer (ed.), Making Their Mark: Art, Craft and Design at the Central School, 1896–1966 (London: Herbert Press, 2000). Christopher Breward, and Claire Wilcox, The Ambassador Magazine: Promoting PostWar British Textiles and Fashion (London: V  & A Publishing, 2012). Charmian Brinson, Jana Barbora Buresova, Andrea Hammel (eds.), Exile and Gender II: Politics, Education and the Arts. Yearbook of the Research Centre for German and Austrian Exile Studies, 18, 2017. Inge Hansen-Schaberg, Wolfgang Thöner, Adriane Feustel (eds), Entfernt: Frauen des Bau­hauses während der NS-Zeit̶ Verfolgung und Exil (Munich: edition text + kritik im Richard Boorberg Verlag, 2012). Lesley Jackson, Import Export (London: British Council, 2005). Lesley Jackson, Twentieth Century Pattern Design (Princeton: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007). Lesley Jackson, Alastair Morton and Edinburgh Weavers: Visionary Textiles and Modern Art (London: V & A Publishing, 2012). Valerie Mendes, Frances Hinchcliffe, Ascher: Zika and Lida Ascher (London: V & A Museum, 1987). Alan Peat, David Whitehead Ltd: Artist designed textiles 1952–1969 (Oldham: Oldham Leisure Services, 1993). Geoffrey Rayner, Annamarie Stapleton, Richard Chamberlain (eds.), Jacqueline Groag: Textile and Pattern Design: Wiener Werkstätte to American Modern (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 2009). Geoffrey Rayner, Annamarie Stapleton, Richard Chamberlain (eds), Artists’ Textiles: Artist designed Textiles 1940–1976 (Woodbridge: Antique Collectors Club, 2013).  Tibor Reich: Art of Colour & Texture (Tibor Publishing: London, 2015). 52

Timothy Brittain-Catlin, in “Picking up the Thread”, World of Interiors, March 2017, 94–103.

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Chapter 12

“The Man from the Bauhaus”: the Lost Career of Werner ‘Jacky’ Jackson  Rachel Dickson Werner ‘Jacky’ Jackson (né Werner Isaacsohn, 1904–1984) was a lauded student at the Bauhaus from 1924 to 1928, before the devastating fracture of his emerging professional life. A promising career in advertising and graphic design in Berlin, that most culturally progressive city before the rise of National Socialism, was suddenly and emphatically denied. And whereas many creative disciplines might form a student’s arsenal of skills prior to selecting one profession, Jacky employed numerous talents as he sought to establish himself in Britain, while occupying the uncertain position of a refugee. This essay introduces Jacky’s Bauhaus years and associated networks, his professional life in Berlin and Prague prior to emigration, his subsequent roles with the Lanchester Marionettes in Malvern, Gloucestershire, and at the Charter Club in Oxford,as well as his work as a toymaker and his final employment as a graphic designer for the Pressed Steel Company, Oxford (forerunner to British Leyland). However, unlike other narratives in this volume which focus on single creative outputs, this text, drawing on a number of scattered international archives, examines a multi-faceted journey within the applied arts, illustrating the difficulties faced by skilled émigrés, who were often unable to fulfil the careers for which they had been trained in a long-abandoned homeland.

Escaping the Black Death the man from the Bauhaus fled to Oxford, and in a tiny workshop carved neatly articulated marionettes that almost danced by themselves1 The narrative of Werner Isaacsohn’s patchwork career across the applied arts may well have remained hidden and untold had it not been for the efforts and determination of Viennese émigré Kurt Iwnicki (1928–2014), Jacky’s closest friend in England, and his three children. Fortuitously, the Iwnicki family recognised the significance of Jacky’s distinctive creative contribution, despite his personal modesty and a tendency to remain almost totally silent about his 1 David Gill, “The Man from the Bauhaus – in memory of Werner Issacsohn (Jacky)” in May I introduce? a personal gallery of people poems (Oxford: Yarnells Press, 2008), 45.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_014

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own history. Indeed, recognition of his talents seems to rest entirely with third parties, despite fleeting traces held in world-class archives on both sides of the Atlantic, from Harvard to the Victoria and Albert Museum, London [V & A] and the Bauhaus. As recipient of Jacky’s posthumous archive of several hundred items after the death of his widow, Greta, in 1988,2 Kurt Iwnicki and family faced the increasingly common second-generation dilemma of legacy – whether archival and other material should remain in private hands or be donated to a public institution, and whether this should be in Britain or, with a degree of trepidation, given the difficult relationship between the artist and his homeland, in Germany.3 Finally, after many years of tenacious negotiation, the Iwnicki family finally fulfilled both Kurt and Greta’s wishes and placed the Jackson archive, almost in its entirety, with the Bauhaus Archiv, Berlin in 2014. Werner Issacsohn was born on 17 April 1904 at Holzminden, northern Germany, son of a prosperous Jewish businessman. Isaacsohn and his elder sister, Gretel, were brought up by an aunt, following the early death of their mother. He attended a prestigious Jewish boarding school and the Städtische Handwerker- und Kunstgewerbeschule in Braunschweig, leaving with a distinction in July 1923. Issacsohn enrolled at the Bauhaus in Weimar on 24 April 1924, leaving Dessau in October 1928, seemingly altering his last name to Jackson during his studies.4 With its unique and progressive ethos, the Bauhaus, founded in 1919, aimed to unite artists, architects, and craftsmen in a utopian project to design a new world. The school promoted experimental, hands-on production, removing distinctions between high and low art, artist and worker, teacher and student, embracing new technologies and materials in conjunction with industry, often with a focus upon communal living. Here teachers were referred to as 2 Jacky married Greta Deutsch in 1956, when he was 51 and she was 39. 3 This material came to the author’s attention in early 2014 when the Iwnicki family were searching for a permanent repository, following Kurt’s sudden death. His children approached Ben Uri Gallery & Museum and the V & A in London, and the Bauhaus Archiv in Berlin, stipulating that all material, both 2D and 3D, should remain together in a single collection. The latter eventually accepted the Jackson archive almost in its entirety, including photographs, marionettes, prototype toys and designs, correspondence, a visual diary, sketches and finished artworks. 4 See typewritten reference from Walter Gropius, dated 13 August 1929, giving dates of attendance at the Bauhaus, and referring to “Herr Werner Jackson”. It seems that Jacky’s original surname ‘Isaacsohn’ remained hidden even from his closest friends in Britain. David Gill (1935–2017) wrote: “He emigrated from his name / And only after his death, it came, / It seemed to me at least, / To take up residence in this / His hardly-promised land.” See David Gill, op. cit, 45.

