Adolf Frankl

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Adolf Frankl (born February 12, 1903 in Preßburg , † August 18, 1983 in Vienna ) was an Austrian painter and draftsman.

biography

Memorial plaque in Vienna

Adolf Frankl was of Jewish origin. From 1909 to 1921 he attended elementary school, secondary school and grammar school with the completion of the school leaving examination . He then studied at the Technical University in Brno / Brno Art and painting at Frantisek Reichental and worked casually as a cartoonist and as a signatory of advertising posters. He was arrested on September 28, 1944 and first deported to the Sered concentration camp (Slovakia) and then to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp . After the liberation in 1945, Adolf Frankl returned to his hometown. However, after the Communists came to power in Czechoslovakia , he emigrated in 1949 and moved to Vienna with his family. Here he began to paint in order to educate about the Holocaust with his works .

Memorial plaque in Bratislava

1944

  • September 28th: ​​His entire family is arrested in Bratislava.
  • September 29th: Deportation to the Sered concentration camp in Slovakia.
  • 3rd to 4th November: Deportation to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

Auschwitz-Birkenau

At the age of 41, Adolf Frankl was deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. He got the tattoo number B 14395. He had traumatic experiences during this time . He later tried to process this in his pictures. He also reports in his writings on the atrocities experienced in Auschwitz. For example, he shared his sleeping place with a second prisoner who died after a while. But Adolf Frankl did not report this in order to get his food ration.

1945

  • January 18: Evacuation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. He survived in the typhus barracks at the Althammer | concentration camp Stará Kuznia, a sub-camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
  • January 27: Liberation by the Red Army in the Althammer camp
  • End of April: return to Bratislava. Beginning of the cycle "Visions from the Inferno - Art Against Oblivion"

From 1949

Emigration with the family to Vienna, Austria. Lives in Vienna, New York and from the 1960s in Germany.

Death 1983

Adolf Frankl dies in Vienna on August 18th.

Works of art

Federal archive B 145 Bild-F076867-0003, Bonn, Federal President's Office, interior decoration.jpg

In addition to the cycle “ Visions from the Inferno - Art Against Forgetting”, countless drawings , watercolors and caricatures were created between 1930 and 1982 . He chooses the motifs for his work from everyday Jewish life, coffee houses , farms, courtrooms and the Dorotheum , the famous Viennese auction house . With his works on the Holocaust , Adolf Frankl wanted to set a memorial to all peoples of the world . "It shouldn't happen to anyone, regardless of religion or political opinion, this or the like!", Says Frankl. So that this memory of the victims of the Holocaust is not forgotten, his son Thomas Frankl and his daughter-in-law Inge Ruth Frankl regularly organize exhibitions. In 2006 they opened the ArtForum gallery on Vienna's Judenplatz , which had to close again in October 2017. Thomas Frankl produced the documentary "Visions from the Inferno - Art Against Forgetting" about the life and work of his father in co-production with the Slovak television STV2. Directed by Peter Dimitrov .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Frankl, Adolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH February 12, 1903
PLACE OF BIRTH Bratislava
DATE OF DEATH August 18, 1983
Place of death Vienna