Rachel Stern2024-03-07T07:17:49-05:00February 26th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
In this presentation, Gettysburg College professor and author Kerry Wallach explores the life and work of Rahel Szalit (1888–1942; also: Szalit-Marcus). Szalit was a sought-after illustrator and painter who was active in 1920s Berlin and 1930s Paris. Image above: Rahel Szalit-Marcus, The Drive to the Rabbi, in Milgroym, 1922. Lithograph. Rahel Szalit was among the best-known Jewish women artists in Weimar Berlin. She painted and drew landscapes, Berlin city scenes, animals, and portraits of women, children, and public figures. She produced numerous lithographs and worked in pen and ink, pencil, pastel, chalk, oil paint, and watercolors. Women figured prominently in many scenes, from small-town Jewish life to snapshots of the metropolis. [...]
Rachel Stern2024-03-26T17:07:03-04:00February 4th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Join us for an evening of stimulating conversation, and refreshments, as we celebrate the publication of Welcoming the Stranger. Abrahamic Traditions and Its Contemporary Implications. Advance copies of the book are available for purchase. This book is a collection of thought-provoking essays exploring the theme of hospitality as a means of building bridges between different cultures and communities. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in interfaith dialogue, social justice, and creating a more inclusive society. Its contents could hardly be more relevant today. Beginning with the story of Abraham’s hospitality to the three strangers described in Genesis18, the narrative explores both the theological evolution in and beyond the Abrahamic traditions of the principle of “welcoming the stranger,” [...]
Rachel Stern2024-02-28T14:34:35-05:00February 2nd, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Searching, wandering, not arriving - this is how the person and art of Franz Domscheit/Pranas Domšaitis can be characterized. Born into a German-Lithuanian family as the son of a farmer and innkeeper, it was primarily his Lithuanian origins that interested him. The early landscape and cultural impressions of his homeland, Prussian-Lithuania, at the interface of German and Lithuanian culture, shaped his work throughout his life. Landscape is one of the painter's main themes, who is primarily perceived as an expressionist. Image above: Franz Domscheit, Two Peasant Women, 1930s. Oil on canvas. Copyright National Lithuanian Art Museum. Trained at the Königsberg Art Academy by Ludwig Dettmann, among others, Domscheit then moved out into the world. Berlin, [...]
Rachel Stern2024-02-14T15:19:09-05:00February 1st, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
In this program Georgetown University professor and author, Ori Z Soltes, explores Marc Klionsky's life and work, in part through conversation with his daughter, the scholar and artist, Nadia Klionsky. Image above: Marc Klionsky, Dizzie Gillespie: The Man and his Trumpet, 1988. Oil on canvas, 52 x 66 inches. National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC. This exciting program features the paintings of Marc Klionsky (1927–2017). Born in the Soviet Union, Klionsky managed to navigate what has been called a “two-world condition”—creating the particularized Soviet Socialist Realist work that was acceptable to the Stalinist and post-Stalinist State while allowing his soul to reveal itself in work that only a very few trusted viewers might see. As [...]
Rachel Stern2024-02-27T06:14:25-05:00February 1st, 2024|Newsletter|
Is this the month of love, just because Valentine's Day is on the 14th? Let's just make it about love - love for those who are marginalized and persecuted, and those who have to leave their home to save their lives, and find a new home, some even multiple times during their lifetime. WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14 ONLINE 12:00 PM EST ”THE ART OF MARC KLIONSKY: Shaping a Three-World Condition from Minsk to New York" REGISTER FOR THIS ONLINE EVENT HERE In this event Georgetown University professor and author, Ori Z Soltes, will explore the life and work of Marc Klionsky (1927–2017), in part through conversation with his daughter, the scholar and artist, Nadia Klionsky. [...]
Rachel Stern2024-01-31T18:36:36-05:00January 16th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
In the aftermath of Germany's defeat in World War I and the failed November Revolution of 1918–19, which was led by many prominent Jewish politicians, the conservative government of Bavaria identified Jews with left-wing radicalism. Munich became a hotbed of right-wing extremism, with synagogues under attack and Jews physically assaulted in the streets. It was here that Adolf Hitler established the Nazi movement and developed his antisemitic ideas. This lecture provides a gripping account of how Bavaria's capital city became the testing ground for Nazism and the Final Solution. Michael Brenner holds the chair of Jewish History and Culture at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich. He is also Distinguished Professor of History and Seymour and [...]
