Georg Tappert

 Georg Tappert, Geisha Revue, 1913

Georg Tappert (1880-1957) was born in Berlin as the son of a tailor. Growing up on Friedrichstraße - one of the main fashion and entertainment streets - Georg soon became familiar with the fashion world and the demi-monde. After an apprenticeship in his father's studio, he began his formal artistic training in 1901 at the Karlsruhe Academy. 

 Georg Tappert, Pink Chansonette, 1921

In 1905, Tappert moved back to Berlin (where he had his first solo exhibition at Paul Cassirer's gallery) and then to Worpswede where he participated in the creation of  the Worpswede Art School. In 1910, Tappert co-founded the Neue Sezession (with Max Pechstein and others) and was appointed its first executive officer. In 1912, he began teaching in Berlin's Royal Art School. During the First World War, Tappert was drafted into the Fliegerstaffel (Flying Corps), but could stay in Berlin and continue with his art work. 

 Georg Tappert, Girl with Flat Hat, c. 1925

After the war, Tappert was one of the founding members and organizers of the Novembergruppe, and a member of the Arbeitsrat für Kunst. Tappert exhibited with the Novembergruppe until 1929. In 1919, Tappert resumed his teaching positions in Berlin at the private Reimann School and the Staatliche Kunstschule. In 1933, while teaching at the Kunstschule, Tappert was dragged from his class by Nazi students who demanded his dismissal. He was temporarily ousted but reinstated the same year. 

 Georg Tappert, Nude, 1930

In 1937, Tappert was finally dismissed from his teaching position and included as an example of "artistic decay" in the pamphlet "The Cleansing of the Temple of Art". The same year, Tappert’s works were removed from all public collections in Germany. After the destruction of his Berlin studio by Allied bombs in 1944, Tappert decided to stop painting. More than hundred of his works were either destroyed by the Nazis or evaporated in the burning of his studio. In 1945, shortly after the war, Georg Tappert, together with Karl Hofer, was asked by the Allied Occupation Forces to help rebuilding the Berlin University of the Arts. He died 1957 in Berlin. You can see more works of Georg Tappert here in my Flickr set.

Erich Salomon - The King of the Indiscreet

Erich Salomon, Self-Portrait on Board of the Mauretania, 1929

Erich Salomon (1886-1944) was born into a prosperous German-Jewish family well assimilated into Berlin society. His father was a banker; his mother came from a line of prominent publishers. He first studied zoology, then switched to engineering before finally settling on law and taking his degree in 1913. With the outbreak of World War I, he was drafted into the Kaiser´s army and soon thereafter was captured during the first Battle of the Marne. He spent the next four years in prisoner-of-war camps, where he served as an interpreter and acquired the fluency in French that was later to prove invaluable in gaining entry to conferences.

Erich Salomom, Five Gentlemen Conversing around a Table, c. 1928 (This picture was taken in the Reichskanzlei in Berlin)

In the postwar years, the family fortune melted away in the inflationary storms that devastated the German economy, and Salomon was forced to live by his wits. He founded an electric car and motorcycle rental service. The enterprise failed, but an advertisement he ran offering to give free legal and financial advice to car-rental customers while chauffering them around attracted the attention of the Ullstein publishing house and, in 1925, they offered him a job in their promotion department. At Ullstein, Salomon immediately was fascinated by photography, and soon began shooting feature pictures for the Ullstein dailies. After experimenting with and mastering the technique of shooting indoors by existing light, Salomon had no trouble convincing Ullstein to let him cove the headline-making trial of a police killer for Berliner Illustrierte.

Erich Salomon, Krantz trial. Hilde Scheller in the witness box, Berlin, 1928. The Krantz trial was one of the most famous murder trials in the Weimar Republic. Hilde Scheller (at that time 16 years old), together with a group of boys deeply in love with her, started a so-called "Suicide Club" resulting in one killing on request and one suicide.

Any pictures taken in the courtroom, where photography was forbidden, would have been a major scoop for the paper, but the ones that Salomon returned with were extraordinary. Salomon had accomplished this by hiding his camera in a bowler hat, cutting a hole for the lens. On the last day, when a court attendant finally realized what he was doing and demanded his negatives, Salomon resorted to a trick he was to use time and time again. He handed over unexposed plates, acted repentant, and left with the exposed ones still in his pockets. In 1928, only one year after he had become interested in photography, Salomon´s career was launched.

