Rachel Stern2024-04-02T18:31:46-04:00March 28th, 2024|Newsletter|
Finally it's spring, and with it comes the energy of renewal and hope. At the Fritz Ascher Society, we have installed a new system to register for events. Hoping it will work flawlessly, I ask you to be kind and patient if it doesn't. Next week, we will hear National Jewish Book Award winner Benjamin Balint in conversation with Georgetown University Professor Ori Z Soltes: WEDNESDAY, April 3 ONLINE 12:00 PM EDT BRUNO SCHULZ (1892-1942): An Artist, a Murder, and the Hijacking of History REGISTER FOR THIS ONLINE EVENT HERE Bruno Schulz, ‘The Enchanted Town II,’ 1920-1922. Bruno Schulz is renowned as a master of twentieth-century imaginative fiction. Isaac Bashevis Singer called him “one [...]
Rachel Stern2024-03-05T11:31:35-05:00March 1st, 2024|Newsletter|
Happy March! This month, we are looking forward to three fabulous events. Please join us on March 18 at Fordham University in New York to celebrate the book launch of Welcoming the Stranger. Abrahamic Traditions and Contemporary Implications, or join us via livestream. Online, we'll learn about two artists well respected in their time, and recently re-discovered. Please safe March 27, 12:00pm ET for an unbelievable art mystery that is a developing story. Stay tuned! Next week, we'll focus on Rahel Szalit, who will be recognized in a forthcoming book publication. Hear author Kerry Wallach: WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6 ONLINE 12:00 PM EST ”TRACES OF A JEWISH ARTIST: THE LOST LIFE AND WORK OF RAHEL SZALIT (1888-1942) REGISTER [...]
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 Stern2024-01-24T06:51:51-05:00January 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 Stern2024-01-24T05:48:25-05:00November 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 Stern2023-10-09T15:01:13-04:00October 4th, 2023|Newsletter|
We have a busy month ahead: WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 11 ONLINE 12:00 pm EST / 18:00 Uhr CET ”SAMSON SCHAMES: FRAGMENTS OF EXILE” REGISTER FOR THIS ZOOM EVENT HERE Samson Schames, Blowing the Shofar, c. 1956. Glass tiles on glass, 56 x 71 cm. Jewish Museum Frankfurt Samson Schames (1898-1967) came from a long-established Jewish family in Frankfurt am Main. With the support of his uncle, renowned gallery owner Ludwig Schames, he made his way into the 1920s art scene and began his training as a painter, graphic artist, and stage designer. Schames’ designs, drawings, and oil paintings from the period up to 1933 testify to his deep connection to Frankfurt and her landscapes. After the National [...]
Rachel Stern2023-09-04T18:11:08-04:00September 4th, 2023|Newsletter|
Happy September! The air here in New York is crisp and smells like fall. In two weeks we ring in the new Jewish year by celebrating Rosh Hashanah, making this the last two weeks of our SUMMER FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN. Your donation helps us organize programs that discover and commemorate artists persecuted by the German Nazi regime. In learning about their lives and art and discussing the historical and cultural context they lived in, we aim to understand history better to help create a better future for us all. WE ARE HALFWAY THERE, raising $8,000.00 to support our virtual lecture program! Please help us reach our goal with your tax-deductible donation. DONATE TODAY With this month’s first [...]
Rachel Stern2024-01-24T07:04:07-05:00July 26th, 2023|Newsletter|
This month, we are kicking off our SUMMER FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN. Before the start of the new Jewish year, we aim to raise $8,000.00 to support our virtual lecture program. Help us continue educating about Antisemitism and the Holocaust through the Arts. Telling the stories of artists persecuted by the German Nazi regime and putting them in their historical and societal context initiates discussions that could not be more relevant today. To sponsor a lecture in honor or memory of someone, please contact Rachel Stern at stern@fritzaschersociety.org. If you like what we do, please show us! DONATE TODAY We have two extraordinary virtual events in our series “Flight or Fight. Stories of Artists under Repression” planned [...]
Rachel Stern2023-08-09T14:35:11-04:00July 17th, 2023|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Marie-Louise von Motesiczky was born into a wealthy, aristocratic Jewish family in Vienna in 1906. She trained under the German painter Max Beckmann, a family friend, and embarked on a promising career. When the National Socialists marched into Austria in 1938 Motesiczky fled the country for the Netherlands, eventually settling in England. Her attempts to build a new life in a foreign country were supported by a network of fellow émigrés, among them the painter Oskar Kokoschka and the writer Elias Canetti, with whom she had a long relationship. Lecture by Ines Schlenker, introduced and moderated by Rachel Stern. Image above: Self-Portrait with Red Hat, 1938 (Private Collection) ©️Marie-Louise von Motesiczky Charitable Trust 2023 [...]