Rachel Stern2024-01-24T06:51:51-05:00January 12th, 2024|Newsletter|
We hope that 2024 started well for you. This is our 10th anniversary year, and we are planning many stimulating and thought provoking events and programs, and even two publications to celebrate this milestone. On Friday, January 27, is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau by the Red Army in 1945. We commemorate this date as the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Leading up to that day, we invite you to once again participate in #EVERYNAMECOUNTS. DATAENTRY CHALLENGE #EVERYNAMECOUNTS The Arolsen Archives are working on the world’s most comprehensive online archive of the people who were persecuted and murdered by the National Socialists. Join us for the third year in recording names and paths [...]
Rachel Stern2024-01-24T15:36:23-05:00December 26th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Fifteen years after the great financial crisis of 2008, which shook the capitalist economic system in America and Europe to its foundations, the book “The New Man as Man Machine” presents, for the first time, the interrelationship of art and political economy in the Weimar Republic, the Soviet Union, and the United States of America during the interwar period. By taking a look back at the 1920s and 1930s, it attempts to better understand our own era and its well-founded fears with regard to globalization and a new global economic crisis. Image above: Kliment Redko, Aufstand, 1924-25 This project focuses on how artists reacted to the central questions of the political economy in these three [...]
Rachel Stern2024-01-24T06:16:58-05:00December 22nd, 2023|Newsletter|
In 1901, the eight-year-old German-Jewish artist Fritz Ascher (Berlin, 1893-1970) drew mother and son negotiating the purchase of a Christmas tree. This is the first known artwork by the artist, which he sketched in graphite and then executed in ink on paper. Fritz Ascher, Winter Scene, 1901. Graphite and black ink on paper, 13.8 x 10.4 inches. Copyright Bianca Stock Find out more about Fritz Ascher in our short biographical film: WATCH "FRITZ ASCHER, EXPRESSIONIST (1893-1970)" Some years later, around 1913, Fritz Ascher draws a conductor on the verso of that same sheet of paper. The caricature shows Ascher’s tenderness and admiration: music, especially Beethoven’s music, accompanied him wherever [...]
Rachel Stern2024-01-24T05:48:25-05:00November 28th, 2023|Newsletter|
#GivingTuesday is here — a 24-hour period of global giving to non-profits! You know what we do, and you know how clear the importance of fact-based historical context has become. And we’ll step up our work telling untold stories of marginalized artists persecuted by the German regime 1933-1945 — a time of societal and political challenges that very much resonates with today’s challenges. Start this day of giving by making your donation to support our virtual programs that you enjoy! DONATE TODAY Fleeing Nazi persecution, he came to Australia. Not as a free man like the photographer Horst Eisfelder, but as a British deportee on the Dunera, heading for the internment camps at Hay in New [...]
Rachel Stern2023-11-01T09:07:44-04:00November 1st, 2023|Newsletter|
This year, we commemorate the German pogroms of November 9, 1938 with a global event - please notice the different event time. Coming together from Hong Kong, Melbourne and New York, we celebrate the photographs of Horst Eisfelder, who passed on this year: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 8 6:00 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 9 7:00 AM Hong Kong Time / 8:00 AM Melbourne Time ”HORST EISFELDER (1925-2023): DIASPORIC LIFE IN SHANGHAI’S STATE OF EXCEPTION” REGISTER FOR THIS ZOOM EVENT HERE Horst Eisfelder. Bake staff at Café Louis with Erwin Eisfelder in center, circa 1941, Shanghai, China. Black and white photograph. Copyright: Horst Eisfelder estate After fleeing Berlin a few weeks before Kristallnacht and arriving [...]
Rachel Stern2023-12-06T14:00:09-05:00October 27th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Presentation by Monica Sidhu, followed by a conversation with the late Klaus’ wife Julie Friedeberger and British Museum curator Stephen Coppel, London. Image above: Klaus Friedeberger, Children Playing, 1959-1962, oil on canvas. Copyright Klaus Friedeberger estate Born in Berlin in 1922 the artist Klaus Friedeberger escaped Nazi Germany in 1937. After studying at the Quaker School in Holland he arrived in London as a refugee in 1939. Classified as ‘enemy alien’ he was interned and subsequently deported to Australia on the transport ship Dunera. He spent two years in internment camps at Hay in New South Wales. Released in 1942 he joined the Australian Army labour corps and after demobilisation he studied art at East [...]
