Yva (Else Neuländer-Simon)

 Yva, Ramona in the little flying machine, 1929

Else Neuländer (1900-1942) was born in Berlin where she opened her first photo studio in 1925. Yva soon became a popular fashion and portrait photographer and published in many prestigious newspapers and magazines such as Die Dame, Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung and Münchner Illustrierte Presse. At the height of her career, she employed up to ten employees in her studio. Yva briefly cooperated with photographer Heinz Hajek-Halke in 1926. 

Yva, Charleston, 1926

Since 1929 Yva worked for the Ullstein publishing house. Friedrich Kroner, the editor of the Ullstein-Verlag, commissioned Christian Schad in 1930 to paint a double portrait showing two young women, which would serve as a color cover for the publisher's magazine Uhu. Kroner wanted Schad to portray one of his female friends, in the company of Schad's girlfriend, Maika Lahmann. While Schad normally took his own photos, on this occasion he used a portrait of Maika and her friend which had been taken by Yva. He painted Freudinnen (Friends) during September-October 1930 in his Hardenbergstrasse studio, Berlin.

Christian Schad, Friends, 1930

Due to her Jewishness, Yva was prohibited from exercising her profession (Berufsverbot) after the Nazis had seized power in January 1933. Her studio was now officially run by her "arian" friend Charlotte Weidler. In 1936, the later famous photographer Helmut Newton began his apprenticeship in Yva's studio. Two years later, Yva had to finally give up the studio. She then worked as a radiographer in the Jewish Hospital in Berlin. In 1942, Yva and her husband, Alfred Simon, were arrested and deported to the Majdanek concentration camp where they were killed most probably in 1942.

Yva, Max Liebermann, from the series "Celebrities from behind", before 1930

The building in Berlin's Schlüterstraße 45, which was her last home and studio, now houses the Hotel Bogota. Yva's photos are displayed in the hall on the fourth floor - the former studio.

Chagall and Germany

 Marc Chagall, Exodus, 1952

Chagall left Russia in 1922 and pursued his work in Berlin from May 1922 to October 1923 before he finally settled in Paris permanently at the end of 1923. His temporary stay in Berlin became decisive for his career as an artist because he could learn from Hermann Struck und Joseph Budko the art of woodcut and of etching. In Berlin he created under the patronage of  the art dealer Paul Cassirer his first etching series called “Mein Leben” (My Life). At the time, Berlin was a centre for Jewish artistic endeavours. Notable Jewish artists were pursuing their work there e.g. Jakob Steinhardt, Ludwig Meidner, El Lissitzky, Issachar Beer Ryback, and Jankel Adler, all whom Chagall knew personally. 

 Marc Chagall, The Pinch of Snuff, 1912

Chagall was a renowned painter of modern art, even and especially in Germany where notable museum directors such as Georg Swarzenski and Gustav Friedrich Hartlaub had purchased his pictures. Already in 1933 these purchases came to be the target of Nazi propaganda. In Mannheim at the exhibition “kulturbolschewistische Bilder” Chagall's famous painting “The Pinch of Snuff” (above) was pulled on a hand-cart through the streets and publicly jeered at together with a painting from Jankel Adler:

 Jankel Adler, Cléron, the Cat Creator, 1925

In 1938 all of Chagall's oil paintings and water-colour pictures were confiscated from the public collections. Four of these were on display at the exhibition of “Degenerate Art” (i.e. “Purim” from the Folkwang Museum Essen, “The Pinch of Snuff” from the Kunsthalle Mannheim, “ Winter” and “Men with Cow”, two water-colour paintings from the Städtische Galerie at the Städelsches Kunstinstitut in Frankfurt). The confiscated works were later sold in Switzerland in exchange for foreign currencies. Today they are dispersed at notable museums throughout the world. Paintings that belonged to private collections shared about the same fate. For instance those that belonged to the vast private collection of Herwarth Walden. Today they are located in the U.S. and in Switzerland. 

