Josef Scharl

 Josef Scharl, Self-Portrait, 1944

Josef Scharl (1896-1954), second of fourteen children, was born in Munich as son of a baker. From 1910  he studied decoration painting and restoration at the Munich School of Painters. In 1915 he was drafted into military service. War injuries and a temporary paralysis of his right arm forced Scharl to spend the last year of the war in military hospitals.

 Josef Scharl, Verlassenes Café, 1930

Back in Munich, Scharl enrolled at the Kunstakademie in 1919. He started to work as an independent artist in 1921, and one year later married Magdalena Gruber. Scharl joined the artist groups "Munich Secession" and "Die Juryfreien" and successfully participated in their exhibitions. In 1930 Scharl was awarded the prestigious Rome Prize. A scholarship enabled him to travel through Italy and France between 1930 and 1932.

Joseph Scharl, Killed in Action, 1932

After Scharl's return to Munich, the cultural climate in Germany had changed. Sales and exhibitions decreased, Scharl's financial situation worsened, and after the Nazis had seized power in 1933 he was banned from painting. Nevertheless, the gallery Karl Nierendorf continued to organize solo shows for him. In 1935 some of Scharl's works were included in a "degenerate" art exhibition in Nuremberg. Scharl's emigration plans were enforced by an invitation of the Museum of Modern Art in New York to participate in an exhibition of German art together with Max Beckmann, Georg Scholz, Erich Heckel and Karl Hofer.

Josef Scharl, Portrait of Albert Einstein, 1944

In 1939 Scharl emigrated to the USA. Albert Einstein, whom Scharl had met in Berlin, supported him financially and helped him to organise various exhibition projects. Scharl visited Einstein in Princeton several times and painted portraits of him. The years 1944-46 marked the peak of Scharl's success in the USA. He won the order of "Pantheon Books" to illustrate the Brother Grimm's Fairy Tales. The fairy tale book was a commercial success and further orders followed, but Scharl was burdened with worries for his family left behind in Germany, a serious stomach illness and the death of Karl Nierendorf in 1947.

Josef Scharl, Street Scene in Paris, 1930

In 1952 Scharl obtained US citizenship. The same year he travelled to Switzerland to take part in a group exhibition at the gallery George Moos in Geneva. The air in Switzerland had a positive effect on his health and many new works were executed. Scharl declined a professorship in Munich and returned to the United States  in 1953. Josef Scharl died one year later in New York after a heart attack. You can see more of his works at Galerie Nierendorf's website.

Lotte Jacobi

 Lotte Jacobi, Self-Portrait, Berlin, 1929

Lotte Jacobi (1896-1990) was born in Thorn,  Prussia, in what is now Poland. When she was two years old, her family moved to nearby Posen. After Posen became part of Poland in 1921, the Jacobi family moved to Berlin and Lotte began her film and camera work, studying film at the University of Munich, while simultaneously attending the Bavarian State Academy of Photography.

 Ruth Jacobi, Berlin, 1928

Photography ran in the Jacobi family. Lotte’s great-grandfather, Samuel Jacobi, visited Paris between 1839 and 1842, where he obtained a camera, a license, and some instruction from L.J.M. Daguerre and then returned to Thorn to set up a studio. He prospered at his trade and eventually passed the business on to his son, Alexander. Alexander, in turn, handed the business down to his three sons, the eldest of whom was Lotte’s father, Sigismund. Thus, there was always the expectation that Lotte would continue the family business. With such a heritage, she once commented, “I was to be a photographer and that was that.”

Lotte Jacobi, Peter Lorre, 1930. Best known for his villainous roles, actor Peter Lorre (né László Löwenstein, 1904-1964) became famous as the child murderer in Fritz Lang's first sound movie, M (1931). After fleeing Nazi Germany in 1933, he went on to build a prominent film career in America, with roles in The Maltese Falcon (1941), Casablanca (1942), and others.

 After completing her formal studies, Jacobi entered the family business in 1927. During this same period (1926-27) she began her professional work as a photographer, and she also produced four films, the most important being “Portrait of the Artist,” a study of the German painter Josef Scharl. 

 Josef Scharl, The Massacre of the Innocents, 1942

From October of 1932 to January of 1933, Jacobi travelled to the Soviet Union, in particular to Tadjikistan and Uzbekistan, taking photographs of what she saw. She returned to Berlin in February 1933, one month after Hitler came to power. As persecution against Jews increased, Lotte left Germany with her son, arriving in New York City in September 1935 where she opened a studio in Manhattan. In 1940, Lotte married Erich Reiss, a distinguished German publisher and writer, a marriage that lasted until his death in 1951. During this time, she continued portrait photography at her studio, while also embarking upon an experimental type of photographic work that artist Leo Katz later named photogenics.

 Lotte Jacobi, Lotte Lenya, c. 1930. Lenya, wife of composer Kurt Weill, became famous as Jenny in the first performance of The Threepenny Opera in 1928.

In 1955, Lotte left New York with her son and daughter-in-law and moved to Deering, New Hampshire. There she opened a new studio, where she both continued her own work and displayed works by other artists. She became interested in politics and was a fervent Democrat, representing New Hampshire at the Democratic National Convention in 1980. She travelled extensively (in the U.S., Europe, and Peru) and enjoyed new-found fame in the 1970s and 1980s. She died in 1990 at the age of 93.

 Lotte Jacobi, Albert Einstein, 1938

Lotte Jacobi is best known for her photographic portraits, which act as a “chronicle of an era.” The list of her subjects reads like a who’s who of the 20th century: W.H. Auden, Martin Buber, Marc Chagall, W.E.B. DuBois, Albert Einstein, Robert Frost, Käthe Kollwitz, Lotte Lenya, Peter Lorre, Thomas Mann, Max Planck, Eleanor Roosevelt, J.D. Salinger, Alfred Stieglitz, and Chaim Weizmann – to name but a few. 

 Lotte Jacobi, Käthe Kollwitz, c. 1930