Erich Salomon, Court trial against Ringverein Immertreu (Wrestling Association Always Loyal), 1929. At that time Berlin's criminals were organized in so-called wrestling clubs as a camouflage. One of these clubs played an important role in Fritz Lang's 1931 movie M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder - some of the crooks were casted with real gangsters.

Salomon soon covered another sensational murder trial. This time, Salomon, a confirmed gadgeteer, concealed his Ermanox in an attaché case outfitted with an intricate set of levers to trigger the shutter. When these pictures were widely published throughout Europe, he left his staff position at Ullstein to become a full-time professional. That same year, he covered his first series of international conferences: the summit meeting in Lugano, a session of the League of Nations in Geneva, and the signing of the Kellogg-Briand disarmament pack in Paris, where he calmly walked in and took the seat of the absent Polish delegate. In his free time, he frequented diplomatic and social events in Berlin.

Erich Salomon, Albert Einstein engaging in animated conversation with British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald, surrounded by a group of luminaries including the Nobel Prize-winner Max Planck, far right, and other German political and business leaders, smoking cigars and sipping cognac. The reception was given by Reich Chancellor Brüning in honour of the visiting British Prime Minister in August 1931. “You have no idea with what affection I am surrounded here, they are all out to catch the drops of oil my brain sweats out,” Einstein noted on this occasion.

Because of his dogged persistence, unobstrusive manner, and dramatic results, Salomon found fewer and fewer barriers to his presence in realms where all other photographers were excluded. Indeed, many statemen began to develop a good-humored acceptance of his ubiquity. At the opening of an international gathering, the French Foreign Minister, Aristide Briand, amused his fellow delegates by looking around and exclaiming, "Where is Dr. Salomon? We can´t start without him. The people won´t think this conference is important at all!"

 Erich Salomon, Aristide Briand points to Salomon and shouts: "Ah ! le voilà ! The king of the indiscreet !" (1930)

By 1931, Salomon had reached the apogee of his career. To celebrate his forty-fifth birthday and the publicacion of his book, Famous Contemporaries in Unguarded Moments, he hosted a party for four hundred leading members of Berlin society at the elegant Hotel Kaiserhof. But Salomon´s celebrity in his homeland was short-lived. Only a year later, he returned from a second trip to America to find Hitler headquartered in the Kaiserhof and the Weimar Republic in its death throes. Salomon, like many others, was soon making preparations to leave.

Erich Salomon, German Foreign Minister Gustav Stresemann en route to Paris for signature of the Briand-Kellogg Pact, 1928.

Salomon decided to settle in Holland, which was his wife´s native country. Based in the Hague, he still covered many key events. He also continued to travel. Britain especially fascinated him, and he made frequent visits to photograph government and opposition leaders and members of the royal family. In the late thirties he was invited to come to America by Life magazine that had just begun to take root and had picked up many of his photographs. He considered emigrating, but he kept putting it off. Soon it was too late to leave. In May 1940, the Nazi Blitzkrieg swallowed the Low Countries in four days. The candid photographer who had been the toast of Berlin society only a few years before was now forced to wear a yellow star. In 1943, Salomon and his family went into hiding. They were betrayed by a meter reader who noted an increase in gas consumption. According to Red Cross records, Erich Salomon, his wife and their younger son died at Auschwitz in July 1944, a month after the Allies landed in Normandy.

Rudolf Schlichter

 Wieland Herzfelde, Eva und George Grosz, Schlichter und John Heartfield in 1922

Rudolf Schlichter (1890-1955) - like Hermann Hesse - was born in Calw, a small town in Württemberg. He left the school early and started an apprenticeship as an enamel painter at a Pforzheim factory. Schlichter's later pretension that, as a twelve years old boy,  he started to work as a lift boy in a Grand Hotel building up an exciting collection of  stolen high heels, was probably invented.  From 1906 to 1909 he attended the School of Arts and Crafts in Stuttgart and subsequently studied under Hans Thoma and Wilhelm Trübner at the Art Academy in Karlsruhe. After his studies, Schlichter shared an appartment with Fanny Hablützel, a professional street girl, and made a living selling pornographic pictures under the pseudonym Udor Rédyl.

