Art Brings People Together

Pages for All Ages: Art Brings People Together Some words and phrases to know before you read • shrivel • blockade • expose • Tao Te Ching • an objective • sawdust • publisher, • philosophy • industrial • malnutrition publishing • influence • Cologne • shrapnel • Hitler, Nazis • denomination • assembly lines souvenirs • political cartoons • complications When he was 78, Fritz Eichenberg looked back on Fritz Eichenberg was born in 1901 in the industrial city his life and said, “I have a tremendous feeling for of Cologne, Germany. At that time, wealthy countries compassion. If I would work just for myself, I think were using the new idea of “assembly lines” to make I would shrivel up. It’s not enough. We belong to weapons by the millions. At the same time, many a community of people. We can’t exist alone. countries seemed to be in the mood for war. When Almost everything I’ve done . I did my best to bring Eichenberg was thirteen, Germany and Russia went to people together, to make people understand each war with each other, which grew into World War One. other. That is my main objective in life.” Cologne was blockaded and bombed for years. As Eichenberg remembered, “There was hardly anything you could eat that wasn’t made of sawdust . Turnips were the only thing you could get.” Eichenberg’s father died of malnutrition when the boy was fifteen. Two years later, as Eichenberg told it, “During the last days of the war, I used to go up to the roof of our house to pick up shrapnel souvenirs from the night’s bombing raids. Undernourished, as we all were, I collapsed one morning in front of Fritz Witte’s door. He was a famous art historian . curator of the Schnutgen Museum of Religious Art.” Witte showed the boy drawings and paintings by famous artists who used their skills to expose the horrors of war – Horgoth, Goya, Daumier, and others. Eichenberg decided to become one of those artists. When he was nineteen, he moved to Leipzig to study print-making and book production, and he fell in love with another student, Mary. They married six years later. After another four years, they had a daughter. The family moved to Berlin and lived there from 1923 to 1933. Eichenberg worked as an “artist-reporter” for 16 Western Friend, January / February 2021 one of the biggest publishers in the world, Ullstein Publishing. The Ullsteins, like the Eichenbergs, were typical Germans. Even though their family history was Jewish, they thought of themselves as “Germans.” People like the Ullsteins and the Eichenbergs thought Hitler was a clown, even while he gained power. For years, Eichenberg made fun of the Nazis with political cartoons. Eventually, that became too dangerous. Eichenberg managed to escape from Germany – with his wife and two-year-old daughter – right before Hitler became Chancellor in 1933. The family entered America right after the Great Depression, and the country was still filled with poverty. So Eichenberg started using his art to expose new injustices in his new homeland. Three years after they arrived in America, Mary died suddenly from an abdominal abscess. Before that, Eichenberg had never worried much about “the meaning of life.” Over the next few years, he became a serious student of the Tao Te Ching. He also began reading philosophy books that a Quaker friend gave him. By 1940, he had fallen in love with Antonie, and they decided to marry. Eichenberg remembered, “When I married again . we had kind the world to connect artists from different countries of a mixed group – half Jewish, half Lutheran, with each other. “I have friends all over the world,” half Christian . To pull the family together . he said. “We never discuss racial or denominational Quakerism seemed to me the thing that could do it.” differences. We try to find out where we can get together. And in all my travels, I found that art is the Eichenberg became a Quaker. He wrote and drew and one thing that immediately brings people together.” taught about Quaker ideas. In 1949, he met Dorothy Day, a leader in the Catholic Worker movement. Years Fritz Eichenberg died at age 89 of complications later, he said Day was, “from a personal point of view, from Parkinson’s disease. He succeeded in focusing perhaps the most important influence in my life.” his whole life on bringing people together. The Catholic Worker movement helps people whom • What is something you feel certain about? others call “hopeless cases.” Dorothy Day published • What kinds of projects seem best for a person the Catholic Worker newspaper. She knew the paper to do alone and which seem best for groups of went to many people who didn’t know how to read. people to do together? She asked Eichenberg if he would make pictures for the Catholic Worker, to communicate with people who • Is it ever good to make fun of people? could not read. He said “yes” right away. For forty years, Eichenberg made scores of pictures for the Both images here are by Fritz Eichenberg: Nazi Cross (circa Catholic Worker. They are some of his best-known art. 1944) and Labor Cross (1954). Regarding the “broadcasting” Eichenberg became a famous artist and art teacher. He of his works, Eichenberg said, “The wider the distribution, the led important art organizations. He traveled all over happier it makes me.” Western Friend, January / February 2021 17.

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