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Masters rather than Professors, a foundation year was compulsory, followed by ‘journeyman’ studies – a vocabulary redolent of the medieval guilds, despite the institution’s avowed modernism. After the foundation course (‘Grundlehre’ or ‘Vorlehre’) taught by Masters including Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, László Moholy-Nagy and Americanborn Lyonel Feininger, Jackson entered the ‘Wandmalerei’ (Mural Painting) workshop. He also studied graphic design and advertising. Surprisingly, despite its prevalence at the heart of Bauhaus culture, as the publication Bauhaus Photography testifies, photography was not officially part of the curriculum until after Jacky’s departure, when it was taught in the context of advertising and journalism.5 Jacky seems to have displayed a strong independent streak and a talent for form from the outset. Both Walter Gropius, architect and co-founder of the Bauhaus, under whom Jacky studied for more than three years,6 and the Director, Hannes Meyer, praised him highly for his ability to work independently. Indeed, there seems some hint in his final reference from Meyer (confirming that he passed his ‘journeyman’s’ exam on 14 April 1928 before a representative of the Handwerkskammer zu Dessau) that Jacky left the Bauhaus before he had formally completed his course in order to commence a professional career.7 Appended to the reference was an extensive list of projects that Jacky had worked on while at the Bauhaus, in design, practical and directorial capacities.8 Noted clients included the Bauhaus itself, where he assisted with new buildings as well as with the Masters’ houses for Feininger and Kandinsky in Dessau, and with projects for leading contemporary art galleries, such as Galerie Fides in Dresden and Galerie Nierendorf, Berlin. Jacky is also credited with working on an apartment in Berlin for Erwin Piscator (1893–1966), a leading German theatre director and producer, and exponent of epic theatre. Collaborations with Gropius included the Dessau-Törten Housing Development, designed as a series of affordable living spaces for a growing population, and dating from 1926 to 1928, the last two years of Jacky’s study. Rationalisation of building processes, cost reduction and prefabrication were key concepts at the heart of the project. Two of Jacky’s drawings are held in the Busch-Reisinger 5 The department was formed in 1929. See Harvey L. Mendelsohn, Bauhaus Photography (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985), viii. This is an English language version of Bauhaus Fotographie (Düsseldorf: Edition Marzona, 1982). 6 Gropius’ reference dated 13 August 1929 states that Jacky worked under his direction from March 1925 to October 1928. 7 Typescript “zeugnis” [sic] from Hannes Meyer on Bauhaus headed paper, 31 October 1928. 8 Ibid.

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Museum at Harvard University;9 showing walls, ceilings and an isometric, they are characterised by simplicity of design and a restrained palette. Popular and socially active, Jacky also became the percussionist in the original Bauhaus Band, formed by Andor (Andy) Weininger and Lux, Lyonel Fei­ ninger’s son, which performed regularly at Bauhaus celebrations. Jacky captured Andy’s face in a dramatically shadowed photo portrait, lit from below, as if by footlights, curiously anticipating his future career within a marionette theatre.10 Jacky was particularly close to and much influenced by American-born Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956), whom he first met when supervising the interior decoration of his Master’s house in Dessau – Feininger allegedly requested the colour: ‘Schinkenrosa’ [ham pink]11 – and subsequently joined the family on holidays at Deep, on the German Baltic coast. These happy vacations are recorded in nine negatives taken by Lyonel, featuring Jacky, sometimes with his girlfriend Linde Strube, the noted actress,12 and with Julia Feininger, Lyonel’s second wife. Located in the Lyonel Feininger Archive, also in the Busch-Reisinger Museum, these black and white prints are closely related to two of Jacky’s depicting similar subjects, reproduced in Bauhaus Photography.13 Jacky was of a similar age to Lyonel’s three sons: Laurence, Theodore Lux (known as Lux) and Andreas; the two latter also studied at the Bauhaus. Jacky maintained a close relationship with the family after his migration, corresponding into the 1950s with Lyonel, who signed himself ‘Papileo’, whilst Julia 9

10 11 12

13

BRGA.22.5 Housing Development, Dessau-Törten, 1926–28: Color scheme for walls and ceilings drawing, interior color scheme, building type 4, isometric from below drawing 1928 Gouache, black ink, graphite, and typewritten collage element on tan wove paper. The Busch-Reisinger Museum was founded in 1901 as the Germanic Museum, the only institution in North America dedicated to the study of art from the German-speaking countries of Central and Northern Europe across all media and periods. It holds a notable collection of Bauhaus material, particularly relating to Gropius and Lyonel Feininger. Many items were gifted by Gropius, after he fled Germany in 1934; following a brief spell in Britain, he moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1937 to teach at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (1937–52). Bauhaus Photography, 291. Email from Kurt Iwnicki to David Gill, 14 November 2002. Linde Strube (1907–1986) was a German actress active in theatre throughout Germany during the late 1920s to 1930s. She notably worked with Emil Jannings, winner of the first Oscar for Best Actor in 1929, whose career later suffered in postwar Germany after he ­appeared in Nazi propaganda films. See , accessed 1 September 2017: it includes the phrase “1938 Flucht ihres jüdischen Freundes nach England” which may refer to Jacky. BRLF.55.3 Lyonel Feininger , Werner Jackson and Linde S., Deep, Baltic Coast, BRLF.55.2; Lyonel Feininger, Werner Jackson, Julia Feininger, and Linde S., Deep, Baltic Coast. See Bauhaus Photography, 114–115.

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signed herself ‘Mami’. Ironically, Kurt Iwnicki suggests that this important friendship was also tempered with unhappiness for Jacky, who felt that he had somehow “not lived up to their high estimation” and that what he had managed to achieve artistically or creatively after his emigration did not match up to their standard, and I am sure this was the reason he allowed their correspondence to lapse for some years. This was of course nonsense: his career, his personal life, his health and his whole driving force and emotional balance had simply been shattered by the Nazis, a blow from which, like so many we know, he never really recovered.14 Despite his obvious success as a student it seems that Jacky was reluctant to talk about his Bauhaus years once in exile. Kurt Iwnicki suggested that “for the Bauhäuslers, students and masters alike, this was their private Eden, unique to them and […] it was almost painful for them to dwell on with others.”15 On leaving, Jacky set up his own studio in Berlin for photography, advertising and graphic design, specialising in the pharmaceutical and chemical industries, under the name Werbesim.16 The Iwnicki archive contained multiple examples of Jacky’s packaging and print adverts for numerous products including Favident and Lactadont toothpaste, Novalan and Synthol to treat joint pain and Fezco Baret for stylish headwear.17 Lisbet Cassirer, former Secretary of the Fine Art Section of the local Jüdischer Kulturbund, confirmed Jacky’s early studio career. A member of the prominent Jewish Cassirer publishing family by marriage,18 her Berlin home acted as a salon for many artists, whilst the Kulturbund, formed by the Nazi regime, enabled limited employment for Jewish artists who had no other professional outlet, following antisemitic legislation. In a sworn affidavit written in German in London in 1957, she remembered Jacky as having: 14 15 16

17 18

Email from Kurt Iwnicki to David Gill, 14 November 2002. Ibid. The name and description “Werbesim Berlin N4 Werbeatelier für die chemische und pharmazeutische industrie” appears in an advertisement, along with the slogan: “WERBESIM WIRBT FÜR IHRE INDUSTRIE”, demonstrating Jacky’s specialisation in the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. See Jackson_I_253–280, Bauhaus Archiv, for various graphic designs. Lisbet Cassirer was also related to Emanuel Lasker (1868–1941), German chess World Champion, mathematician and philosopher. Thanks to her daughter Susanne Bano, a ­research chemist, Lisbet was able to immigrate to England. Sourced from Sigrid Bau­ schinger, Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen; Biographie einer Familie (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2015).

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the training and talent of very few. As far as I know, he was the first to photograph cigarette smoke, [sic] that is probably why he had many commissions from Reemtsma. He also had large and small advertising commissions from chemical factories like Dr Rudolf Reiss, Ichthyol, Asta and others. He was regularly employed by several journals, especially medical ones. He also designed for international exhibitions, and he designed interiors, villas and apartment blocks.19 On a separate undated sheet connected with a compensation claim, Cassirer added that [u]nder these circumstances, I can say today that his income would have been approximately 7,000 Reichsmarks 1930–1933. The so-called seizure of power by Hitler was completely responsible for Werner Jackson’s loss of occupation. In summer 1933 he would have immediately lost most of his commissions. He lived very modestly and had to give up his studio. I remember him living in poverty [sic], he was robbed of all his means. The Jewish Kulturbund in Berlin under the auspices of Rabbi Leo Baeck helped him, one of the most gifted artists, to escape.20 A number of workaday commercial portrait photographs of women and girls remain from this period, whilst four fine copies of Jacky’s more experimental images are now the V & A collection.21 Relating closely in style and content to the Feininger negatives and to a wider tranche of Jacky’s own images populated with his beautiful contemporaries, these were originally gifted by Greta after Jacky’s death. Linde Strube features again, elegant and bronzed, lazing in a cornfield, and as a model for cigarette advertising for the popular tobacco firm, Reemtsma, where youth, beauty and sophistication combine.22 Jacky’s striking images for its “R6” brand foreground hazy smoke rings and clouds as dramatic compositional devices, and, in one image, a young boy sits 19 20 21

22

Typewritten letter from Mrs. L. Cassirer, London, 15 January 1957. Undated typescript “Eidesstattliche Versicherung” sworn by Frau Lisbet Cassirer in London. Woman in a Cornfield, gelatin-silver print, E.70–1996, V & A Prints & Drawings Study Room, case R1, shelf SH1, box CONS4; Young woman smoking 1930s, gelatin silver print, given by Mrs Greta Jackson, PH.155–1985, Prints & Drawings Study Room, level F, case EDUC, shelf 5. Reemtsma was founded in 1910 in Erfurt. Under National Socialism the company prospered despite the official anti-tobacco policy of the Nazis, and allegedly held 60% of market share in 1937.