Marc Chagall, Solitude, 1933

Chagall himself has made the beginning rule of tyranny in Germany an important theme in his paintings like in “Solitude” of 1933 (above) and “The Chute of Angels”, on which he worked from 1923 to 1947:

 Marc Chagall, The Chute of Angels, 1923-1947

Look at the clocks, it's ten past ten on both of them, close to midnight, and time is running out again:

 Marc Chagall, Clock, 1914

After Chagall heard of the pogroms during the Reichskristallnacht in 1938, he created a major work called “The White Crucifixion”, today in the Art Institute of Chicago:

Marc Chagall, White Crucifixion, 1938 

Chagall needs to flee France from the Germans in 1944. After his return from exile in the United States to Paris, as part of a memorial book dedicated to eighty-four Jewish artists who were killed by the Nazis in France, Chagall wrote a poem entitled "For the Slaughtered Artists: 1950":

I see them: trudging alone in rags,

barefoot on mute roads.

The brothers of Israels, Pissaro and

Modigliani, our brothers - pulled with ropes

by the sons of Dürer, Cranach

and Holbein - to death in the crematoria.

Karl Hofer

 Karl Hofer, Grosser Karneval, 1928

Karl Hofer was born in Karlsruhe on 11 October 1878 as son of a military musician. After an apprenticeship in C.F. Müller's court bookstore, he began to study at the Großherzogliche Badische Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Karlsruhe in 1897. Here he studied under Poetzelberger, Kalckreuth and Thoma until 1901. None of these teachers, however, were able to provide him with ideas for his ambitious striving for a new art form and he soon came under the influence of Arnold Böcklin. 

 Karl Hofer, The Caller, 1935

Hofer travelled to Paris in 1900 where he was greatly impressed by Henri Rousseau's naive painting. The art historian Julius Meier-Graefe introduced Hofer not only to private collections worth while seeing in Paris, but also drew his attention to Hans von Marées. As a result Hofer decided in 1903 to spend a couple of years in Rome. His painting, which was until then influenced by Böcklin's Symbolism, changed in favour of Marées' classic Arcadian concept. In 1904 the Kunsthaus Zurich presented Hofer's first one-man show within the ‚Ausstellung moderner Kunstwerke', which was afterwards shown in an extended version at the Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and at the Folkwang-Museum in Hagen and in Weimar in 1906. 

Karl Hofer, Die Wächter (The Guardians), 1936

From 1908 Hofer lived temporarily in Paris. The stay changed his style through dealing with influences of Cézanne, French Impressionists and El Greco. In 1913 the artist moved to Berlin. He was interned in France one year later and only returned to Germany in 1917. He accepted a post as a professor at the Kunstschule in Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1921 (where he was the teacher of Hans Feibusch). On the occasion of his 50th birthday a retrospective took place at the Kunsthalle Mannheim, the ‚Berlin Secession' and Alfred Flechtheim's gallery in Berlin. His art was considered "degenerate" during the 'Third Reich' and he was dismissed from his teaching post in 1933/34. His works were exhibited in 1937 in the Munich exhibition 'Entartete Kunst'. 

 Karl Hofer, The Camp, 1944

A vehement anti-Nazi protest, the next work, Santa Denunziata  is tied to the tragic events in Karl Hofer's life. In 1941, Mathilde Hofer (neé Scheinberger), the artist's wife, was denounced as a Jew by Gestapo informants (Denunziaten) and sent to her death at Auschwitz.

Karl Hofer, Santa Denunziata, 1941

Hofer then declared; "When they are finished with the Jews, they will start with the artists, and with all of those who cannot defend themselves." The partly concealed, haloed figure, is likely a self-portrait of the artist as a future victim surrounded by accusers who may fear they will be the next victims themselves.

Karl Hofer, The Black Rooms, 1943

After the war, in July 1945, Hofer was appointed director of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste in Berlin. Together with Oskar Nerlinger he edited the art magazine "Bildende Kunst". Hofer died in Berlin in 1955.

More paintings by Karl Hofer are here on my Flickr page.