“THE EYE AND THE MOUTHPIECE OF OUR THOUGHTS
AND IDEAS”:
FORGOTTEN ARTIST INTERNEES
1940-42
RACHEL DICKSON
"The eye and the mouthpiece of our thoughts and ideas":
Alva, Lomnitz, Meyer, the Nonnenmachers, Schames and Solomonski - forgotten artist internees 1940-42
On 6 September 1940, the art critic of the Jewish Chronicle published a piece entitled 'Forty Artists Interned'. 1 Written in the autumn following mass internment, ‘H K’ railed against the ‘unimaginative stupidity’ of the internment of artists and declared their civilising influence, as ‘the eye and the mouthpiece of our thoughts and ideas’. The article further identified a group by name and, alongside the more familiar ‘Johnny [sic] Heartfield’, ‘Fred Uhlmann’, ‘Martin Bloch’ and ‘Ludwig Meidner,’ a number of others stand apart by the very fact that we do not immediately recognise their names today, including Alva (1901-73) – described as ‘languishing behind barbed wire in the Isle of Man’ – and ‘Mr and Mrs Nonnenmacher’ (Erna, 1889-1980, Hermann, 1892-1988)
More than 50 years later, the art historian, former Hutchinson camp internee and unofficial camp recorder, Klaus E Hinrichsen, in Visual Art Behind the Wire 2 listed more than twenty male and three female artists whom he knew from British transit and internment camps and overseas deportations. Once again, amongst the 29 names, we see Alva and the Nonnenmachers, as well as the less familiar: Alfred Lomnitz (1892-1953), Klaus Meyer (1918-2002), Samson Schames (1898-1967), and Fritz (Fred) Solomonski (later Frederick Solomon, 1899-1980).
All these names have a particular resonance for Ben Uri, as each one is represented within the permanent collection, 3 with the exception of Schames, who exhibited with Ben Uri in 1945, the year after the gallery boldly reopened in new West End premises in January 1944. 4 Yet for all those listed in the collection catalogue of 1994, not one biographical entry makes reference to the internment experience. It is also worthwhile noting that Hinrichsen’s list was by no means exhaustive. Written half a century after the events and coloured by his living in the heart of the north London Jewish émigré community, it includes individuals drawn from his personal, and often very local, postinternment acquaintance. For example, Klaus Meyer, whom Hinrichsen knew from Hampstead (Hinrichsen lived in Highgate), was a young student when interned, only
recently enrolled at the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London, in contrast to the other, mainly mid-career artists, with established European reputations behind them –hence Meyer’s omission from the Chronicle’s list. This paper will, accordingly, examine the art produced in internment by this small cohort, and comment briefly on their immediate post-internment experiences, to indicate how these, mainly middle-aged artists, were often unable to sustain significant careers in exile, after the fracture of flight, exile and internment.
When first drafting the abstract to accompany the conference paper from which this text derives, I referred to forgotten artists of the Isle of Man. It is now apparent that this is the case neither with Lomnitz nor Schames. Although Hinrichsen put ‘(IOM)’ after Lomnitz’s name, he was interned only on the British mainland in a transit camp at Kempton Park racecourse, and subsequently at Huyton, outside Liverpool Furthermore, although Manx National Heritage owns a portrait of Schames by Hugo Dachinger (who was interned on the Isle of Man) dated 1941, 5 and which was included in a bequest of internment art, Schames was only interned in Huyton from June 1940 until his release on 13 October 1940, and therefore the portrait was most likely made post-internment.
Certainly, on release, many internees, including Dachinger and Schames, moved within the same émigré circles in London in 1941-42, particularly through the activities of the Free German League of Culture (FGLC) and the left-leaning AIA (Artists International Association), and latterly via Jack Bilbo’s newly opened Modern Art Gallery. They may also have taken life drawing classes together at sculptor Paul Hamann’s studio.
Huyton transit camp, on the site of an unfinished Liverpool Housing Corporation estate, was intended to serve as a temporary base prior to the distribution of internees to more permanent locations on the Isle of Man or overseas or, as in the case of Schames and Lomnitz, prior to their release in autumn 1940. Both artists have left striking, contrasting legacies of their time in Huyton, which complement Jessica Feather’s Art Behind the Wire exhibition and catalogue produced for National Museums Liverpool (2004), 6 which focussed primarily on the work of Dachinger and Walter Nessler. There are certainly
similarities between works by all four artists: evocative, richly coloured watercolour and gouache portraits and topographical scenes – often executed on newspaper, and sometimes layered with surreal or abstract motifs, as well as with the graphic and textual impact provided by the newsprint itself.