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Figure 12.1 Werner Jackson, Woman Smoking, c. 1930

at the woman’s feet, gazing up in fascination as she exhales.23 A related image features in Bauhaus Photography, where Lux Feininger is portrayed in similar pose, casually admiring the two smoke rings he has created, drifting upward like two eyes of a comical ghostly face.24 Jacky’s photographs also featured in popular publications, such as “Das Wellenbad” on the cover of the Mode und Kultur supplement to the Kölnische Zeitung in July 1932 and another image on the front of the weekly Wochenschau dated 16 April 1933.25 The languid and utopian feel of these images belies the impending global tragedy, ironically populated with Aryan ideals of bronzed, blonde Germans. Increasing antisemitic legislation against Jewish professionals made it impossible for Jacky to continue to work in Berlin. Iwnicki recalls that he was badly beaten by the Nazis, which had a profound and lasting effect both physically and psychologically. Jacky developed severe stomach ulcers and was often in great pain, hospitalised a number of times, and needed regular nursing. 23 24 25

Celebrated women actors such as Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis all featured in smoking adverts at this time. The trademark R6 cigarette was introduced in 1921. Bauhaus Photography, 92. Bauhaus Archiv. Jackson_I_515.

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Fleeing to Czechoslovakia in 1936, he worked in a photographic studio, only for the Nazi invasion to necessitate his further emigration to England in spring 1939. On the outbreak of war, Lux Feininger wrote anxiously to him: “I can’t imagine you going on, carving puppets, yet, I cannot see you any place else.”26 His comments suggest that by 1939 Jacky was well established as a carver, though there are no previous references in archive materials, nor any indication of where he learnt the skill. However, period photographs convey the Bauhaus’s theatricality and suggest that wooden toys were certainly part of the school’s output.27 Furthermore, members of the Bauhaus theatre photographed by Lux have exaggerated made-up or masked features and surreal costumes – which would have found resonance in Jacky’s marionettes.28 Julia Feininger recalled Jacky’s eye for colour and form at Deep in 1933, when he juxtaposed designs by Lux, “spreading them out on the big table, one next to the other, fitting the colors for their utmost effect in harmony […] and it was so beautiful”.29 In the same letter she also enquired if Jacky might move to America, joining them in exile: “would you have more opportunities here than in England with your marionettes? And have your plans for a theatre materialized?” – acknowledging that the transatlantic refuge had helped Papileo’s creativity, despite life being “terribly hard here and the fight for existence is killing”. Despite Julia’s encouragement, Jacky emigrated to Britain, his trajectory shared with a number of other Bauhäuslers. Jacky’s archive retains an undated typewritten list of a Bauhaus diaspora spread across more than thirteen countries, from Japan to South America and Africa. Amongst the eleven individuals recorded in Britain (ten in London, Jacky, the lone émigré in Oxford) were: Georg Teltscher-Adams, John Duguid, Werner Feist, Margaret Leischner, Lucia, wife of Moholy-Nagy and a freelance photographer at the Bauhaus 1923–1928, and Naum Slutsky (1894–1965), goldsmith, industrial designer and master craftsman. Their British refuge brought varying degrees of success and failure, as their individual narratives attest.30 During the brief period in Czechoslovakia Jacky met Greta Deutsch (1917– 1988), several years his junior, first in Brno and then by chance at the station in Prague in early 1939, as she was leaving for England and a position as a domes-

26 27 28 29 30

4 September 1939, New York City. Bauhaus Photography, 221. Ibid. Undated typescript from Julia Feininger. See reference to Lucia Moholy-Nagy in John March’s essay, elsewhere in this volume.

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Figure 12.2 Hoi Me Miserum, pencil and watercolour, 24 February 1941

tic, a common means for women refugees to enter the country.31 Jacky himself emigrated a short time later, having secured a visa on the promise of employment carving marionettes for Waldo Lanchester (1897–1978, brother of actress Elsa Lanchester), noted puppeteer, and founder of the Lanchester Marionettes, now based in Malvern, Worcestershire. In London, Jacky renewed contact with Greta before moving initially alone to Malvern to join the Lanchester Marionettes. In early 1941, when they were reunited, Jacky created a visual record of their early days together in the capital as two newly-arrived refugees, in a detailed and poignant series of captioned vignettes of London wartime life (dedicated to “Puppe”), which highlighted temporary stays in various hostel, hotel and hospital rooms. 31

Greta arrived in Britain on 27 March 1939, two days before Kurt Iwnicki arrived from ­Vienna. See Anthony Grenville, “Underpaid, underfed and overworked: Refugees in Domestic Service”, in AJR Journal, Vol. 8, No. 12, December 2008, 1–2, regarding women refugees and domestic service.

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Addresses included South Woodford, Essex; the Hotel Monopol and Taviton Street, Bloomsbury; Earls Court Gardens, and Archway Hospital, beginning in December 1939 and ending with a view of a modest bedroom at Foley House, Malvern, the Lanchesters’ home, dated February 1941, as they settled into a new life together. The drawings are partnered with drily humorous captions in German. Jacky recalled fellow refugees in their unorthodox lodgings: “the gentleman next to the staircase wrote applications on his typewriter. The painter started to paint in the night, moving the furniture around.”32 An oblique reference in one caption to a “trip” made between 16 May and 26 August 1940 suggests that Jacky spent this time in internment.33 Certainly, this period coincides with the mass internment of enemy aliens, discussed at length in many publications.34 However, exact details of Jacky’s circum­ stances remain unclear and Manx Museum & National Trust has no specific record of an internee bearing his name, but its records of male prisoners are known to be far from complete. Iwnicki recalled that, according to Greta, Jacky was interned on the Isle of Man for a short period, and that Waldo spoke on his behalf at his tribunal but inadvertently provided evidence of possible pro-Nazi sympathies by describing the circumstances of Jacky’s sister. She had married a non-Jewish Professor of Civil Engineering, a high-ranking advisor to the German Government, who had allegedly been able to protect her from antisemitic legislation: Unfortunately, Waldo was so naïve that he told the tribunal this in his belief that it would raise his standing in their eyes and exempt him from internment! The opposite, as anyone might guess, was the case and Jacky only narrowly escaped being shipped off to Canada and was sent to the Isle of Man instead.35 Jacky was associated with Lanchester Marionettes from 1939 to 1943, but it is unclear how exactly he became known to Waldo Lanchester and how he received the invitation which secured his visa application. Certainly Germany was regarded as a notable centre for puppetry at the time. A special winter number of The Studio in 1938 devoted to “Puppets and The Puppet Stage” listed more than a dozen puppeteers and theatres across the 32 33 34 35

Annotated drawing, dated 24.II.41. Annotated drawing, dated 24.II.41. See David Cesarani and Tony Kushner (eds.), The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, 1993). Email from Kurt Iwnicki to Steve Cockayne, 14 May 2008, whilst the latter was researching the Lanchesters for a possible biography.

