JUDENMORD Art and the Holocaust in Post-war Germany Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius with Sigrid Philipps REAKTION BOOKS In Memory of my Grandmother Emma Hummel née Reis, Mainz, 27 September 1880 – Krefeld, 3 April 1962 and my great-aunt Barbara Fischer née Reis, Mainz, 9 January 1895 – Auschwitz, 20 October 1943 Published by reaktion books ltd Unit 32, Waterside 44–48 Wharf Road London n1 7ux, uk www.reaktionbooks.co.uk First published by Reaktion Books in 2018 English translation by Anthony Mathews Translation © Reaktion Books 2018 Bilder zum Judenmord © 2014 by Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius Originally published by Jonas Verlag, Marburg, 2014 The translation of this work was funded by Geisteswissenschaften International – Translation Funding for Humanities and Social Sciences from Germany, a joint initiative of the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Federal Foreign Office, the collecting society vg wort and the Börsenverein des Deutschen Buchhandels (German Publishers & Booksellers Association). The author acknowledges additional support by the Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Kunstsammlung. All rights reserved No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers Printed and bound in China by 1010 Printing International Ltd A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library isbn 978 1 78023 907 1 Contents Foreword to the English Edition 7 Introduction 8 1 Prequel Images 22 2 The Human Figure, 1945–9 32 3 Early Series 66 4 Captured in One Picture 140 5 A Confession 168 6 Remembering in the 1950s 170 7 Remembering Again: The Early 1960s 207 8 The Past in the Present: Commenting on the Auschwitz Trial 238 References 319 Bibliography 355 Acknowledgements 381 List of Illustrations 383 Index 393 1 Prequel Images he Nazi period was not the first time that Jews were subjected to deadly attacks; quite early on pogroms were captured in images and widely T known about. The question is whether this German history of anti- Judaism and anti-Semitism is also reflected in the drawings and paintings that were made after 1945.1 As early as 1493 the same woodcut of Jews being burned alive was shown as many as three times in the Nuremberg chronicle of the world by Hartmann Schedel (illus. 2). The illustration was inserted into the text whenever ‘evil deeds’ are mentioned that were attributed to the Jews and whenever there are reports of their alleged desecrations of the Sacred Host in various German towns.2 This extremely realistic portrayal of the burning alive of Jews has re- mained in the popular mind right up until modern times, and is recalled in the graphic representations of gassing by both Lea Grundig and Ludwig Meidner (see illus. 41 and 42). Whereas, however, the image in the late medieval illustrated book of world history was understood in relation to the torments in Hell as an inevitable punishment, in their 1940s graphics the two exiled Jewish artists expressed sorrow at the terrible suffering of their peo- ple. In this sense they were countering the anti-Semitic imagery of the Nazi propaganda that did not so much portray acts of violence as emphasize the alleged danger that the Jews presented. In the 1950s Lidy von Lüttwitz (see illus. 140) used the ancient woodcut as a model for the memorial at Auschwitz. In Germany the few other representations of pogroms before 1933 referred mainly to the cruel acts of persecution in Tsarist Russia in the 1880s and those carried out during the civil wars there.3 As images of grief and fore- warning, they have been represented principally by Jewish artists. In 1904 in Exile (illus. 3), Samuel Hirszenberg portrayed the mass exodus following the 23 Prequel Images 2 Hartmann Schedel, ‘Burning Alive of Jews’, from Schedelsche Weltchronik (Nuremberg, 1493), woodcut. pogroms of 1903.4 In a large painting a long procession of male and female figures is moving through a hostile-looking landscape. Their clothing and headgear are varied and indicate a range of social classes, all walking close to- gether, sharing the same fate. The painting has disappeared; in the interim it was widely distributed as a postcard bearing the title Golus and referring to any exile since the destruction of the Second Temple.5 It became a prototype for the representation of Jewish refugees and has clearly influenced the works of art discussed in this book more than Hirszenberg’s Wandering Jew of 1899, portraying a massacre.6 For Jakob Steinhardt in 1913, it may have been both the contemporary ac- cusations of ritual murder current in Russia at the time and those in Zerkow in Poland in his youth that were the motivation behind his two woodcuts7 and the dry-point etching (illus. 