Lomnitz had worked as a painter and as a commercial artist prior to leaving Germany in 1933, had continued this dual career in exile in England and pursued his creativity into internment. Within a year of his release an autobiographical account was published by Macmillan in 1941. 7 Entitled “Never Mind, Mr Lom” (‘With Illustrations by the Author’) – apparently the cheery parting given by Lom’s char lady as he was escorted from home by two detectives, leaving behind his mother and schoolboy son, Wolf – it was described on the dustjacket as ‘the first account of life in an English internment camp for aliens’, with a striking cover design of a lone figure silhouetted against coils of barbed wire overlying paragraphs of newsprint, through which words such as ‘Petain’ and ‘disloyalty’ could be glimpsed. The tone of the synopsis and the title itself suggests a very British attitude to internment, a condition to be borne stoically and to be turned to its best advantage – indeed the account is subtitled: ‘The Uses of Adversity’. 8 Lom’s own opening acknowledgement of thanks to ‘my English friends’ 9 suggests a further positive identification with his new homeland, with Lom seeking to reposition himself as an Englishman as far as possible; indeed, in the text he comments that ‘Hadn’t he been thrown out of Germany without a penny only to find his spiritual home in England?’ 10
The account is written as a third person narrative and was, no doubt, edited to appeal to the wider public – as a charming tale with a happy ending. The very last words, on p. 192, are ‘THE END’, after Lom returns home, suggesting that there was no aftermath or consequences post-internment. From the outset the narrator ‘Lom’ demonstrates a clarity of purpose, advising his fellow internees who are confused, depressed, and bewildered to:
‘Cut the barbed wire round your minds and you will have taken the first step into the future’. 11 Lom instinctively understood that ‘the one practical course was to build up a collectivist spirit’. 12 Even in the short space of time spent at Kempton Park racecourse, Lom and a friend, identified as Keyser, a dress-designer, decide to collaborate artistically
– they could learn from each other and ‘surely each would have something the other lacked’. 13 Subsequently, Lom greeted his transfer to Huyton as another positive step: ‘[…] here was a foundation whereon to build one’s new life. With a little ingenuity you could imagine Huyton a great big boarding-house or a simple-life club! Huyton was going to be a Bruderhof’ 14 Huyton was a place where ‘every corner of the camp is a potential picture’, 15 where ‘the quietness of life and absence of any external distraction gave a splendid opportunity for more concentrated work than would have been possible in the normal way of life’. 16 Indeed, Lom was eventually given a room to work in by the Company Captain. He describes making a collapsible easel from salvaged wooden posts and door hinges, using a found piece of slate as palette and, at least initially, working with watercolours and cartridge paper brought from home. When the paper ran out, he used old newspapers to paint on, describing the satisfying effect of applying watercolour over type and images. Although the dust-jacket suggests that painting in this way was a ‘new departure in art’, Lom had worked with newsprint and collage prior to his arrival in England: ‘he had made such experiments before, both in his early struggling days when paper was a considerable expense for him, and latterly just for fun’. 17 For example, Woman Seated at a Table, (1934, Ben Uri Collection, watercolour, collage and newsprint) utilises a page from the Evening Standard. 18
The book is also illustrated by four stylistically different full-page reproduction inserts:
The Guitarist; A Camp within a Camp; Activities and Inactivities; Entrance to Camp 3. The Guitarist (opposite the title page), identified as Klampfenkarl, a former Dachau inmate, and described evocatively as dressed in: ‘pigeon-grey trousers, a Bordeaux-red pullover, and a little neckerchief repeating all those colours’ 19 is painted in a delicate, highly naturalistic style. Activities and Inactivities, a lively line drawing (opposite p. 55), illustrates the Camomile-Weise, a piece of wasteland where internees spent afternoons ‘lying among the chamomile and the grass discussing the whole internment business over and over again’. 20 Chapter headings are also accompanied by black and white drawings and, although the mood conveyed through these vignettes, and through the Guitarist and Activities and Inactivities, suggests something of a pleasant, leisured existence, the inclusion of Camp within a Camp (opposite p. 22) and Entrance to Camp 3 (opposite p.
135) provide a telling reminder of the reality of internment, with the powerful and recurring motifs of strands of barbed wire stretched between wooden poles, watchtowers, tents and armed guards. John Denham’s 1986 exhibition catalogue includes a number of additional camp images, but the dates suggest they were made after release, 21 with The Guard Post (#44, 1941) and The sing song (#45) although proposed for the book, not finally included. The Ben Uri Collection also holds a watercolour entitled Girl Behind Barbed Wire, clearly an image inspired by internment but undated. 22
Little is known of Lom’s career post-internment, though the onset of Parkinson’s curtailed his artistic activities. His naturalization on 2 September 1946 is recorded in the London Gazette, with Lom identified as ‘artist and publicity consultant of Aston Rowant’. 23 Although Ben Uri held a retrospective in 1954, soon after his death, 24 his reputation was largely ignored until the 1980s when the aforementioned gallerist, John Denham, who did so much to restore the reputations of neglected émigré artists, featured his work in a solo and group show. 25
Frankfurt-born, Samson Schames had early access to expressionist works shown in the renowned eponymous city gallery belonging to his uncle, Ludwig Schames. Unable to finance completion of his art studies, he initially worked as a painter and stage designer and, following the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation in 1933, participated in various Jewish cultural organisations, eventually fleeing to England sometime after Kristallnacht in November 1938. In exile Schames was able to lodge at the home of a cousin in Golders Green, in north London, and also had access to a room in sculptor Benno Elkan’s house for painting. It is apparent that he swiftly began to forge a career here, prior to internment, with his first exhibition at the Brook Street Galleries in March 1940 reviewed in the Jewish Chronicle under the headline: ‘A very interesting refugee’. 26 ‘The reviewer noted that ‘His sense of colour has developed consistently since he has got away from the influence of the harshness of Pechstein and Kokoschka. The colour of England seems to suit his brush’. The article also noted that his works in the Jewish Museum, Frankfurt, ‘have been slashed and mutilated by the Nazis’.