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country, noting that “[p]uppetry has attained a high standard of achievement in Germany, in every branch of presentation and every form of technique.”36 Furthermore, their “age-long” presence in Germany was such that “when the National-Socialist party came into power, the great value of puppetry as a medium for the encouragement of folk arts and national culture was easily recognised.”37 Toy- and puppet-making also featured in the oeuvre of other creative émigré(e)s, such as Erna Pinner (1890–1987)38 who survived the turmoil of the inflation years through the creation of near life-size puppets, often portraits of her friends. Some of these famous creations are illustrated in Das Puppenbuch (The Book of Puppets) published in 1921”39 while a Paul Brann is recorded as “a local performer of German origin whose marionettes had enchanted a [British] School audience in March, 1939.”40 Although puppets and marionettes had had a presence in Britain for several hundred years, the 1920s and 30s saw a revival, particularly in London and the West Country. Waldo Lanchester was at the forefront of the revival of the string puppet. In partnership with H. W. Whanslaw he had co-founded the British Puppet and Model Theatre Guild in 1925, followed by the Whanslaw-Lanchester Marionettes in 1927, at the London Marionette Theatre in Stamford Brook. In a similar development William Simmonds’ Cotswold Puppets were fully integrated into local cultural life at this time.41 Helen Binyon (1904–1979, Laurence Binyon’s daughter) founded the troupe of Jiminy Puppets with her sister, Margaret, and subsequently taught puppetry to trainee art teachers at Bath Academy of Art at Corsham in the postwar period. Alan Powers, writing in

36 37 38

39 40 41

The Studio, Puppets and The Puppet Stage, Winter 1938, 25. Ibid. Lutz Becker, “Von der Kunst zur Wissenschaft. Der erstaunliche Lebensweg der Erna ­Pinner”, in Barbara Weidle (ed.), Ich reise durch die Welt. Die Zeichnerin und Publizistin Erna Pinner (Bonn: Weidle-Verlag, 1997). The author is grateful to Sarah MacDougall for this reference. AJR Information, May 1987, 8. Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox, Refugees in an Age of Genocide (London: Frank Cass, 1999), 173. William Simmonds (1876–1968) studied painting at the Royal College of Art and Royal Academy Schools before working on tank designs during the First World War. He moved in 1919 to Far Oakridge, Gloucestershire, also the home of distinguished Anglo-Jewish painter, William Rothenstein, Principal of the RCA, to work on puppetry fulltime.

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Apollo,42 noted that “parallels with the Bauhaus can be sought in artforms that usually escape the attention of historians, such as puppetry”. He cites Olive Blackham43 whose prewar production ‘Lima Beans’ featured highly abstracted puppets, similar to those illustrated by Oskar Schlemmer, head of the Bauhaus Theatre workshop in Weimar.44 In 1936 Waldo and his wife Muriel relocated to Malvern, Muriel’s home town (she was an artist-potter), opening the Lanchester Marionette Theatre at Foley House, 28 Worcester Road, with an adjoining shop selling Muriel’s pottery, and where the troupe remained until 1949, when they relocated to Stratford-uponAvon. With a repertoire of opera, ballet, plays and the Grand Puppet Circus, the 50-seat theatre was a lively addition to the Malvern Drama Festival, and was opened by Festival Director Sir Barry Jackson, with George Bernard Shaw – who much admired Waldo’s work45 – in the audience. The troupe performed three times daily during the Festival, also opening at Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and in the summer. During the war when the Festival was cancelled, the puppets continued to perform, first to evacuees, and then touring England with Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA), from the end of 1941 to early 1943.46 This period coincided with Jacky’s employment – under quaint financial arrangements Jacky had free board and lodging and received £1.0.0 for each finished marionette – enabling Waldo and Muriel to tour whilst he remained in Malvern, carving new puppets to enrich the ever-changing cast of wooden characters. Whilst Waldo was a brilliant manipulator and technical puppeteer, he was less talented as a carver. Hence Jacky created many of the best-known charac-

42 43

44

45 46

Alan Powers, “Britain and the Bauhaus”, Apollo, May 2006, 51–54. Olive Blackham (1899–2002) established the Roel Puppet Theatre in 1932 at Roel Farm, Guiting Power, near Cheltenham, staging performances during spring and summer, touring during autumn and winter, and hosting a Summer School of Puppetry, which included a visit to the nearby Lanchester Marionette Theatre in Malvern. Alan Powers, op. cit., 51–54. Jacky was also friendly with Oskar Schlemmer and his wife Tut (née Helena Tutein). Schlemmer was Master of Mural Painting and Sculpture in Weimar before leading the Theatre workshop from 1923. Jacky and Greta maintained a significant and as yet uncatalogued correspondence with Tut Schlemmer from 1953 to 1983. Shaw described Waldo as “our chief living puppet master” in the programme for his puppet play Shakes v Shav (1949). During the war the marionettes travelled some 40,000 miles and gave some 700 performances. Before the war they appeared at the 1937 Paris Exhibition, and performed for Princess Elizabeth at Buckingham Palace in December 1938 on the occasion of the King’s birthday.

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Figure 12.3 Werner Jackson, Marionettes, 1930s

ters in their entirety – from limbs to tiny, expressive features,47 first modelled in Plasticine –including the cast of the troupe’s signature Underwater Ballet (except the mermaid) performed to Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. These remained unaltered (except for some replacement fish) from 1939 to 1958. Other key figures carved by Jacky included The Ringmaster, who originally appeared as “Professor Schlookuc and his performing seal”, strung so he could tip his hat, and Professor Armstrong, strongman of the Lanchester Grand Circus. One of the tallest and heaviest puppets, he could lift a weight. The height of these figures, around 60–65 cm, with their complex originality, shows an ambition of scale, the usual measurement for similar string puppets being a more manageable 30 cm. As the war continued and the touring obligation increased, it was suggested that Greta should join as housekeeper, to help Muriel with dressing marionettes and serving in the shop, where Jacky also sold decorated tiles and toys he had designed, and to nurse him if the need arose. Thus he and Greta were 47

The Bauhaus Archiv has numerous marionette heads in various materials – see 2016/610– 613 – as well as complete figures. See Jackson_I_481–5. Bauhaus Archiv.

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able to live happily enough together without marrying, until the status quo was upset by the arrival of Muriel’s mother who proceeded to treat them “as servants (and foreigners to boot) to be watched and chivvied and kept in their place whereas to Waldo and Muriel they had always been friends and collaborators.”48 Jacky retaliated by subtly caricaturing her in some of the less attractive marionettes, such as a witch on a broomstick. Although Jacky was a highly skilled and sensitive carver, he was nevertheless to suffer humiliations in this position, including complete public lack of recognition for his work: excluded from the troupe’s histories, programmes,49 publications (such as Douglas Fisher’s Wooden Stars: A History of the Lanchester Marionettes in 1947)50 and related films. Iwnicki recalled that “Waldo […] never publicly acknowledged Jacky’s role and kept him in the background whenever the press or a film crew were around, and this undoubtedly hurt Jacky.”51 Nevertheless, as Kurt Iwnicki points out, [t]o understand something of Jacky’s feelings […] you need some insight into refugee mentality at the time which only an insider can have. Jacky was grateful to Waldo for enabling him to escape to this country […] and it was his very gratitude to Waldo which made it impossible for Jacky to have it out with him. Refugees kept a low profile in those days and besides, changing job was subject to all sorts of restrictions.52 Jacky and Greta therefore reluctantly left the Lanchester household in 1943, relocating to Oxford, after Ernest ‘Pop’ Appleton53 met Jacky at a Lanchester tour in the city and invited him to establish a marionette theatre for the fledgling Charter Club54 (based on and intended to promulgate the ideals of

48 49 50 51 52 53 54

Email from Kurt Iwnicki to Steve Cockayne, 14 May 2008. See the archives of the British Puppet and Model Theatre Collection at V & A Archives, Blythe House THM/233. Douglas Fisher, Wooden Stars: A History of the Lanchester Marionettes (London: T. V. Boardman & Co., 1947). Fisher also made a film version of the book. Email from Kurt Iwnicki to Steve Cockayne, 14 May 2008. Ibid. Ernest Robert Appleton (1891–1964) was a broadcaster with the BBC and a religious author. His portrait appears on a cigarette card in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, NPG D47166. Scant archival information remains relating to the Club. The brochure lists the Club’s President as Sir David Ross, Vice-Chancellor, Oxford University, with Mr E. R. Appleton as Chairman.