Rudolf Schlichter, Berlin Hausvogteiplatz, 1926

Called for military service in World War I, Schlichter carried out a hunger strike to secure early release, and in 1919 he moved to Berlin where he joined the KPD (Communist Party of Germany) and the November Group. Schlichter took part in the First Berlin Dada fair in 1920 where he displayed - together with John Heartfield - the Prussian Archangel assemblage, a pig-headed military officer that they suspended from the ceiling. He also worked as an illustrator for several periodicals, notably Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (AIZ), Die Rote Fahne and Eulenspiegel. Art became Schlichter's weapon in the political fight against the upper class and militarism. His favoured sujets were depictions of the city, street scenes, the sub-culture of the intellectual bohème and the underworld, portraits and erotic scenes. 

Rudolf Schlichter, Tingel-Tangel, 1919

In 1922, a group of artists - Otto Dix, Conrad Felixmüller, Rudolf Schlichter, Carlo Mense, Carl Hofer, Georg Schrimpf, and Heinrich Maria Davringhausen - mocked the Novembergruppe for having become depoliticized and subsequently established an art movement to be later named the Neue Sachlichkeit or New Objectivity. Their work, all of which was later condemned by the Nazis as "degenerate," was intense, angular, and nervous. In 1924, with John Heartfield and George Grosz,  Schlichter created the Rote Gruppe (the Red Group). 

 Rudolf Schlichter, Portrait Bert Brecht, 1926

Schlichter was at that time considered one of the most important members of the Neue Sachlichkeit; Bert Brecht, Alfred Döblin, Oskar Maria Graf, Erich Kästner, Carl Zuckmeier and Egon Erwin Kisch were among his friends. In 1925 Schlichter participated in the Neue Sachlichkeit exhibit at the Mannheim Kunsthalle (that's exactly where the notion of Neue Sachlichkeit was coined). Schlichter's work from this period was realistic, a good example being his portraits of Karola Neher, Bertold Brecht (above) and Margot, now in Berlin's Märkisches Museum. The latter depicts a prostitute who often modeled for Schlichter, standing on a deserted street and holding a cigarette:

Rudolf Schlichter, Margot, 1924

In 1927, Schlichter befriended Elfriede Elisabeth Koehler, called Speedy, a cocotte from Geneva, who shared Schlichter's interest in buttoned boots, bondage and masochistic games. Schlichter now abandoned the workers' movement and associated with conservative intellectuals such as Ernst Jünger and Karl Kraus ("There is no more unfortunate creature under the sun than a fetishist who yearns for a woman's shoe and has to settle for the whole woman"). Speedy and he even re-joined the Catholic church. A strange move, but Schlichter felt masochistic about his masochism and wanted to confess, while Speedy was content to somehow officialize her new life. 

 Rudolf Schlichter, Untitled, c. 1930

At the beginning of the 1930s Schlichter wrote his autobiography in two volumes: Das widerspenstige Fleisch (The Rebellious Flesh) and Tönerne Flüsse (Clay Rivers); the latter was immediately put on the index by the new Nazi-Government because of its "erotic-perverse tendencies". In 1932 the Schlichter couple left Berlin and setlled in Rottenburg (a small town near Stuttgart). Three years later, he was expelled from the Reich's Association of German Writers, and spent a couple of months in prison on procuration charges (Speedy had supplemented the family income receiving paying customers in their private flat). 

 Rudolf Schlichter, Blind Power, 1937

In 1937 many  of Schlichter's works were shown in the infamous Degenerate Art Exhibition, and in 1939 the Blind power of Nazi authorities banned him from exhibiting. His studio was destroyed by Allied bombs in 1942. One year after the war, in 1946, Schlichter participated in the 1. Deutsche Kunstausstellung in Dresden with some of his late surrealistic works. He explained his turn to Surrealism in his text "Das Abenteuer der Kunst" (The Adventure of Art), which was published by the Rowohlt Verlag in 1949. Rudolf Schlichter died in Munich on 3rd May, 1955. You can see more of Rudolf Schlichter`s work here in my Flickr set.

About the Seduction of an Angel

  ringl+pit, Bertolt Brecht, 1931

About the Seduction of an Angel 
Bertolt Brecht, 1948

Angels can not be seduced at all or quickly.
Pull him into the entryway,
stick your tongue in his mouth and reach

under his robe, til he gets wet; put
his face to the wall, lift his robe
and fuck him.  If he stares in anguish
then hold him tightly and let him come two times;
otherwise, by the end, he'll be in shock.