For Schames, as for Lom, the experience in Huyton, as recorded in a typescript dated 8 July 1964
[ ] was not too bad. For many, among them Ludwig Meidner, whom I met there, it was a very interesting interlude. Room and board were taken care of; models were plentiful. ….. I drew and painted but also made figures out of barbed wire which I later on showed in Bond Street. Since, in the beginning, I had no paint, I made it myself. The soot of a stove, mixed with condensed milk, gave me black. The juice of beets mixed with pulverised chalk…gave me red paint. Clipped hair attached to little sticks served as brushes […] 27
When an interviewer had asked him in 1950 how he had felt using precious rations for making art, the response was ‘There wasn’t so much to eat at this time but I preferred it this way. I thought to make something positive out of these negative things’. 28 Schames described the response to his internment art as generally positive, and well received by the officers who bought some of his work; like many of his fellow artists, he made portraits of internees as well as densely-coloured topographical scenes His Sleeping Place 29 recalls Fred Uhlman’s drawing from Hutchinson camp, My Bedroom - the Artist Uses his Suitcase as a Work Surface, in the Absence of a Table (1940, Imperial War Museum) while Watchtower 30 and Rumours 31 convey the anxious, febrile atmosphere in a camp where men are crowded together with little access to proper news from the outside world and where irrational fears take hold. As fellow internee, Klaus Meyer recalled, his ‘[…] greatest fear was that the khaki uniforms of the British soldiers standing on the watchtowers would change to the black of the SS - because the fear of an invasion was very great’ 32
Released on 13 October 1940 through the intervention of family members, Schames returned to the house in Golders Green and, by 1941, he was showing work extensively, including in an Exhibition of Contemporary Continental Art held in July at the prestigious Leger Galleries, 33 where Picasso, Braque, Dufy and De Chirico works were exhibited, alongside those by émigrés/internees, Dachinger, Marie Louise von Motesiczky, Erich Kahn, Nessler, Ehrlich and Siegfried Charoux. As Schames indicated in the 1950 interview, he clearly felt no disjunct between the work made in internment
and that which followed immediately after – all were suitable for presentation together, even in the smart environs of Bond Street. In October he participated in the first Civil Defense Artists (CDA) selling exhibition, at the Cooling Galleries, also in Bond Street, 34 an association which held twenty shows between 1941 and 1944. The catalogue proudly announced that ‘The first exhibition of the work of painters and sculptors engaged in Civil Defense has an importance, actual and theoretical, which it is difficult to exaggerate. For the arts are a part of a world which we have lost, for a time, and are determined to regain’. 35
As many commercial galleries were closed during the war, and Ben Uri did not open its new premises until January 1944, the CDA provided a much-needed outlet for artists such as Schames, who was eligible to participate, given his position as an official Fire Guard (FG). This role gave him ready access to the bombed city streets and a steady source of found materials: broken china, rusty nails, and shards of glass, all of which were incorporated into his mosaics and collaged works. Schames had first been interested in mosaic work in Frankfurt prior to exile, but the Blitz saw their first realisation.
The CDA was notably supported by key members of the British art establishment, and several young British artists showed work across the series, such as Leonard Rosoman and Norman Hepple. 36 The first selection committee included Sir Kenneth Clark, with Matthew Smith, Graham Sutherland and Augustus John on the later advisory committee. Initially focusing on painting, drawing and sculpture, the series gradually extended its remit to include theatre design, illustration, photography, craftwork, poster design and murals. Indeed, Schames showed a mural entitled Alert, as part of the section, Eight Mural Designs, included in the Tenth CDA Exhibition in 1943. 37 . In the 13th CDA exhibition, which concentrated on theatre designs, posters and photography, he included the design Curtain for a theatre (in an internment camp), dated 1940. 38 As a regular CDA exhibitor, he mainly submitted works across two themes: those which dealt with the wider condition of European Jewry, such as persecution, exile and internment, along with topographical scenes of the ruined city around him, both strands utilising a range of materials and techniques Schames
also showed two Blitz-related works (Blitz and London 1941) in the Exhibition of Drawings
Paintings & Sculptures by Free German Artists held in June 1944, under the patronage of the AIA and arranged by the FGLC in the Charlotte Street Centre. 39 Kokoschka provided the catalogue text.