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the Atlantic Charter).55 Jacky maintained some links with Waldo, including designing a poster for a performance of Shakes versus Shav in Czechoslovakia, whilst Waldo continued to send him photographs of new marionettes he had made, and of which he was particularly proud. The importance of Oxford as a location for wartime academic refugees is explored in the recent publication Ark of Civilisation.56 It highlights a number of émigré artists/designers, including Milein Cosman (born in Germany in 1921), who was evacuated with the Slade School of Art from London. Those who were there by chance, such as Ernst Eisenmayer, Heinz Kiewe and Kurt Wieler, also found themselves adopted in this city with its strong intellectual and cultural backbone. Many of Jacky’s experiences in wartime Oxford and after were shared with this network of fellow émigrés, including the aforementioned Viennese-born Kurt Iwnicki, Irene Gill (née Gabi Zuntz) and Stefan Moosbach (later Stephen Moorbath, 1929–2016). Iwnicki knew Jacky from around 1945 when he was apprenticed to instrument makers in the city. Arriving aged ten in March 1939 on a Kindertransport organised by Quakers, Iwnicki had lodged at the Woodside hostel in High Wycombe with other refugees57 before being taken in by German academic émigré, Dr Gunther Zuntz,58 his wife, Eva Leonore, and their three children, in Summertown, north Oxford. Iwnicki remained with the family for several years, eventually studying engineering at Oxford Technical School59 on a scholarship. Maintaining an interest in the arts, he also studied painting at a free class on Sunday afternoons run by Romanian émigré Arthur Segal (1875–1944) who lived at the end of the road, and who had relocated his London art school to Oxford during the war, having first taught painting in Berlin. Iwnicki described how he first learned about the Bauhaus by seeing a 55

56 57 58 59

The Atlantic Charter was a pivotal policy statement issued by the Allies, led by the UK and the USA, on 14 August 1941, which defined the Allied goals for the postwar world, aspiring towards peaceful and global co-existence. Adherents of the Charter signed the Declaration on 1 January 1942, which became the basis for the modern United Nations. Sally Crawford, Katharina Ulmschneider, Jaś Elsner (eds.), Ark of Civilization: Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, 1930–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Lilly Kann, the émigrée actor, is noted as working in the kitchen at Woodside in 1939. See Ian Wallace (ed.), Voices in Exile: Essays in Memory of Hamish Ritchie (Leiden/Boston: Brill Rodopi, 2015), 33. Zuntz had lost his teaching job in Marburg on racial grounds and had settled in Oxford as a librarian after a short time at the University of Copenhagen, eventually teaching at the University of Manchester. See Crawford et al., op. cit., 138. Fran Lloyd cites Oxford Schools of Technology, Art & Crafts & Commerce (forerunner to Oxford Brookes University) as part of the refugee network in Oxford, also attended by fellow Austrian émigrés Ernst Eisenmayer, Siegfried Grube and Kurt Weiler. See Ark of Civilization, op. cit., 252–253.

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Figure 12.4 Werner Jackson, Self-portrait, 1950s

woodcut by Lyonel Feininger – Jacky’s old friend and tutor – at the Zuntzes, who were, coincidentally, related to Gunther Zuntz. The latter’s daughter, Gabi, recalled her wartime introduction to Jacky: We often queued up in the Town Hall for ‘British Restaurant’60 lunches and here Kurt introduced me. […] Tall and slim, handsome, even the crinkly hair – he reminded me of my frequently absent father. I say that now with hindsight. At the time I did not know what drove me to visit him so often in the small neat workshop on the second floor of one of the houses in Broad Street. […] I would wander around, looking at the magnificent, life-sized marionettes he had carved – he was planning to open a marionette theatre on Gloucester Green, but nothing came of it.61 Sooner or later I might think of something to say. He would listen, never comment, hardly ever saying anything significant himself, and I would leave feeling baffled. But I went back again and again for these almost silent encoun60

61

British Restaurants were communal kitchens created in 1940 during the Second World War to help people who had been bombed out of their homes, had run out of ration coupons or otherwise needed help. In 1943, 2160 British Restaurants served 600,000 cheap meals a day. They were disbanded in 1947. Sketches of a building on Gloucester Green and plans for a new marionette theatre are now located in the Bauhaus Archiv, Inv. no. Jackson_I_433–434.

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ters, and he seemed pleased when I did, or when we met in the queue at the Town Hall.’62 Kurt had met Jacky through the activities of the Charter Club at 15 Broad Street, opposite Balliol College, and heralded as the first such club. Opening “in Oxford on, or about, United Nations Day, June 14, 1943”63 it was described on the cover of its inaugural leaflet as: “A meeting place, a cultural centre and a quiet refuge for members of the forces and war-workers of the United Nations interested in the Arts and Civics.”64 The brochure further stated that: [h]ere in Oxford we have an ideal opportunity, for here are many representatives of the United Nations, including eminent artists, scientists and statesmen, as well as members of the various Services.65 In this spirit of cultural camaraderie, the club offered to locals and to American and other servicemen “rooms for reading, writing, handicrafts and refreshment, as well as a lecture room for talks, play readings, cinema and marionette shows of the United Nations”.66 Iwnicki visited the Club specifically to meet the marionette maker and this marked the start of their close friendship, despite the age difference. A captioned photograph on the front of another leaflet documented Jacky’s activities and promoted the club’s relaxed atmosphere in which “a group of players have momentarily abandoned their game to watch the antics of a marionette, made by another member. Incidentally, even this small group includes members from six different nations.”67 Furthermore, the text declared, members “find in their love of the arts not only a ready-made international language but also an integrating force which transcends social and political differences.”68 The Club had an ambitious and lofty charter, as well as support from many notables. These included the Ambassadors of the United States, Netherlands, Poland and Yugoslavia, the Chinese Minister of Information in London, Sir Arnold Bax (Master of the King’s Music), Lionel Curtis (Fellow of All Souls, Ox62 63 64 65 66 67 68

Irene Gill, Oma, Mu and Me (Salisbury: Fivepin 2006), 177. Ibid. The four-page printed and unpaginated brochure described the Club’s aims and listed its officers under the banner of “Unity Through the Arts”. Courtesy of Anna Iwnicki. Ibid. Ibid. Photocopy of a leaflet promoting the Charter Club, courtesy Anna Iwnicki. Ibid.

