Interwar Archives - Fritz Ascher Society

Jun 28, 2024

“My verses are like dynamite”
Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret
Presentation by Aubrey Pomerance, Berlin (Germany)

Rachel Stern2024-07-10T16:07:15-04:00June 28th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on “My verses are like dynamite”
Curt Bloch’s Het Onderwater Cabaret
Presentation by Aubrey Pomerance, Berlin (Germany)

Under threat from Nazi antisemitism, the young Jewish lawyer Curt Bloch (1908–1975) fled Dortmund for the Netherlands in 1933. He went into hiding there in 1942 and emigrated to the United States after the war. In his hiding place, from August 1943 to April 1945 Bloch produced a magazine with the telling title Het Onderwater Cabaret – “The Underwater Cabaret.” Image above: Curt Bloch, Het Onderwater Cabaret 30 Aug 1943; Jewish Museum Berlin, Convolute/816, Curt Bloch collection, loaned by the Charities Aid Foundation America thanks to the generous support of Curt Blochʼs family Week by week, Curt Bloch created small-format booklets with artfully designed covers, containing a total of 483 handwritten poems in German and [...]

Jun 2, 2024

Art and Internment.
Heinz Henghes the Stowaway Sculptor
Presentation by Ian Henghes, London (UK)

Rachel Stern2024-06-19T14:37:38-04:00June 2nd, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on Art and Internment.
Heinz Henghes the Stowaway Sculptor
Presentation by Ian Henghes, London (UK)

Heinz Henghes (1906-1975) was born in Hamburg in 1906, a ‘Mischling’ of mixed Jewish and German descent. In America for almost 10 years before returning to Europe at a time of great political unrest Heinz spent time in Italy where he enjoyed the patronage of Ezra Pound, despite Pounds noted anti-semitism. In London at the outbreak of war Heinz was interned and sent to Australia on the notorious ship the Dunera. Ian Henghes, the artist's son, presents his father’s extraordinary story and the contact he had with other artists, writers and thinkers of his time. Image above: Heinz Henghes in Milan studio ca 1935 © Ian Henghes Ian Henghes is an online communications specialist working [...]

Apr 17, 2024

“Let’s Talk of Interesting People”:
The Story of Erna Friedländer (1890-1979)
With Noit Banai, PhD, Hong Kong, and Ketul Arnold, Boulder (Colorado)

Rachel Stern2024-05-08T21:07:06-04:00April 17th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on “Let’s Talk of Interesting People”:
The Story of Erna Friedländer (1890-1979)
With Noit Banai, PhD, Hong Kong, and Ketul Arnold, Boulder (Colorado)

This presentation by Noit Banai, PhD, Hong Kong, and Ketul Arnold, Boulder (Colorado), traces Erna Friedländer‘s unique journey as a German refugee who survived Nazi persecution and World War II in Hong Kong, and subsequently migrated to England, Israel, and the USA. Image above: Erna Friedländer, Chinese Landscape. Undated. Monotype. Courtesy The Studio: An Illustrated Magazine of Fine and Applied Art, London As a German refugee who survived World War II in Hong Kong, and subsequently migrated to England, Israel, and the USA, Erna Friedländer’s journey is unique among the many histories of Jewish dispossession. Though few traces remain of Friedländer artistic oeuvre, she was a thoroughly modernist artist. Painter, printmaker, and teacher at the [...]

Apr 2, 2024

Steinberg before STEINBERG
Lecture by Mario Tedeschini Lalli, Rome (Italy)

Rachel Stern2024-05-22T13:55:25-04:00April 2nd, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on Steinberg before STEINBERG
Lecture by Mario Tedeschini Lalli, Rome (Italy)

In this presentation Mario Tedeschini Lalli, Italian journalist and scholar of 20th century history, tells the story of Saul Steinberg, before he became STEINBERG, the majuscules with which he signed his name to the art most people know, using some of his public art, some of his clandestine art, some of his personal art and - yes – some of his top secret art. Image above: Saul Steinberg, Seaside, 1941. © The Saul Steinberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York The art of Saul Steinberg (1914-1999) was arguably one of the most recognizable for the US public from the mid-1940s until his death in 1999. Much of Steinberg’s best-known work appeared in magazines such as [...]

Mar 27, 2024

Bruno Schulz (1892-1942):
An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History
Benjamin Balint and Ori Z Soltes in Conversation

Rachel Stern2024-04-03T13:56:09-04:00March 27th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on Bruno Schulz (1892-1942):
An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History
Benjamin Balint and Ori Z Soltes in Conversation

Benjamin Balint, author of the National Jewish Book Award winning book, and Georgetown University professor Ori Z Soltes in conversation. Bruno Schulz is renowned as a master of twentieth-century imaginative fiction. Isaac Bashevis Singer called him “one of the most remarkable writers who ever lived.” But Schulz was also an exceptionally talented graphic artist whose masochistic drawings would catch the eye of a sadistic Nazi officer. Schulz’s art became the currency in which he bought life. Image above: Bruno Schulz, Mural, 1941-1942. Drohobycz. Discovery Benjamin Geissler, 2001. Drawing on extensive new reporting and archival research, Benjamin Balint chases the inventive murals Schulz painted on the walls of an SS villa—the last traces of his vanished [...]

Mar 6, 2024

The Miraculous San Francisco Discovery of
Ary Arkady Lochakov’s Lost Art
A Talk by Journalist Julie Zigoris, San Francisco

Rachel Stern2024-03-27T13:42:26-04:00March 6th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on The Miraculous San Francisco Discovery of
Ary Arkady Lochakov’s Lost Art
A Talk by Journalist Julie Zigoris, San Francisco

One sunny May day in 2022—halfway around the world from Paris where the Jewish artist Ary Arkady Lochakov (1892-1941) died of malnutrition in 1941—a miraculous discovery was made. Maintenance staff came upon 48 abandoned artworks in a waterside park, all of them carefully arranged as if they were meant to be discovered. 38 of the 48 artworks all had the same signature: Ary Arkady Lochakov. Port employees researched Lochakov to discover he was a member of the famed École de Paris and was featured in Hersh Fenster's essential book Our Martyred Artists. San Francisco Standard journalist Julie Zigoris was the first (and only) to report the story to the public, following the trail of breadcrumbs to make some incredible [...]

Feb 26, 2024

Traces of a Jewish Artist:
The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit (1888–1942)
A Book Talk by Kerry Wallach, Gettysburg College

Rachel Stern2024-03-07T07:17:49-05:00February 26th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on Traces of a Jewish Artist:
The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit (1888–1942)
A Book Talk by Kerry Wallach, Gettysburg College

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. [...]

Jan 16, 2024

In Hitler’s Munich:
Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism
A Book Talk by Michael Brenner, Munich and Washington D.C.

Rachel Stern2024-01-31T18:36:36-05:00January 16th, 2024|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on In Hitler’s Munich:
Jews, the Revolution, and the Rise of Nazism
A Book Talk by Michael Brenner, Munich and Washington D.C.

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 [...]

Dec 26, 2023

The New Man as Man Machine
A Book Talk by Eckhart Gillen, Berlin

Rachel Stern2024-01-24T15:36:23-05:00December 26th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|Comments Off on The New Man as Man Machine
A Book Talk by Eckhart Gillen, Berlin

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 [...]