In April 1942 Schames was given a one man show at fellow internee Jack Bilbo’s Modern Art Gallery, newly opened in Baker Street, where he showed mosaics alongside a section devoted to Huyton pieces, with titles including: Morning in the Camp, The Wandering Jew (wire sculpture), The Doctor’s Waiting Room, Interned Artist, Interned Musician, and Interned Scientist. In the brief catalogue introduction Denis Matthew commented:
‘it is refreshing to see the works of Schames where the restrictions of the internment camp have not deprived him of the language to express his emotions – where charcoal and paper stained with vegetable juices speak more eloquently than aureolin on expensive canvas.’ 40
Although Schames and Bilbo (born Hans Baruch in Berlin) were both Huyton internees, Bilbo’s wife Owo recalled that ‘Jack and I did not know Samson Schames prior to opening the Modern Art Gallery, he just walked in one day, as did many refugee artists, happy to find a “home from home”’. 41 The Bilbos’ apartment and the gallery became a sympathetic, German-speaking refuge for émigré artists and recently released internees alike, and, as Schames’ widow commented: ‘This was the beginning for everyone who had no name, even Kokoschka’. According to Bilbo, Schames was the very first artist he showed in his new venture, 42 marking the start of a close friendship between the two couples, maintained through the Schames’ move to the USA in 1948.
Whereas Schames and Lom were released directly from Huyton, Bilbo was subsequently sent to Onchan on the Isle of Man, where he became pivotal in the cultural life of the camp. One can chart many similarities between the artists’ activities at Hutchinson and Onchan, each camp having its own arts impressario of dramatically contrasting character: Hutchinson was the domain of the quietly erudite figure of Klaus Hinrichsen, while Onchan became home to the flamboyant, self-styled Bilbo: self-publicist, painter,
gallerist, publisher and bar owner, who created a fictious back story for himself where he purported to have been a bodyguard to Al Capone.
Also interned on the Isle of Man were husband and wife, Hermann and Erna Nonnenmacher Their circumstances had been highlighted in the Jewish Chronicle’s review of the June 1939 Exiles Art exhibition at London’s Wertheim Gallery:
Each has a story to tell. Most cannot be made public for fear of what the Gestapo will do to relatives or friends. But I can tell you about Hermann Nonnenmacher, who is a nonJew married to a Jewess and who was asked by the Nazis to stay on condition that he divorced his wife.’ 43
Both were German-born sculptors and ceramicists who had married in 1919 and shared a studio in Berlin formerly belonging to Bauhausler, Lyonel Feininger. Hermann had chosen to reject the official invitation, and both had arrived as refugees in London in February 1938.
As Yvonne Cresswell, former Manx National Heritage (MNH) curator has explained, the documented presence of the Nonnenmachers as internees on the Isle of Man - Hermann in Onchan, Erna in Rushen women’s camp - is partly due to Erna’s internment, as MNH generally only has information on the registration of male internees if they were married (their information was linked to the female registration card) and/or if they wrote/drew something for a camp newspaper; and/or are a named individual in an oral history interview/publication Hence, MNH records include Erna’s registration card, with her poignantly clear photograph, recording that she left the Isle of Man on 14 February 1941, after a tribunal held on 11 January 1941. 44
As with most women artist internees, Erna’s artistic legacy is tiny: one ceramic tile depicting a crucifix design, made from clay found at Port Erin just before her release and fired at Glenfaba Brickworks, its design inspired by the local Calf of Man stone. 45 Unusually, Erna also had a design included, alongside that of her husband, in the Christmas Card and Arts exhibition held, unseasonably early, in Bilbo’s so-called Cabin, in October 1940. It is not clear how her work reached Onchan, although some sporadic
contact was allowed between husband-and-wife internees, and Hermann is known to have made a drawing of Port Erin which he exhibited.
Hermann Nonnenmacher took an active role in artistic life in Onchan, participating in both interned artists exhibitions organised by Bilbo and held in his cabin. The first exhibition took place from 26th-30th August 1940, under Bilbo’s stirring slogan: ‘The world is a cage, forged by human stupidity. Art will break this cage’. 46 The camp magazine, The Onchan Pioneer proudly reviewed the exhibition:
We look at these paintings and scetches [sic] with a feeling of admiration and relief. These men, taken away from their studies and homes, some for weeks, some for many months kept behind barbed wire have all recovered their creative power. There is strength in these pictures and an unbroken will-to-live, to work and to be free […] 47
Exhibitors included Nonnenmacher, Bilbo, Henry de Buys Roessingh and a number of others associated with The Onchan Pioneer. The show was opened by commandant, Lord Greenway, 48 and the typewritten catalogue sheet was for sale at 1d, along with works, at prices to be arranged with the artists. Nonnenmacher contributed 54 drawings (catalogue #80-134) which included #103 The Blind, compared by the reviewer to Breughel; #132 Port Erin (suggesting Hermann had been able to visit Erna); and #135 Sea-Gulls (sic) Wood Carving. 49 An overall interest in surrealism was in evidence, with a final collaborative entry entitled, Collectiv: Surrealist sculpture: Composition “Onchania”. The poignancy of the whole achievement was particularly noted by The Onchan Pioneer: ‘For us who know what difficulties had to be overcome by these men who live behind barbed wire, to be able to paint, to work, to create again, for us has this unique exhibition of interned artists something pathetic’. 50