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ford) and the eminent painters Augustus John and Paul Nash. Nevertheless, the Club seems to have foundered not long after its opening in Oxford, and indeed, there seem to be no references to any other successful branches. Although Jacky maintained his workshop upstairs after the Club closed, during the 1950s his focus turned away from marionettes towards toy design. Irene Gill suggests that a plan to open his own marionette theatre in Gloucester Green, Oxford, failed because the building did not have facilities for separate toilets for men and women. As archive material is scant in this period, we can surmise that Jacky had a difficult time working piecemeal on toys and other designs, some of which were sold to Hamleys, such as a night-light with a moving scene and a flying chicken, known as the Hi-fly Chik from 1950.69 Some of the toys were wooden,70 or moulded in plaster or a casting plastic, and then hand-painted. Some were mechanical. A number of models remain in the archives, accompanied by prototypes and associated preparatory drawings. Quirky bathroom accessories included a nanny-shaped baby powder container in red and blue versions, with a striped uniform and neat bun, and a toothbrush holder in the shape of a face – the bristles adding a comical moustache effect when slotted in.71 Drawings for a “Cat in the Bag” toy handbag, signed “W. Jackson 53” and produced for a London manufacturer, were “to be reduced to technically appropriate size and strength. Design adaptation to working model supplied for: Messrs. O. & M. Kleeman, London”.72 These sorts of designs were, according to Iwnicki, mass produced in a debased form and did quite well (for example the celebrated flying chicken being demonstrated in the photo to the Duchess of Kent and her boys by the manufacturer).73 Iwnicki, with his engineering skills and creative outlook, provided some of the ideas and mechanical designs for Jacky, but, sadly, “[n]one of these things 69 70 71 72

73

The owner of Hamleys was photographed demonstrating Werner Jackson’s Hi-Fly Chik to the Duchess of Kent and her son. See Bauhaus Archiv: Jackson_I_429/1–2 and Jack­son_I_ 509. Wooden toys including Father Christmas and Snowman figures. 2016/581. Bauhaus Archiv. 2016/568.1–2. Bauhaus Archiv. O. & M. Kleemann, Mappin House, 156–162 Oxford Street, London, W1 was described in a brochure for the 1947 British Industries Fair at Earls Court as manufacturer of ‘Kleeware’ plastic mouldings, producing “combs of all Descriptions, Hairwear, Fancy goods. Toys and Novelties and Sunglasses.” Founded by Max Kleemann in 1938, the firm sold to Woolworths and exported internationally. Postwar, their toys included dolls, tea sets, cars and Littletown building kits for 0‑gauge train layouts. Typescript of letter from Kurt Iwnicki to Gabi Zuntz (Irene Gill), 23 June 2004.

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made any real money […] despite the effort he put into them – Jacky just didn’t have commercial nous and was easy prey for those who did.”74 The archives also suggest he sold to Combex, part of the renowned toy firm Dunbee-Combex-Marx. Eventually, in the late 1950s, Jacky took on a full-time design job at the Pressed Steel Company in Cowley, south Oxford, as art editor for in-house publications,75 also producing some advertising material. Securing the position was clearly extremely significant, as he created a celebratory collage built around the original classified advert for a layout artist he had cut from the newspaper. He embellished this to appear as if a large fishing bait, wielded by a top hatted gentleman from the Pressed Steel Company, had hooked a slightly dripping and disgruntled-looking individual out of the “commercial artist’s pool”.76 Jacky remained with the firm until his retirement. Much of his time at PSC was fondly recalled by his younger co-worker, Pauline Moorbath, in the exhibitions’ team who designed displays and stands for trade fairs and shows such as the Ideal Home Exhibition.77 Pauline and Jacky formed a close friendship, perhaps strengthened not only by their shared creativity but by Pauline’s marriage to fellow German émigré Stefan Moosbach78 who had lodged with Kurt Iwnicki at the Zuntzes.79 Anglicising his name to Stephen Moorbath, he became a renowned geochronologist, founding the Geological Age and Isotope Research Group at Oxford University in 1956. When Pauline left the firm in 1962, Jacky presented her with a charming collaged farewell poem, inscribed Abschiedslieder – ohne viel Worte [sic]. A staff photograph taken at the farewell ‘do’ shows Jacky, darkly handsome, hovering shyly at the back of the group. During this time, Jacky and Greta lived in a bungalow at 43 Hurst Rise Road, Botley, just outside Oxford, where Jacky would remain following his retirement from the Pressed Steel Company until his death in 1984, following a tragic fall. The garden was bounded by a distinctive topiary hedge, which Jacky had determinedly cut into circular, triangular and square shapes, the essential forms of the Bauhaus, and a wholly appropriate visual epitaph to a wonderfully creative refugee Bauhäusler, whose potential sadly remained unfulfilled in exile.

74 75 76 77 78 79

Ibid. See Link, Number 25, Summer 1960, Jackson_I_336, Bauhaus Archiv. Jackson_I_435, Bauhaus Archiv. Interview with the author, Oxford, 24 May 2017. Professor Stephen Erwin Moorbath FRS, 9 May 1929–16 October 2016. See note 58 above.

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Acknowledgements

The author extends particular thanks to Anna Iwnicki, Pauline Moorbath and Irene Gill for all their help with this chapter, and to Dr A. Nyburg and Dr M. Malet for translation from German. All archive items referenced were first viewed by the author at the Iwnicki home in Wales in 2014 and have subsequently been transferred to the Jackson Archive at the Bauhaus Archiv, ­Berlin, donated by Mrs Greta Jackson with the assistance of the Iwnicki family. At the time of writing, all items are being catalogued as part of the Jackson Archive ensuring that Jacky’s narrative will be publicly available for posterity. See: accessed 1 October 2017. However, current numbers may only be temporary until cataloguing is ­finally completed.

Works Cited

Sigrid Bauschinger, Die Cassirers: Unternehmer, Kunsthändler, Philosophen; Biographie einer Familie (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2015). Lutz Becker, “Von der Kunst zur Wissenschaft. Der erstaunliche Lebensweg der Erna Pinner”, in Ich reise durch die Welt. Die Zeichnerin und Publizistin Erna Pinner (Bonn: Weidle-Verlag, 1997). David Cesarani and Tony Kushner (eds.), The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain (Abingdon: Routledge, 1993). Sally Crawford,  Katharina Ulmschneider and Jaś Elsner (eds.), Ark of Civilization: Refugee Scholars and Oxford University, 1930–1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017). Douglas Fisher, Wooden Stars: A History of the Lanchester Marionettes (London: T. V. Boardman & Co., 1947). David Gill, “The Man from the Bauhaus – in memory of Werner Issacsohn (Jacky)”, in May I introduce? a personal gallery of people poems, (Oxford: Yarnells Press, 2008). Irene Gill, Oma, Mu and Me (Salisbury: Fivepin, 2006). Tony Kushner and Katharine Knox, Refugees in an Age of Genocide (London: Frank Cass, 1999). Harvey L. Mendelsohn, Bauhaus Photography (Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1985). This is an English language version of Bauhaus Fotographie (Düsseldorf: Edition Marzona, 1982). Alan Powers, “Bauhaus in Britain”, Apollo, May 2006. Unnamed authors, “Puppets and The Puppet Stage” issue, The Studio, Winter 1938.

Index Index

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Index Adenauer, Konrad 162 Ader, Inge 49–50, 52–59, 62, 65 Agamben, Giorgio 101, 104 Ahrends, Bruno 28 Alexander, Donald 83 Amidi, Amid 203. 209 Andersen, Erika 49–50, 56 Anson, Alice 49, 50, 52–59, 61, 65 Appleton, E. R. 242 Ardizzone, Edward 133 Arnheim, Rudolf 225 Arnheim, Rudolf and Mary 80 Arnold, Malcolm 146 Arup, Ove 33, 39 Ascher, Lida 222–23, 228 Ascher, Zika 222–23, 228 Auden, W. H. 152 Auerbach, Ellen 49–50, 52, 54, 56–57, 66 Aufseeser, Ernst 220 Aufseeser, Hans 220 Bach, J. S. 161, 169 Baer, Ann (née Sidgwick) 150, 152–61, 164–66, 172, 174–75 Baer, Bernhard 4, 150–56, 158–66, 168, 170–75 Baer, Charlotte 150 Baer, Edith 153 Baer, James 153 Baer, Ruth (née Heine) 153 Baer, Salli 150, 153 Baer, Susan 153 Baruch, Francesca 176 Bassell, Otto see Burton, Olaf Batchen, Geoffrey 100–101, 104 Bax, Sir Arnold 245 Beaton, Cecil 87 Beckmann, Max 155 Beddington, Jack 158, 204 Beethoven, Ludwig van 169 Behrendt, Walter 33, 47 Bell, Clive 158 Benjamin, Walter 70, 193, 209 Benton, Charlotte 8, 16, 24, 28–30, 34, 38, 45–46