Admonish him so he sways his butt;
let him know he's free to grab your balls.
Tell him he can fall without fear
while he is hanging between earth and heaven -

but don't look him in the face while you are fucking him
and, for heaven's sake, don't crush his wings.

 

Kees van Dongen, Tango of the Archangel, 1922

 

Über die Verführung von Engeln
Bertolt Brecht, 1948

Engel verführt man gar nicht oder schnell.
Verzieh ihn einfach in den Hauseingang
Steck ihm die Zunge in den Hals und lang

Ihm untern Rock, bis er sich nass macht, stell
Ihn, das Gesicht zur Wand, heb ihm den Rock
Und fick ihn.
Stöhnt er irgendwie beklommen
Dann halt ihn fest und lass ihn zweimal kommen
Sonst hat er dir am Ende einen Schock.

Ermahn ihn, dass er gut den Hintern schwenkt
Heiß ihn dir ruhig an die Hoden zu fassen
Sag ihm, er darf sich furchtlos fallen lassen
Dieweil er zwischen Erd und Himmel hängt -

Doch schau ihm nicht beim Ficken ins Gesicht
Und seine Flügel, Mensch, zerdrück sie nicht.

Antonio Donghi

 Antonio Donghi, Self-Portrait, 1942

Antonio Donghi (1897-1963) was born in Rome. He studied painting at the Istituto di Belle Arti in Rome (1908–16) before military service in France. Donghi soon established himself as one of Italy's leading figures in the neoclassical movement that arose in the 1920s. In the post-World War I "return to tradition" of the Scuola Romana he shared an interest in 17th- and 18th-century painting with Francesco Trombadori and Carlo Socrate, with whom he exhibited at the Rome Biennale of 1923.  

 Antonio Donghi, Giocoliere (Juggler), 1926

The following year Donghi was exhibited in Milano's Galleria Pesaro together with Felice Casorati, de Chirico, Ubaldo Oppi and Mario Tozzi. He also participated in the important 1925 New Objectivity exhibition in Mannheim (Germany), and had solo shows in Paris, New York and Buenos Aires. Donghi also cooperated with the Novecento Italiano group, participating in their second exhibit in 1929.

 Antonio Donghi, Circo equestre, 1927

Possessed of an extremely refined technique, Donghi favored strong composition and spatial clarity. The critic Ugo Ojetti saw his clear realism and choice of subject-matter (people, still-lifes and cityscapes) as egalitarian and related to Caravaggio's influences. The disconcerting immobility of his figures (e.g. Woman at the Window) also drew comparisons with the work of Seurat and of Henri Rousseau, and it was identified as Magic Realism by Franz Roh (Expressionismus, magischer Realismus, Leipzig, 1925).

 Antonio Donghi, Canzone, 1934

By the 1940s, Donghi's work was far outside the mainstream of modernism, and his reputation declined, although he continued to exhibit regularly. In his last years he concentrated mainly on landscapes, painted in a style that emphasizes linear patterns. He died in Rome in 1963. Most of Donghi's works are in Italian collections, notably the Museo di Roma. You can see more of his paintings here in my Flickr set.

Gisèle Freund

 Gisèle Freund, Self portrait, early 1930s

Gisèle Freund (1908-2000) was born in Berlin into a wealthy Jewish family. Clara, her mother, came from a family of industrialists. Julius Freund, Gisèle's father, ran the family business; he was also an art collector. From an early age, Julius took her to art museums, and at home she met talented painters. 

 Max Slevogt, Portrait of Julius Freund, 1925

She studied sociology and art history at the Institut für Sozialforschung (Institute for Social Research) in Frankfurt am Main under Karl Mannheim, Max Horkheimer, and Norbert Elias. During this period Freund joined the communist student organization at the university. In 1933, when when the National Socialists came to power, the family emigrated to France. Freund smuggled out photographs she had taken of Hitler's political victims. 