Henrion, Roessingh, Meyer, Bilbo and Nonnenmacher all participated in the second Christmas Cards and Arts Exhibition, held in Bilbo’s cabin from 26 October - 6 November 1940. This time, Bilbo’s rallying cry was: ‘Art was is and always will be’. 51 The Onchan Pioneer further noted that:
Happy men are these artists who can produce, work, create even in camp. They give us much by their work. They give us pleasure. They add colour to the drabness of our every day [sic] life and they set us an example too: they remind us that the meaning of healthy mens lives is work, creative occupation. We must not forget that in these weeks and months of enforced idleness 52
Younger than many of his contemporaries, Klaus Meyer was interned as a young art student who had barely completed eighteen months at London’s Central School of Art. Letters of support, and calling for his release were written by his tutors, his fellow students and, indeed, by the acting principal, in August, attesting to his loyalty: 53
As with a number of other Onchan artists, in the absence of canvas, paper or board, Meyer resorted to whatever materials were available, using thick, floral wallpaper which was peeling (or made to peel) from the walls, its pinkish red design still clearly visible verso. Scene from a house kitchen (Private Collection) clearly conveys the male presence firmly located within a domestic scene, perhaps a little out of place, but nevertheless imbued with a sense of vigour, humour and purpose. Meyer also drew portraits of his fellow internees, among them the musicologist Hans Keller, the composer Hans Gal, and the young musician Peter Schidloff (later of the Amadeus Quartet), as well as his own sensitive self-portrait. He also produced scenes of daily camp life, often in a humorous vein, such as his sketch of latrines, and outdoor scenes where the internees are depicted with a heroic quality, as noble labourers with purposefully rolled-up sleeves. 54 Meyer himself commented in his oral testimony held by the British Library that being in camp wasn’t so bad for him – of course he resented it deeply, but nevertheless came out healthier then when he arrived, nourished on a diet of herring and potatoes, outdoor exercise and cultural stimulation. 55
For Meyer, who would become a successful commercial and graphic artist postwar, and for Hermann Nonnenmacher, a rich source of their camp work is provided by illustrations from The Onchan Pioneer, the internment publication to which many of the artists contributed or in which they found their work reviewed. Onchan contained 1,500 men, almost forty-five per cent more than Hutchinson and Hinrichsen commented somewhat critically on The Onchan Pioneer in his fictionalised account of internment, entitled Martin Millgate:
People were more politically aware and the “Onchan Pioneer”, though less well produced than Hutchinson’s “The Camp” was far more polemical with hard-hitting editorials, a large Youth Section and full reports on many activities. Quite a few articles were written in German and there was no room for short stories. Except for the sculptor Hermann Nonnenmacher and the designer Henrion the graphic work was unimpressive. 56
For the artists, beyond the few extant works, it is exhibition ephemera and reviews in camp publications, that help us to accurately fix their time in internment, their peers, and their networks. Camp magazine images also reveal a side to their artwork not necessarily seen post/pre internment: Nonnenmacher, as member of staff on The Onchan Pioneer, produced scores of drawings which survive in printed form, whereas his sculpture of the time does not.
The first issue of the The Onchan Pioneer was published on 27 July 1940, subtitled Lagerzeitung (camp times) and without illustration. Initially German was the lingua franca rather than English. By the third issue, (14 August 1940), there was an announcement for an exhibition in House 8 by ‘Nunnenmacher’ [sic], which was reviewed more fully, in slightly awkward English, in the following issue: ‘A Moving Memorial of Our Struggle – Exhibition of Works by Hermann Nonnenmacher’.
Our house sheltering so many gifted men witnessed some days ago Herman Nonnenmacher’s private exhibition of some of his drawings. A sculptor by profession his drawings succeed in reflecting in simple lines like a mirror the character of some of those overwhelming experiences which are moving us at present. Tangibly or intangibly the barbed wire which surrounds our life – in the real as well as in the allegorical sense –dominates the men whom he has chosen for his art; but he also retained some of the lighter sides of life and there are some cheerful sketches of his comrades engaged upon their daily tasks: Above all glides the constant messenger of that freedom, to which we are aspiring, the seagull of which swarms come and go ceaselessly, intensifying our longing to glide with them into that world upon which the door has been locked to us 57
By Issue #14 Nonnenmacher had provided his first cover design and he continued to design throughout early 1941. For Issue #19 (5 January 1941) he drew men carrying a heavy bucket full of herrings; for Issue #21, with its cover article, Music in Internment
(19 January 1941), he sketched a group of internees intently listening to a pianist; while a wild and fantastical design with dozens of leaping fish, graced the cover of Issue #22 (26 January 1941). The local and plentiful Manx herrings were unsurprisingly a frequent motif, often depicted with mystical allusions. Interned artist, Martin Bloch, painted the fish transmogrified into a dish of mermaids in his work, Miracle in the Internment Camp, 1941, (Collection of Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge).