Berger, Otti 215–16 Bernays, Minna 14 Betjeman, John 33 Bevan, Aneurin 158 Beyer, Ralph 182 Bing, Ilse 51 Binyon, Helen 239 Binyon, Margaret 239 Black, Misha 35 Bohm, Dorothy 49–50, 52, 54–55, 58 Boult, Adrian 136 Brandt, Bill 70 Brann, Paul 239 Brassaï 70, 95, 104 Braun, Sonia (Sonia Orwell) 158 Breuer, Marcel 17–18, 28, 30, 39 Britten, Benjamin 152 Brook, Peter 164 Bunyard, Anneli 49–51, 55, 57, 61 Burra, Edward 35 Burton, Olaf (Bassell, Otto) 217 Busch, Wilhelm 143 Cameron, Basil 136 Canetti, Elias 21 Carr, Dorothy 225–27 Carr, Francis (Spitzer, Géza) 225–27 Carrington, Noel 153 Cash, J. Allan 87 Cassirer, Lisbet 233–34 Cavalcanti, Alberto 151–53 Chagrin, Francis (Paucker, Alexander) 201 Chambers, Jack 83, 88 Chan, Plato 78 Chermayeff, Serge 20, 27, 30, 33, 35–36, 38–39, 41 Christie, Agatha 157 Churchill, Winston 152, 189 Clark, Sir Kenneth 158, 199–200, 204 Coates, Wells 33, 35–36, 39, 45 Connell, Amyas 36 Cooper, Budge 83, 84, 92 Cooper, Douglas 158 Coppola, Horacio 55 Corinth, Lovis 155

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004395107_015

250 Cosman, Milein 4, 132, 134–40, 147–48, 243 Croft, Michael 157 Croft, Posy 157 Cullen, Gordon 39–40 Curtis, Lionel 245 Daguerre, Louis 100–101 Dannatt, Trevor 36–38, 43, 45–46 Davies, Richard Llewelyn 41, 42 Deja, Bruno 154–58 Dekk, Dorrit 157 Delacroix, Eugène 164 Deutsch, Gerti 49, 50, 52, 55, 57–61, 63, 111 Deutsch, Greta 236 Deverson, Harry 68, 76, 80 Diebold, Bernhard 194–95 Disney, Walt 193–94, 197 Dorn, Marion 158 Duguid, John 236 Dyer, Anson 198 Ehrensweig (also Ehrenzweig), Anton 225 Ehrenzweig, Oscar 225 Einzig, Hetty 24, 148 Einzig, Susan (Suzanne) 1, 4, 132, 134, 139–43, 147–48, 200 Eisenmayer, Ernst 198, 243 Engelman, Edmund 14 Ettinger, Trude 224 Farr, Arthur C. 87 Fein, Otto 115 Feininger, Julia 232, 236 Feininger, Lyonel 231–32, 244 Feininger, Theodore Lux 232, 235–36 Feist, Werner 236 Fichtl, Martha 14 Fichtl, Paul 14 Fischer, Harry (né Heinrich Robert Fischer) 4, 150, 170–73 Fischer, Wolfgang 173 Fischinger, Oskar W. 191, 194–95, 197 Fisher, Douglas 242 Foges, Wolfgang 84 Forbes, Duncan 99 Frank, Celia 218 Frank, Julius 217–19 Frankl, Lieselotte 86

Index Fraser, Eric 133 Frerk, K. W. 152 Freud, Anna 16, 86 Freud, Ernst L. 6, 9–12, 15–16, 22 Freud, Sigmund 2, 6, 9, 11–16, 86, 108 Friedlander, Elizabeth 4, 176, 182, 186–89 Frisch, Otto Robert 65 Fry, Maxwell 30, 33, 35–36, 39, 41, 45, 158 Funt, Allen 122 Furth, Hugo 151 Gaspar, Bela 197 Gernsheim, Helmut 67–69, 74–75, 87–88 Gestetner, Sigmund 23 Gidal, Tim 110 Giedion, Sigfried 32 Gielgud, Val 144 Gill, Eric 159, 178, 182, 184 Gill, Irene (née Zuntz, Gabi) 243, 246, 248 Gilpin, Denis 206 Gloag, John 35 Godfrey, Sir Bob 207–208 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 164 Gold, John R. 37, 39, 41 Goldfinger, Ernö 6, 9, 19–22, 27–28, 33, 38, 45 Gombrich, Ernst 169 Grant, Duncan 35 Greene, Helga 163 Gregory, Peter 157 Grierson, John 72–73 Groag, Jacqueline 214, 220–21, 224 Gropius, Walter 2, 20–21, 27–34, 38, 40, 231 Haas, Lisel 49–50, 55–58 Halberstadt, Max 108–109, 112 Hale, Jeff 208 Hamilton, Richard 156 Hanna, Nancy 208 Hardy, Bert 111, 116 Hartmann, Georg 187, 189 Haussmann, Baron 95 Hay, Lorna 120 Heartfield, John (né Helmut Herzfeld) 157 Heimann, Adelheid 49–51, 55, 57–61, 64 Hepworth, Barbara 35, 158 Heron, Patrick 158 Hicks, Wilson 121–22

Index Hitchcock, Henry-Russell 8, 29, 32 Hitler, Adolf 53, 155, 195, 197, 234 Hobson, Charles W. 152 Hodson, Michael 156–57 Hoffman, Eva 99, 102 Hoffmann, Josef 216, 219–20 Hoffnung, Gerard 4, 132, 134, 143–48 Holme, Charles 75, 116 Holme, Geoffrey 75, 80, 83, 87 Holme, Rathbone 87–88 Hopkinson, Tom 61, 110, 115, 120 Hoppé, E. O. 87 Howe, Ellic 188 Hulton, Edward George Warris 110, 115 Humperdinck, Engelbert 140 Humphries, Eric 157 Huntley, John 204, 207 Hutton, Kurt 110–11, 116 Huxley, Julian 68, 81 Issacsohn, Werner 229–30 Jackson, Anthony 31, 36 Jackson, Sir Barry 240 Jackson, Werner ‘Jacky’ 5, 229–31, 234–35, 241, 244, 246 Jeanneret, Charles see Le Corbusier Jeanneret, Pierre 40 Joad, C. M. 158 John, Augustus 246 Johnson, Philip 8, 32 Juda, Annely (née Anneliese Brauer) 157 Juda, Elsbeth 49–50, 54, 57,61,64, 212, 224 Juda, Hans 54, 61, 212, 223 Kandinsky, Wassily 231 Kastan, Erich 113 Kaufmann, Eugen 28, 34 Keller, Hans 135–36 Kempe, Fritz 107 Kempff, Wilhelm 169 Kiewe, Heinz 143 King George VI 116 Kitson, Claire 193 Kleboe, Raymond S. 116 Klee, Paul 155, 205, 231 Klein, Bernat 221–22 Klemperer, Otto 65

