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Chana Schütz, ed., Karl Schwarz ve Reshito shel Museon Tel Aviv 1933–1947 [Karl Schwarz and Tel Aviv Museum’s Early Days, 1933–1947]. Tel Aviv and Berlin: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Stiftung Neue Synagogue, Centrum Judaicum, 2010. 177 pp., 188 illustrations (31 color), 80 NIS.

Fig. 1. Noach Bee (Birsowski), Portrait of Karl Schwarz (left), Portrait of Tel Aviv Mayor Israel Rokach (right). From Noach Bee (Birzovsky), Pne Tel Aviv beKarikaturot [Faces of Tel Aviv in Caricatures], ed. Moshe Sheynbaum (Tel Aviv: Eretz Israel Publishing, undated [ca. late 1930s]).

Tel Avivan by Citizenship, Berliner for Life Schwarz’s activities before 1933 as an art historian and a scholar of Jewish art. It also complements publica- Karl Schwarz (1885–1962) was an art historian, art tions by the Tel Aviv Museum dedicated to its former critic, and museum curator, whose special area of directors, such as Dr. Hayim Gamzu, who followed interest was modern printmaking. In the late 1920s and Schwarz in 1947, and Eugen Kolb, who served as direc- early 1930s he was an editor at the Verlag für Jüdische tor from 1952–59.1 Kultur, Fritz Gurlitt and headed the Jewish Museum in Schütz’s book opens with extended acknowledge- Berlin. In 1933, upon an invitation by Tel Aviv mayor ments to the Tel Aviv Museum’s directorate, for Meir Dizengoff, he immigrated to Jewish Palestine and giving—in her own words—“an ‘outsider’ from Berlin served as director of the Tel Aviv Museum for the next the privilege of portraying in a respectful way the fourteen years. This book, edited by Chana Schütz, figure of Karl Schwarz and his achievements for the focuses on Schwarz’s activities as director of the Tel Tel Aviv Museum” (11). Schütz has made significant Aviv Museum. It comes as a sequel to Schütz’s 2001 contributions to contemporary historical-cultural book Karl Schwarz: Jüdische Kunst, Jüdische Künstler research of the “Jewish Renaissance” centered in Berlin (Berlin: Hentrich & Hentrich, 2001), which deals with before 1933. She has published seminal articles on the

1 Dr. Hayim Gamzu, Bikoret Omanut [Hayim Gamzu, Art Kolb, Binyan Tarbut beIsrael [Eugen Kolb, Building Culture in Israel] Critiques], (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2006); and Eugen (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv Museum of Art, 2003).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2013 IMAGES 6 Also available online—brill.com/ima DOI: 10.1163/18718000-12340015 162 reviews subject, for example, “Art by Jewish Publications,” in seventeen pounds sterling in one hundred and twenty the framework of an exhibition held at the Art Library monthly payments with no interest.2 The fifteen essays in Berlin (1989), “Bialik, Ginzburg, Gershuni, Heaven, included in this volume, all originally published in the Books,” in the catalogue to an exhibition held at The daily Haaretz, are an important resource for the future Centrum Judaicum in Berlin—to name but two—in historian in contextualizing Schwarz’s seminal place in which she paints a complex and fascinating picture of the history of art in the nascent Yishuv. Jewish artists’ activities in that city prior to the Nazi Presenting Schwarz’s contribution to the Tel Aviv ascent to power. Her introductory article to the pres- Museum, Schütz opens with a survey of the institu- ent volume, which focuses upon Schwarz’s Tel Aviv tion’s founding fathers’ missions, first and foremost Museum period, is far stronger in its presentation of that of mayor Meir Dizengoff. This context is impor- the German context, which is her specialty, than of tant, since from the moment he arrived in Tel Aviv, the local context of British Mandate Palestine. The Karl Schwarz completely changed Dizengoff and his Palestinian context is essential for our understanding advisors’ concept of the museum. As imagined by of the role played by Karl Schwarz and his great influ- Dizengoff, the museum was to serve as a platform ence on that particular field. for the Cultural Zionist project that began with Ahad According to Schütz, Karl Schwarz exhibited two ha-Am and whose most acclaimed proponent was main characteristics as a museum director. He was Chaim Nahman Bialik. Bialik, one should note, was first and foremost a “Berliner,” an ambitious collector a significant partner in Dizengoff ’s decision to found who directed most of his energies to enriching the col- a museum in Tel Aviv. The basic idea shared by both lections of the museum. Schütz focuses on Schwarz’s poet and mayor was to assemble in Tel Aviv, “The First correspondence with Jewish collectors throughout Hebrew City,” an esteemed collection of Jewish art from Europe (and especially those from Germany), pay- all parts of the Jewish Diaspora and to create a sort ing close attention to particular donations of works of “artistic compilation” similar to Bialik’s vision of a of art to the Tel Aviv Museum that she attributes to “literary compilation” of Hebrew authors and poets. The Schwarz’s expert mediations. Schütz rightly praises introduction to the catalogue, published in honor of Schwarz’s constant efforts to acquire the much coveted the inauguration of the Tel Aviv Museum (apparently and all-too-rare British immigration certificates for his unknown to Schütz), contains a detailed proclamation German compatriots to British Mandate Palestine, of the museum’s aims. These echo—almost verbatim— which did not succeed (51, 52). The author mentions, Bialik’s ideas about the nature of modern Jewish art for example, Schwarz’s vain attempt to acquire such that were published by the poet about ten years earlier a certificate for German-Jewish Expressionist artist in a treatise devoted to the art of Russian-Jewish artist Ludwig Meidner (51). Leonid Pasternak: Second, Schwarz was a central, if not the central character in the development of art in Jewish Palestine Jewish artists are separated and scattered in many coun- at its most formative stage. On a very basic level, one tries; their creations drown within foreign art as a singular of his most significant contributions to the develop- drop in the sea. There are such [Jewish] artists that do not ment of Israeli culture was his private art collection, join the communal efforts of a singular nation [Judaism]. which included over seventeen hundred drawings and This is due to the fact that their creations—even though the Jewish spirit speaks loudly from their brushes and prints by German Expressionist artists. He brought chisels—are always credited to other nations. At times, this collection with him from Germany, and it now Jewish traits of certain artists, those who are masters of forms a significant part of the Tel Aviv Museum’s their trade, are unexpectedly revealed. graphic collection. Schwarz sold his collection of The Hebrew museum in Jewish Palestine is given a prints and drawings to the Tel Aviv Museum; the Tel task: to search for Hebrew art wherever it may be found, Aviv Municipality paid him a monthly honorarium of to compile and assemble it in a single place and add it to a singular national account.3

2 Schwarz mentioned this affair in a letter (written in French), under Mordechai Narkiss at the Bezalel National Museum in sent to Dr. J. Leibovitch, 17 Rue Kassad, Bab-el Louk, Le-Caire, Jerusalem. Egypt, dated April 27, 1947. See: Tel Aviv Museum File No. 23a, 3 “Introduction” in Catalogue Dedicated to the Inauguration of box 1024, Unit 4, Tel Aviv Municipal Archive. Leibovitch was the Tel Aviv Museum, 1932, as quoted by Tami Katz-Freiman, Yissud keeper of the photography archive at the Musée du Caire Museum Tel Aviv, 1930–1936, (Tel Aviv: The Tel Aviv Museum of (Cairo Museum). He migrated to Israel in the 1950s and worked Art, 1982), 11–12.