Release, of course, was another omnipresent topic. The cover of Issue #24 (9 February 1941) showed a simple sketch of a solitary figure (perhaps Nonnenmacher himself) walking away from the viewer, in anticipation of imminent release, while the cover of Issue #25 (16 February 1941) dramatically depicted a silhouette in retreat, set against a design of barbed wire, surrounded by an expressionist swirling sky; underneath was a stirring farewell:
Herman Nonnenmacher has been released: From the first night in the dark cellar of the […] barracks, we have shared, both of us all stages of this strange period of confinement […] His strong personality based on the rhythm of simple impressive lines, in life as well as in his art, was creating by and by a mass of inspiring motives.
A subsequent issue published a short article entitled, ‘Emigrants in the Royal Academy’, reviewing the ongoing annual Summer Exhibition at the RA in London’s Piccadilly. Beneath a sketch of two stylized figures by Nonnenmacher, the review observed that ‘Hermann Nonnenmacher during his internment at the staff of “The Onchan Pioneer” exhibits a sculpture of a kneeling women. Erna Nonnenmacher shows “terracottas”: a child’s head and a girl with a turtle’. 58
Meyer’s first publication in The Onchan Pioneer was in the topographical series ‘our camp in pictures’ (#3), in which he illustrated the elegant sweep of Royal Avenue, Onchan on the cover page. 59 He also variously provided images of the quartermasters’ stores and the camp farm in Issue #20 (perhaps leading one obituary writer mistakenly to suggest that Meyer was a contributor to a socialist publication).
However, perhaps the single page which best sums up the overall artistic contribution to the Pioneer is in Onchan Camp Youth, supplement #5, appended to The Onchan Pioneer (Issue #17). 60 A full-page montage of drawings by several artists to celebrate the New Year (‘our greeting cards of the season’), heralded the arrival of “1941” with the salutation: ‘the artists wish you all the best’. Nonnenmacher used the familiar motif of a flock of circling of seagulls; Meyer reprised the image of internees opening a parcel from home, which he had previously used on a Christmas card design; Heinz Kiewe (a frequent contributor of articles and images), contributed a massive Hanukah candle sprouting from the roofs of the camp houses, and F H K Henrion drew a distinctive simplified, single graphic hand clasping a dove (which was to later become an AIA symbol). 61
My final brief comments relate to Fritz Solomonski and Solomon Alva, who both, rather like Erna Nonnenmacher, leave tantalising fragments relating to internment. Solomonski, who was both artist and art historian (receiving his doctorate from Berlin on Expressionist painters of the Twenties) became Ben Uri’s first salaried secretary/curator and later, a religious minister, after his release. Interned in Hutchinson, he was a signatory to the now famous letter ‘Art Cannot Live Behind Barbed Wire’, written to the New Statesman and Nation on 28 August 1940, protesting the plight of interned artists, with 17 signatories from Hutchinson camp (known as the ‘artists’ camp’ due to the significant number of established practitioners it housed)
Ben Uri provided a valuable informal support mechanism for émigré artists, through its programme of exhibitions and acquisitions, and other allied cultural activities. Yet Solomonski seems not to have made a great success of the post, lasting barely a year, and there are few archival traces at Ben Uri. Much of what is known about him comes through the filter of Hinrichsen (fictionalised or otherwise) or via Jewish Chronicle reports of his ministerial career. Hinrichsen’s oral testimony describes him as ‘a Lieberman pupil […] a cantor […] a singer in a synagogue, beautiful voice, and indeed I think he was a much better singer than artist. But he was one of those people who can do
almost anything […] a very nice man but one of those very wishy-washy sorts of artists.” 62
In an interview for the Association of Jewish Refugees (AJR) in 2003, Hinrichsen expanded his description of Solomonski:
he was later the head of the Ben Uri gallery and he did huge anti-Hitler pictures, huge paintings, which were not particularly good, you know, always Hitler is the devil and Churchill is the avenging angel or things like that. It doesn’t quite cut. And then he became a cantor in Cuba, his wife was a graphologist, and then he went to America and he had one great collector of his work in England and that was Samuel Courtauld (laughs), which is not a good indication of the activities of the Courtauld Institute, but he apparently was not involved in collecting pictures for that, but he collected Solomonski. He was unhappy with Ben Uri, because they always wanted him to arrange ‘kleine Tänzle’, ‘little dances’- little social events. But he did some quite interesting portraits as well. Ja, those were the ones, most of them, who I was interned with. 63
In Hinrichsen’s aforementioned fictionalised account of internment (Martin Millgate), he describes Solomonski’s farewell gifts to Millgate, reprising the actual items given to Hinrichsen: ‘Fred Solomonski, a pupil of the great German impressionist Max Liebermann, but also was a Liedersinger with hopes to become a cantor in a London synagogue. He had done a somewhat idealised portrait drawing of Martin [drawing of Hinrichsen] and now gave him perhaps the only religious work done in the camp – a stencil print of God sending Elijah on his way to spread the word of the scriptures’. 64 A hand-coloured version was gifted to Hinrichsen, the black and white drawing having been reproduced as a stencil in The Camp Almanac. A copy is now in the Ben Uri Collection. 65 Hinrichsen himself commented on the lack of need for religious imagery in camp:
The shared experience of all the artists was the loss of homeland and the internment in their country of refuge, and it was irrelevant whether people were Aryans, Jews, half, quarter or one-eighth Jews – such differentiations could only serve to perpetuate the lunatic Nazi race theories. 66
Solomonski returned to the theme after his release and contributed an oil version of Elijah and the Angel to the Artists Aid Jewry exhibition held at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1943. 67
Hinrichsen’s summing up of Solomonski as a finer singer than artist presages his post internment displacement – little artistic success, a parallel career as a minister and a final departure for the USA in 1955, preceded by unsuccessful attempts by his patron, Sir Samuel Courtauld, to persuade the Tate to acquire his work, 68 and a begging letter from Solomonski to Professor Erwin Panofsky, now himself a refugee in New York, 69 asking if any suitable teaching position might be found for an artist / art historian with his qualifications.