251 Klimt, Gustav 161 Koch, Erika 49–50, 52, 54–56, 58–59, 61 Koch, Rudolf 179, 182, 184–85 Kokoschka, Olda (née Palkovská) 162, 164–69 Kokoschka, Oskar 4, 21, 150, 155, 157, 160–74 Korn, Arthur 28, 38–39, 45–46 Körner, Theodor 162 Kosenkina, Oxana Stepanowna 123 Kracauer, Siegfried 99 Krazna-Krausz, Andor 68, 79–80, 88 Krüger, Lore 49–50, 52, 54–58 Kubin, Alfred 155 Lambert, Constant 135 Lanchester, Muriel 240, 242 Lanchester, Waldo 237, 240, 242 Lane, Sir Allen 4, 153–54, 178–79, 181 Larkins, William 198–201 Lasdun, Sir Denys 28 Le Corbusier 21, 33, 39–41 Learner, Keith 208 Leischner, Margaret (Margarete) 215, 236 Leslie, Esther 192 Lewis, Dewi 111 Linnecar, Vera 208 Lloyd, Frank 170 Lorant, Stefan 3, 59, 68, 72, 97, 110 Lowry, L. S. 161 Lubetkin, Berthold 2, 6, 8–9, 22–23, 27, 29, 31,33–36, 40–42 Lucas, Colin 35 Magee, Hayward 111, 116, 120 Mahler, Marian (Marianne) 220–21 Man, Felix H. 87, 110 Mander, Kay 83 Mandowsky, Erna 49–51, 55, 57–59, 61, 64 Mann, Heinrich 155 Marcus, Frederick (Fritz) 36–37, 46 Marées, Hans von 154–55 Martin, Kingsley 158 Martin, Leslie 43, 45 Marville, Charles 95 Marx, Adolf and Heide 6, 9, 11, 12 May, Ernst 34 McBean, Angus 87 McCombe, Leonard 111, 116

252 McGrath, Raymond 35–36 Megaw, Helen 227 Meidner, Ludwig 157 Meier-Graefe, Julius 154, 155 Meitner-Graf, Lotte 49–50, 56–62, 64–65 Mendelsohn, Erich 28, 30, 39–40, 182 Mendelssohn, Peter de 68 Meyer, Hannes 231 Meynell, Francis 185, 187–88 Michelangelo 169 Michaelis, Margarete 49–50, 56 Moholy-Nagy, László 20, 27, 33–34, 55, 193, 215, 224, 231 Moholy-Nagy, Lucia (née Schulz) 49–50, 52, 5457, 61–62, 71, 224, 236 Montessori, Maria 87 Moorbath, Pauline 247 Moore, Henry 35, 158, 160–61, 171, 223 Moosbach Stefan / Moorbath, Stephen 243, 247 Morison, Stanley 184–85, 189 Morland, Dorothy 158 Moro, Peter 2, 27–34, 36–39, 41–46 Mortimer, Raymond 158 Morton Shand, Philip 33 Morton, Alastair 219–20 Morton. H. V. 95–96 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 169 Nash, Paul 35, 246 Neu, Trude 216 Neubauer, Theodor 54 Neumann, Leo 6, 9, 16–18 Neurath, Eva (née Itzig) 170 Neurath, Walter 170 Newton, Eric 172 Nicholson, Ben 35, 158, 161, 171 Nichols-Reeves, Jacquie 124, 126 Nolan, Sidney 161 Nussbaum, Felix 7 Orwell, George 158, 202 Osman, Colin 110, 119, 127 Pal, George (György Pál Marczincsak) 4, 191, 194–98, 208 Palmier, Jean-Michel 37 Paolozzi, Eduardo 225–26

Index Pariser, Ursula 49–50, 59 Parsons, K. M. 87 Paucker Alexander see Chagrin, Francis Pearce, Philippa 142–43 Penrose, Roland 35 Perutz, Gisela 227 Perutz, Max 227 Peterhans, Walter 68 Pevsner, Nikolaus 7, 22, 35, 46, 153, 158, 181 Pinner, Erna 239 Piper, John 158, 224 Piper, Myfanwy 158 Piper, Reinhold 154–55 Piscator, Erwin 231 Plomley, Roy 144 Powers, Alan 225, 239 Pritchard, Jack 35 Pulling, Norah 139 Queen Elizabeth 116 Queen Elizabeth II 221 Read, Herbert 157–58 Reddihough, Cyril 160 Reich, Jeno 213 Reich, Otto 113 Reich, Sam 228 Reich, Tibor 5, 213, 219, 221–22, 227–28 Reimann, Albert 156 Reiner, Imre 4, 176, 183 Reinganum, Victor 133 Reiniger, Reni (Lotte) 193 Reiss, Eva Marie 108, 114 Reiss, Francis Erik 3, 107–112, 114–16, 118–127, 129 Reiss, Franziska, geb. Simonis 112, 114–15 Reiss, Walter Abraham 112–14 Rembrandt, Harmenszoon van Rijn, 159 Richards, J. M. 33, 43–44, 158 Ridler, Vivian 166 Roberts, John 156–57 Robertson, Grace 63, 111 Robertson, Howard 35 Robertson, James Fyfe 118 Roeder, Helen 200 Ronis, Willy 70 Rosenauer, Michael 28 Rosenberg, Eugen 38

253

Index Rosenlewe, Marion 169 Rosenthal, H. W. 46 Rotha, Paul 68, 72–73, 84–85, 90, 103 Ruhemann, Fritz A. 6, 9, 16–18 Ruttman, Walter 193 Sachs, Hans 193 Sachs, Martha 193 Sachs, Peter 4, 191–209 Said, Edward 37 Samuel, Godfrey 33, 39 Samuely, Felix 45–46 Sander, Bertha 216 Sargent, Malcolm 136 Saxby, Leslie 115 Schmoller, Hans 4, 158, 176, 179–82, 189 Scofield, Paul 164 Segal, Arthur 243 Segal, Walter 28, 46 Sekers, Miki 224 Seton, Marie 196 Severn, Merlyn 116 Shakespeare, William 4, 150, 155, 162, 167, 169, 172 Sidgwick, Ann see Baer, Ann Sidgwick, Frank 156 Simmonds, William 239 Simon, Gerty 49–50, 56–58, 62, 64 Simon, Oliver 178, 180, 185 Slutsky, Naum 236 Somerset, David, Duke of Beaufort 170 Spitzer, Géza see Carr, Francis Stern, Grete 49–50, 52, 54–57 Stevens, Beryl 206, 208 Stölzl, Gunta 215 Strand, Paul 99 Strube, Linde 232, 234 Summerson, Sir John 34, 39 Suschitzky Wolfgang, also Wolf 3, 67–78, 80–85, 87–91, 93–104, 110 Sutherland, Graham 161, 171, 224 Tagore, Rabindranath 159 Teltscher-Adams, Georg 236

Tisdall (Aufseeser), Hans 220, 225 Titian (Tiziano Vecelli) 169 Tomalin, Elisabeth 214, 216 Tschichold, Jan 176–80, 182, 189 Tudor-Hart, Alexander 69 Tudor-Hart, Edith 49–50, 54–56, 59–61, 63, 68–69, 72, 85 Türkheim, Hans Jakob 115 Uhlman, Diana (née Croft) 37, 157–58 Uhlman, Fred 37, 157–58 Umbehr, Otto Maximilian 56 Usherwood, Ralph Dean 138, 142 Vitruvius 39 Voute, Puck 70 Wadenoyen, Hugo van 80 Walton, William 146 Ward, Basil 36 Wardle, Irving 164 Wegner, Fritz 4 Wegner, Zoltan 85 Weiler, Kurt 198, 207 Weininger, Andor 232 Weiss, E. R. 176, 187 Whanslaw, H. W. 239 White, Antonia 118 White, Harold 87 White, Helen and Rex 126 Wiesner, Arnost 46 Wilk, Christopher 32 Williams, Douglas Graeme 134–35, 138, 140 Williger, Karin 220 Wolfit, Donald 169 Wolpe, Berthold 4, 176, 179, 182–86 Wotton, Sir Henry 39 Wright, Basil 103 Yorke, F. R. S. 30, 39 Zuntz, Gunther 243–44, 247 Zuntz, Leonore 243, 247