4) depicting pogroms. The compositional arrangement of these works, Lea Weik concluded, harked back to the cop- per engraving by Johann Michael Voltz on the bloody acts of violence against Jews in Frankfurt am Main in 1819.8 In this drawing, and in one of the two woodcuts of 1913, gangs approaching from the left are attacking Jews on the right who are already overpowered, while in the right-hand foreground, among those that have been clubbed, there is an old bearded Jew holding up his hands to the heavens, representing the lamenting Jew and prophet, a grieving figure that Steinhardt was particularly preoccupied with at the time.9 With what seem wildly rapid strokes, the whole event is etched into a city street scene, as in the case of Voltz, but significantly Steinhardt added on the horizon a church tower topped by a cross. In a 1914 lithograph Max Liebermann recalled the pogrom in Bessarabia ten years previously. Only in the background did he suggest the attacks by 3 Samuel Hirszenberg, Exile, 1904, postcard. 4 Jakob Steinhardt, Pogrom, 1913, dry-point etching. 25 Prequel Images 5 Max Liebermann, the military on horseback, whereas he placed a monumental female figure in Kischinew: To my Beloved the centre of the picture following a pictorial arrangement that he often used Jews (The Czar), from (see illus. 218). Fleeing from her assailants out for plunder and carrying her Kriegszeit Künstlerflugblätter, child and all her belongings in her arms, she can be viewed as an allegory of III/16 (September 1916), 10 lithograph. the persecuted Jews. The print with the titleKischinew (illus. 5) appeared in the magazine Kriegszeit in 1914 published by Paul Cassirer and justified 6 Willy Jaeckel, Massacre the German attack on Tsarist Russia. In the same series of Künstlerflugblätter of the Jews, from Kriegszeit (artists’ flyers) the non-Jewish Willy Jaeckel also published the drawing Massacre Künstlerflugblätter, XXXII/24 (March 1915), lithograph. of the Jews of 1915 (illus. 6). He emphasized the rape of Jewish women by men with fur caps, here presumably indicating Russians; at the time Russia was at war with the German Reich. The artist was harking back to a popular image in war propaganda, using the defilement of women in war as a means of blackening the enemy.11 Lea Grundig, after her first arrest and under the influence of the Nuremberg Race Laws in Germany around 1935 or perhaps during her stay in Switzerland, etched Pogrom (illus. 7) as part of the series The Jew is Guilty about the perse- cution at the time in Poland.12 The same gesture by a boy terrified to death is documented in the well-known photograph from the Stroop Report on the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, with which the ss demonstrated their victory over the Jews in 1943 (see illus. 153). Grundig placed the viewer in the same pos- ition as the firing squad and so presented him with the threat of murder of the extended family before his very eyes. 26 Judenmord Even though many artists witnessed the start of assaults by the Nazis after 7 Lea Grundig, Pogrom, 1933, apart from Grundig there are not many other commentaries on them. drawing 5 from the series The The painter Ludwig Meidner, libelled and driven into exile by the Nazis, and Jew is Guilty, 1935, etching. who in Cologne had experienced the pogrom against Jews and their prop- erty on Reichskristallnacht in 1938, devoted an impressive drawing13 (illus. 8) as a memorial to these aggressive acts by the Nazis. Two religious Jews, pre- sumably rabbis, lamenting in the midst of destroyed and burning synagogues and the remains of their contents, are juxtaposed by Meidner with an angel- like vision in a bright robe and with curly hair. This figure is pointing its right forefinger at Hebrew letters14 resembling the Writing on the Wall at Belshazzar’s Feast, but indicating on a white scroll – not on the wall as in Daniel 5:5 – the date equivalent to 10 November 1938 in the Jewish calen- dar. By inscribing this on a scroll, Meidner was writing the date into the long history of persecution of the Jewish people. He was linking Jewish history to contemporary politics in Germany by making reference back to the text of 8 Ludwig Meidner, In the prophet Daniel and the subsequent tradition of Christian iconography. Memory of our Destroyed Its message is that the figure pointing to the scripture is intended to be the Synagogues in Germany, prophet Daniel, who is interpreting the writing as a prophecy of the coming 1939, chalk and charcoal end of Belshazzar’s rule. Opposite him, in the way the scene is normally on paper. 28 Judenmord represented, is the terrified king, the only one to see the message. But in this position Meidner placed the despairing rabbis bewailing the burning of the synagogues, heedless of the written signs.