Born Solomon Seigfried Allweiss, of Austrian parentage, Alva originally studied music in Berlin, adopting his pseudonym in 1925 He studied and travelled extensively in Europe and the Middle East before moving to Paris in 1933, in the face of increasing antisemitic legislation in Germany (as hinted at in his oil painting, The Writing on the Wall, 1933), and then to London in 1938. Although he was interned on the Isle of Man, the specific camp has not yet been identified, which prompts the suggestion that he contributed little significant artistic output during internment. Nevertheless, in his autobiography, With Brush and Pen, 70 he refers tantalisingly to his a series of drawings entitled Campflowers: ‘13 ball pen drawings, portraits of fellow internees (printed on office copying machine, Isle of Man 1940’ and reproduces the title page depicting a bearded internee standing beside a barbed wire fence. 71 He further states that his time in internment may have inadvertently saved his life, as his unoccupied studio in London was destroyed in the Blitz. 72 By summer 1941 he had his first London exhibition at the prestigious Leger Galleries, with reviews in the art journals, The Studio and Apollo. 73
In conclusion, one can note that these seven artists serve as adjuncts to the histories of the better-known painters and sculptors of internment. Yet each, in some small way, has helped to complete the understanding of the breadth of individual response to the circumstance of internment and, equally, to highlighting the difficulties faced in forging a
post-internment career in Britain, often working within the unfamiliar visual languages of expressionism or modernism. And it is not surprising that so many of these displaced Jewish artists sought some form of artistic refuge within the confines of Ben Uri, even as it was perhaps initially unaware of their internment history.
1 Jewish Chronicle 6 September 1940, p.17.
2 K. E. Hinrichsen, Visual Art Behind the Wire in D. Cesarani and T. Kushner (eds.), The Internment of Aliens in Twentieth Century Britain (London: Routledge Taylor & Frances, 1983), pp. 188-209.
3 See Jewish Artists The Ben Uri Collection, eds., Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd., 1994)
4 See Ben Uri Art Society: ‘Exhibition of Portraits by Contemporary Jewish Artists’, 24 April-18 May 1945 and ‘Autumn Exhibition of Paintings, Sculptures and Drawings by Contemporary Jewish Artists’, 4 September – 19 October 1945
5 https://imuseum.im/search/object_record/view?id=mnh-museum265251&type=object&tab=all&from=&page=&term=Schames&size=20&sort=&filter=&view=&images= &ttmgp=0&rfname=&rlname=&machine=&race=&raceyear=&linked=0&pos=0
6 Art behind barbed wire, ed., Jessica Feather, exh. cat. (Liverpool: National Museums Liverpool, 2004)
7 Alfred Lomnitz, Never Mind, Mr. Lom (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1941)
8 Ibid, p. iii.
9 Ibid, p. vi.
10 Ibid., p. 35.
11 Ibid., p. 12.
12 Ibid., p. 13.
13 Ibid., p. 19
14 Ibid., p. 38.
15 Ibid., p. 86.
16 Ibid., p. 80.
17 Ibid., p. 84.
18 See Jewish Artists The Ben Uri Collection, eds., Walter Schwab and Julia Weiner, p. 71-73. https://www.benuricollection.org.uk/search_result.php?item_id=164
19 Alfred Lomnitz, Never Mind, Mr. Lom, p. 128.
20 Ibid., p. 55.
21 Alfred Lomnitz, 1892-1953: paintings, drawings, prints, 10-23 March. 1986, John Denham Gallery, London
22 See Jewish Artists The Ben Uri Collection, p. 73. https://www.benuricollection.org.uk/search_result.php?item_id=156
23 The London Gazette, 22 October 1946, p. 5212.
24 Ben Uri Art Gallery, Lom (Alfred Lomnitz) Memorial Exhibition, June-July 1954. See Ben Uri archives: https://buru.org.uk/archive_record.php?id=413&st=Lomnitz
