Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
Frederika "Friedl" Dicker-Brandeis | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Frederika Dicker July 30, 1898 |
| Died | October 9, 1944 (aged 46) |
| Nationality | Austrian |
| Known for | Painting, Drawing, Design |
| Spouse |
Pavel Brandeis (m. 1936) |
Frederika "Friedl" Dicker-Brandeis (30 July 1898, Vienna – 9 October 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau), was an Austrian artist, designer and educator murdered by the Nazis in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. From 1919-1923 she was a student at the Weimar Bauhaus.
Biography
[edit]Frederika Dicker was born in Vienna on 30 July 1898, into a poor Jewish family. Her father was a shop-assistant; her mother, Karolina, died in 1902. She married Pavel Brandeis in 1936 and used the hyphenated surname after that.
Dicker-Brandeis was a student of Johannes Itten at his private school in Vienna, and later followed Itten to study and teach at the Weimar Bauhaus. After completing the obligatory one semester Bauhaus Preliminary Course, Dicker was accepted as a student. She was recognised as an exceptionally gifted student, such that throughout her time at the Weimar Bauhaus she was not required to pay some tuition fees, given scholarship funds and granted a studio in the autumn of 1921.[1] She was involved in the textile design, printmaking, bookbinding, and typography workshops there from 1919-1923.
After leaving the Bauhaus, she worked as an artist and textile designer in Berlin, Prague, and Hronov. Dicker-Brandeis wrote to a friend in 1940:[2]
I remember thinking in school how I would grow up and would protect my students from unpleasant impressions, from uncertainty, from scrappy learning... Today only one thing seems important — to rouse the desire towards creative work, to make it a habit, and to teach how to overcome difficulties that are insignificant in comparison with the goal to which you are striving.
In World War II
[edit]Dicker-Brandeis and her husband, Pavel Brandeis, were deported to the Terezín "model ghetto" on December 17, 1942. During her time at Terezín, she gave art lessons and lectures with art supplies she smuggled into the camp.[3] She helped to organize secret education classes for the 600 children of Terezín. She saw drawing and art as a way for the children to understand their emotions and their environment. Dicker-Brandeis insisted that each child must sign their own name, not allowing them to become invisible or anonymous. [3] In this, she persisted in pursuing her goal "to rouse the desire towards creative work."[2]
In September 1944, Brandeis was transported to Auschwitz. Dicker-Brandeis volunteered for the next transport to join him. Before she was taken away, she entrusted Raja Engländerova, chief tutor of Girls' Home L 410, with two suitcases containing 4,500 drawings. Dicker-Brandeis was murdered in Birkenau on 9 October 1944.[4] Her husband survived.
Legacy
[edit]After the war, Willy Groag, director of the Girls' home L 410, brought the suitcases with children's drawings to the Jewish Community in Prague. From the nearly 660 authors of the drawings, 550 were murdered in the Holocaust. The drawings are now in the Jewish Museum in Prague's collection, with some on display in the Pinkas Synagogue.
In 1999, an exhibition of Dicker-Brandeis' work, organized by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and curated by Elena Makarova of Israel, opened in Vienna. It then toured to the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden, France, USA, and Japan.
Her work was included in the 2019 exhibition City Of Women: Female Artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938 at the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere.[5]
Gallery
[edit]-
Výslech I -
Nádraží
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ Otto, Elizabeth. "Passages with Friedl Dicker-Brandeis: From the Bauhaus through Theresienstadt". academia.edu. Edition Text & Kritik. Retrieved 20 August 2024.
- ^ a b Salamon, Julie (September 10, 2004). "Keeping Creativity Alive, Even in Hell". The New York Times.
- ^ a b Brown, Kellie (2020). The sound of hope: Music as solace, resistance and salvation during the holocaust and world war II. McFarland. pp. 99–100.
- ^ Sterling, Eric (2005). Life in the ghettos during the Holocaust. Syracuse University Press. p. 196. ISBN 978-0-8156-0803-5.
- ^ "City of Women". Belvedere Museum Vienna. Retrieved 26 June 2020.
Bibliography
[edit]- Susan Goldman Rubin: Fireflies in the Dark: The Story of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and the Children of Terezin, Holiday House Inc New York, 2000, ISBN 0-8234-1681-X
- Elena Makarova: Friedl, Dicker-Brandeis, Vienna 1898- Auschwitz 1944: the artist who inspired the children's drawings of Terezin ", 1st edition. Tallfellow/Every Picture Press, in association with Simon Wiesenthal Center/Museum of Tolerance, Los Angeles, 2001, ISBN 0-9676061-9-5
External links
[edit]
Media related to Friedl Dicker-Brandeisová at Wikimedia Commons- Entry in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia
- More about Friedl Dicker-Brandeis
- The Pinkas Synagogue
- Exhibition Tokyo Fuji Art Museum April 2002
- Jewish Museum (1109 Fifth Avenue, New York City) from September 10, 2004 to January 16, 2005
- http://makarovainit.com/friedl/home.html
- https://web.archive.org/web/20101215004606/http://www.jewishmuseum.cz/en/afdb.htm
- https://web.archive.org/web/20140116202409/http://www.thejewishmuseum.org/exhibitions/FDB
- Documents about Friedl Dicker-Brandeis in the collection of the Jewish Museum Prague Archived 2011-04-23 at the Wayback Machine.
- about Friedl Dicker-Brandeis in Yad Vashem website
- 1898 births
- 1944 deaths
- Austrian people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp
- Bauhaus alumni
- Austrian expatriates in Germany
- Austrian expatriates in Czechoslovakia
- Czech Jews
- Jewish Czech artists
- Jewish Austrian artists
- Artists from Vienna
- Theresienstadt Ghetto prisoners
- Austrian civilians killed in World War II
- Austrian schoolteachers
- 20th-century Austrian women painters
- 20th-century Austrian women artists
- Austrian Jews who died in the Holocaust
- Jewish women artists