 Gisèle Freund, Walter Benjamin à la Bibliothèque nationale, Paris, 1937

Freund entered at the Sorbonne, receiving her PhD in 1936. In the mid-1930s, Freund played chess with Walter Benjamin at a café on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Also the Bibliothèque Nationale connected them. Benjamin did research there for his now famous Passagenwerk (Arcades Project), Freund wrote her dissertation on early French photography, La Photographie en France au dix-neuvième siècle, a metrialistic account of the origins of photography (published in the 1970s in French and German under the title Photographie et société).

Gisèle Freund, Rue de la Pluie, Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1935

In 1936 Freund photographed the effects of the Depression in England for the Life magazine. Freund's dissertation was first published in book form by Adrienne Monnier (1892-1955). Freund visited her bookstore, La Maison des Amis des Livres, first time in 1935. With Monnier's help, Freund was able to enter the literary circles. She also started to spent an increasing amount of time in the apartment of Adrienne and Sylvia Beach, owner of the famous Shakespeare and Company Bookstore. 

 Gisèle Freund, Norbert Elias, Paris, 1935

Before the outbreak of the war, Freund made hundreds of portraits of artists and writers. Her subjects included among others her former teacher Norbert Elias (above), Louis Aragon, Walter Benjamin, André Breton, Jean Cocteau, Colette, Marcel Duchamp, T.S. Eliot, André Gide, James Joyce, André Malraux, Romain Rolland, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Valéry and G.B. Shaw ("Above all, don't cut off my beard!", Shaw told her). 

 Gisèle Freund, George Bernard Shaw, Londres, 1939

In 1939 Freund had a private exhibition, entitled Ecrivains célèbres, at the Galerie Adrienne in Paris and the Guggenheim Jeune Gallery in London. After the German Invasion of France, Freund went into hinding in a village in the province of Lot, Southern France. In 1942 she fled to Argentina with the help Victoria Ocampo, who had founded in 1931 the magazine Sur, the most important literary magazine of its time in Latin America.

 Gisèle Freund, The last islands before Cape Horn, Patagonia, 1943

Later Freund moved on to Mexico. For years she traveled up and down through the countries of Latin America. During this period she photographed Eva Perón and also became acquainted with the Mexican artists Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. To Mexico Freund was invited by the poet and writer Alfonso Reys, originally to give a lecture on French literature. Eventually her stay took two years. In 1950 Life published her critical photoreportage on Eva Peron, which drew the attention of the FBI and four years later she was blacklisted. 

 Gisèle Freund, Le lever d'Evita Peron, Buenos Aires, 1950

In 1944-45 Freund was a photojournalist for the France Libre propaganda services. From 1947 to 1954 she worked for Magnum Photos. Magnum was founded by the legendary Robert Capa. "If you want to make money, give up your job as a reporter," Capa said to Gisèle Freund. "It will earn you a good living, but you'll never get rich."  

Gisèle Freund, Simone de Beauvoir, 1948

In the 1970s, Freund traveled in Japan, the Near East, and the United States. Following the election of François Mitterand to the presidency in 1981, Freund became Mitterrand's official photographer. A major retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the Musée National d'Art Moderne (Centre Georges-Pompidou) in 1991. Gisèle Freund died in Paris on March 31, 2000. You can see more photos of her here in my Flickr set.

Théophile Robert

 

Théophile Robert, Lady in Black Dress, 1926

Théophile Robert (1879-1954) was born in Ried-sur-Bienne, Switzerland.  Between 1900 and 1907 he studied painting in Paris in various private art schools. After his studies Robert moved to Berlin where he stayed until 1909. He then returned to Switzerland, created his own studio in Saint Blaise near Neuchâtel and befriended Charles-Edouard Jeanneret, the future Le Corbusier. Between 1909 and 1918 Robert participated in many expositions.

Théophile Robert, After the Bath, 1921

In 1918, after the end of the war, Robert moved to Paris where he shared a studio with Le Corbusier and Ozenfant. On the basis of an advantageous contract with the gallery Druet, Robert could regularly exhibit his work in Paris and abroad. His success culminated in 1925 with ten exhibits worldwide. 

Théophile Robert, Danaïdes, 1928

 

In 1929 Robert returned to Saint Blaise. His work now became more and more religious, and he received numerous commissions to decorate churches. Théophile Robert died in Neuchâtel in 1954. The same year, the "Salle Théophile Robert" in the Fine Arts Museum of Neuchâtel was inaugurated where many of his works are on permanent display.