Elsbeth Judah

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Elsbeth Juda (as pseudonym and Jay ; * 2. May 1911 in Darmstadt , † 5. July 2014 in London ) was a British photographer , journalist and art collector . She is best known for her work in the fields of fashion and work in the British business and export magazine The Ambassador .

Early life

Elsbeth Juda was the daughter of the philosopher Julius Goldstein (1873–1929) and his wife Margarete (Gretel) Goldstein (1885–1960). Gretel Goldstein, b. Neumann, was the daughter of a Mainz wine merchant. Julius and Gretel married on March 19, 1907.

At the age of eighteen Elsbeth Juda went to Paris and worked there as a secretary in the banking industry . In 1931 she married her childhood love, the journalist Hans Juda (1904–1975). The couple moved to Berlin, where Hans found a job as financial editor for the Berliner Tageblatt . In 1933 they emigrated from Germany and settled in London.

life and work

Juda studied photography with Lucia Moholy (1894–1989), the wife of the artist László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946). In 1940 Hans Juda became the publisher and founding editor of The Ambassador magazine . Elsbeth, who, unlike Hans, spoke fluent English, later joined as a fashion photographer and co-editor of the magazine.

Between 1940 and 1965, under the direction of the Judah couple, The Ambassador became an important marketing tool for the British economy and was continuously supplied with paper by the British government during the Second War . In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, the work of Elsbeth and Hans Juda was an important element in supporting the UK export trade. They promoted every area of ​​British production, culture and the arts. The magazine reached subscribers in about 90 countries around the world and was one of the world's leading trade magazines until the mid-1960s.

Elsbeth was in close contact with a large number of artists, writers, designers and photographers. Together with her husband, she built up a collection of contemporary art. Many of the artists represented in the “Hans & Elsbeth Juda Collection” belonged to her personal circle of friends.

Her photographs have been exhibited in many famous museums, including a. at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. In 2013 the Kunsthalle Darmstadt showed central works by Elsbeth Judas in the exhibition “Bauhaus and Seeing New Things - Photographs by Lucia Moholy , Gertrud Arndt , Elsbeth Juda”.

Exhibition of her works in Darmstadt in 2013

On the initiative of the “Friends of the Liberal Synagogue Darmstadt e. V. “, Elsbeth Judas' photographic works were shown for the first time in Darmstadt, her hometown and birthplace, 80 years after she was forcibly expelled from Germany. From April to September 2013 her works were exhibited in the Kunsthalle Darmstadt as part of the exhibition “Bauhaus and New Seeing” curated by Peter Joch .

In particular, the connection between the Bauhaus-influenced teacher Elsbeth Judas, Lucia Moholy, and the work of her student Elsbeth Juda in exile in England, met with a positive response.

The chairman of the Liberal Synagogue Friends Association, Martin Frenzel, said in his opening speech on April 22, 2013 on the occasion of the vernissage of the exhibition “Bauhaus and New Seeing” in the Kunsthalle Darmstadt, where Elsbeth Juda personally came from London, the first exhibition of the works the artist in her hometown is also “an act of remembrance culture”.

Already in November 2012 Elsbeth Juda traveled to Darmstadt to a. to visit the Liberal Synagogue Memorial on the hospital grounds and the grave of her father, the philosopher and cultural journalist Julius Goldstein, at the Darmstadt Jewish Cemetery .

literature

  • Bryan Robertson: Elsbeth Judah. 90 X Rembrandt. Collages on the late self-portraits . Holzwarth Gallery, London a. Stuttgart 1994
  • Peter Joch: Bauhaus and New Seeing, photographs by Lucia Moholy, Getrudt Arndt, Elsbeth Juda . Kunsthalle Darmstadt, Darmstadt 2013.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Martin Frenzel: The two lives of Elsbeth Juda . Catalog for the exhibition Bauhaus and New Seeing, Darmstadt 2013
  2. ↑ Harald Pleines: Elsbeth Juda (101) does not let himself be deterred from a visit . In: Darmstädter Echo, November 16, 2012
personal data
SURNAME Judah, Elsbeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jay; Goldstein, Elsbeth
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British photographer, publicist and art collector
DATE OF BIRTH May 2, 1911
PLACE OF BIRTH Darmstadt
DATE OF DEATH 5th July 2014
Place of death London