25 Alfred Lomnitz, 1892-1953: paintings, drawings, prints, 10-23 March. 1986, John Denham Gallery, London
26 Jewish Chronicle, 15 March 1940, p. 33.
27 Samson Schames 1898-1967, Bilder und Mosaiken, exh. cat. (Frankfurt am Main: Judisches Museum, 1989), p. 122.
28 Ibid., p. 9.
29 Ibid., p. 147
30 Ibid., p. 16.
31 Ibid., p. 11.
32 Typescript summary of Klaus Meyer oral testimony interview, Tape 6, Side A, unpaginated (Private Collection).
33 Ibid., p. 197.
34 Ibid., p. 197. The exhibition was held in October 1941
35 Catalogue foreword by Sacheverell Sitwell, unpaginated.
36 See CDA catalogue dated April 1943.
37 See Catalogue entry #7 for the Tenth CDA Exhibition.
38 13th CDA Exhibition, 27 July to 21 August, 1943
39 See exh. cat., entries #20 and #26. The exhibition ran from 8-28 June 1944.
40 Samson Schames 1898-1967, exh. cat., Jüdisches Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 23 March – 18 June 1989, p. 111.
41 Typescript letter from Mrs. Owo Bilbo to Mrs C Frewein, Jüdisches Museum, Stadt Frankfurt am Main, 27 January 1989. [Cordula Frowein was the exhibition co-curator and catalogue editor for Samson Schames 1898-1967, Jüdisches Museum, Frankfurt am Main, 23 March – 18 June 1989].
42 See Jack Bilbo, An Autobiography (London: The Modern Art Gallery Ltd.: 1948), p. 259.
43 Jewish Chronicle, 30 June 1939, p. 29.
44 Manx National Heritage holds the online record for Erna Nonnenmacher: https://imuseum.im/search/agent_record/view?id=mnh-agent104980&type=agent&tab=all&from=&page=&term=Erna+Nonnenmacher&size=20&sort=&filter=&view =&images=&ttmgp=0&rfname=&rlname=&machine=&race=&raceyear=&linked=0&pos=
45 Manx National Heritage has the entry for Erna’s clay tile in its collection: https://imuseum.im/search/object_record/view?id=mnh-museum125369&type=object&tab=all&from=&page=&term=Erna+Nonnenmacher&size=20&sort=&filter=&view =&images=&ttmgp=0&rfname=&rlname=&machine=&race=&raceyear=&linked=0&pos=-20
46 ‘Interned Artists Exhibition’, The Onchan Pioneer, No. 5, 31 August 1940, p. 6.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Typescript Catalogue for ‘Interned Artists Exhibition’.
50 ‘Interned Artists Exhibition’ The Onchan Pioneer, No. 5, 31 August 1940, pp. 6-7.
51 ‘Christmas Cards and Arts Exhibition’, The Onchan Pioneer, No. 11, p.3.
52 Ibid.
53 Letter dated 22 August 1940, Private Collection.
54 All Private Collection.
55 British Library oral testimony for Klaus Meyer (website currently down)
56 See ‘Martin Millgate A German for Ten Weeks: Memories of an English Schoolboy, interned on the Isle of Man in 1940 as an “enemy alien”, told to his grandson, CLAUD MILLGATE’, p. 82.
Typescript by Klaus Hinrichsen, Private Collection, London.
57 The Onchan Pioneer, 21 August 1940, p. 2.
58 The Onchan Pioneer, p. 3., undated.
59 The Onchan Pioneer, No. 16, 15 December 1940, cover
60 Onchan Camp Youth, Supplement No. 5, 22 December 1940, p. 5.
61 See ‘Exhibitions as political ‘demonstrations’: Artists International Association’s For Liberty exhibition, London 1943’, Harriet Atkinson, University of Brighton https://cris.brighton.ac.uk/ws/portalfiles/portal/14645992/HA_edit_ICDHS_12_Zagreb_2020_paper_12_au thor_corrections.pdf
62 Undated typescript copy of oral testimony between Klaus Hinrichsen and ‘MAB’, Reel 7, Hinrichsen Family, London.
63 Kaus Hinrichsen, AJR Audio-Visual History Collection, 20 November 2003,; location: Highgate, London; interviewer: Anthony Grenville, Tape 1, p. 35.
64 Hinrichsen, op. cit., p. 98.
65 Ben Uri Collection: https://www.benuricollection.org.uk/search_result.php?item_id=406
66 K. E. Hinrichsen, Visual Art Behind the Wire, p. 198.
67 Artists Aid Jewry Exhibition, exh. cat., Whitechapel Art Gallery, organised by the Jewish Cultural Club, Free Austrian Movement and Free German League of Culture.
68 Tate Archives: TG 4/6/3/18
Tate Collections: Gifts: Gifts declined: S, 1930-1950
https://archive.tate.org.uk/Record.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog&id=TG+4%2f6%2f3%2f18&pos=1
69 Typescript, letter to Professor Panofsky from Solomonski, 24 June 1949, Smithsonian Archives of American Art. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/erwin-panofsky-papers-8926/series-1
70 With Pen and Brush Autobiography of a Painter by Alva (London: W. H. Allen, 1973).
71 Op. cit., p. 17 and p. 98.
72 Op. cit., p. 18.
73 Op. cit., p. 99; bibliographic reference to article by Jan Gordon, ‘Alva’s first London exhibition’, The Studio, October 1941 and Apollo, August 1941.