Ephraim Moses Lilies

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EM Lilies (1910)
Father Jakob Lilien with his tools (illustration for Songs of the Ghetto )
Berlin 1902: Founding members of the Jewish publishing house . V. l. To right: (standing) E. M. Lilien, Chaim Weizmann , Davis Trietsch , (sitting) Berthold Feiwel and Martin Buber .
Poster (1899)
Dedicated to the dead of the Kishinev pogrom .

Ephraim Moses Lilien (born May 23, 1874 in Drohobycz , Galicia , Austria-Hungary ; died July 17, 1925 in Badenweiler ), also Efraim Mose Lilien , Maurycy Lilien in Polish , Hebrew אפרים משה בן יעקב הכהן ליליען, was a Jewish graphic artist , illustrator , painter and photographer who was best known for his ornamental graphic works in the Art Nouveau style and his bookplates .

life and work

Ephraim Moses Lilien was born in 1874 in a small Galician town in the Lemberg district. His parents were the poor turner Jacob Lilien (1854–1907) and his wife Karoline, b. Langermann (1855-1920). Since his parents had no money to enable their son to attend school, he was sent to apprenticeship to a sign painter. Rich relatives, who were ashamed that a family member should become a sign painter, supported him with five guilders a month so that Lilien could attend secondary school in Lemberg. From 1890 he attended the art school in Krakow . However, since the five guilders were not enough, he still had to work as a painter on the side. According to his own statement, the need was his "constant companion".

After winning first prize in a painting competition, Lilien traveled to Vienna to study , but she didn't even have enough money to enroll . In 1894 he went to Munich , where after a few years he succeeded in receiving his first orders, including for the magazine Jugend and the Süddeutsche Postillon . In 1896 he won 2nd prize in a youth photography competition . In 1899 Lilien moved to Berlin , where he successfully established himself as a commercial artist and frequented bohemian circles . He became friends with the writer and Diseuse Maria Eichhorn .

Artistic creation and political engagement

With the book Juda, which he illustrated and designed , a collection of ballads by the non-Jewish poet Börries von Münchhausen , Lilien became the “first Zionist artist” in 1900 and, in the years that followed, put his work almost entirely at the service of the national Jewish idea. With his work he left a lasting mark on the appearance of the young Zionist movement. In 1903 he illustrated the book Songs of the Ghetto by the Yiddish writer Morris Rosenfeld . The Encyclopaedia Judaica named him in 1971 the first artist to get involved with the Zionists, as he took part in three Zionist congresses in succession. In addition to the invitation card for the 5th  Zionist Congress , the well-known photo of Theodor Herzl on the balcony of the Hotel “ Drei Könige ” in Basel is from Lilien.

Lilien got involved in the Democratic-Zionist Group . In 1902 he was one of the founders of the Jewish publishing house in Berlin together with Martin Buber , Chaim Weizmann , Berthold Feiwel and Davis Trietsch . In 1906, 1910 and 1914 he traveled to Palestine for several months each and was enthusiastic about the impressions there.

In April 1903 a pogrom broke out in the Bessarabian city ​​of Kishinev in which several dozen Jews were murdered, which provoked violent international reactions. Lilien created a graphic to commemorate the victims.

The Ten Commandments in Ferdinand Rahlwes' Bible edition, illustrated by Lilien

Lilien illustrated the "Books of the Bible ", edited by Ferdinand Rahlwes, pastor at St. Ulrici in Braunschweig from 1895 to 1909 . The translation was by Eduard Reuss . Originally 10 volumes were planned, but only three were published. Lilien's economic success only came through contact with the Braunschweig publisher Georg Westermann , who published the three volumes of the superb edition between 1907 and 1912 . In 1909 Lily's first own exhibition took place in Vienna . Since there was no sufficiently large exhibition space in Braunschweig at that time, Dankwarderode Castle was prepared for exhibitions at Lilien's suggestion . Lily's first exhibition there also took place in 1909, and exhibitions in other cities followed in the next few years. These successes gradually led to an improvement in relation to his father-in-law. In 1912 the "Bible for School and Home" appeared, and in 1914 the Luther translation of the Bible .

First World War

In 1916 Lilien, who was an Austrian citizen due to his birth in Galicia , volunteered to take part in the First World War on the side of Austria-Hungary . Since he was just over 40 years old at the time, he was classified as an officer candidate. As a well-known photographer and graphic artist who had already visited Palestine several times before the war, Lilien was first sent to the Ottoman front and later to the Middle East to take photos and drawings of the war and the various theaters of war. Among other things, he traveled through Asia Minor and to the Palestine Front for this purpose . Lilien returned to Vienna as a lieutenant towards the end of the war . For his services he was awarded the Austrian Golden Cross of Merit and the Ottoman Iron Crescent . The results of his work are believed to have been lost in the turmoil of the November Revolution.

Rescue of the Hornburg synagogue

In Hornburg , 30 km south-east of Braunschweig, there was a synagogue that was built in 1766 until 1924 . The church, which had not been used since 1882, had been left to decay for over 40 years. Even before the First World War, Karl Steinacker , the first director of the “Fatherland Museum Braunschweig”, today's Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum , learned of the desolate condition of the building and tried to save it. In 1922 he finally learned of the intention to demolish the building because it was in disrepair. Together with the Jewish community of Braunschweig , the Braunschweig regional rabbi Hugo Schiff , E. M. Lilien and others, Steinacker succeeded in bringing the entire historical interior of the synagogue to Braunschweig in 1924 and rebuilding it there in the Jewish Museum Hinter Aegidien true to the original. The interior of the Hornburg synagogue is still completely preserved in the Jewish Museum Braunschweig.

family

House of the Magnus and Lilien families at Wolfenbütteler Strasse 5 (formerly 3) in Braunschweig (2014)

In 1903 Lilien met the graphic designer Helene Magnus (1880–1971), who was studying at the Munich Art Academy . She came from a wealthy Jewish family from Braunschweig. Her parents were the judiciary Otto Magnus (1836–1920) and his wife Sophie, b. Isler (1840-1920). Her brother was the doctor Rudolf Magnus (1873–1927). In 1906 Lilien and Magnus married against the determined resistance of the bride's parents. Otto Magnus in particular was against his daughter's marriage to an Eastern Jew from poor backgrounds .

The relationship with his father-in-law improved over the years - not least due to the artistic and economic success of his son-in-law. After the death of the parents-in-law in 1920, the family moved to Braunschweig, the wife's hometown. From then on they lived in the house Wolfenbütteler Straße 3 (today 5), which Otto Magnus had built in 1886/1887.

After the family had moved to Braunschweig, Lilien applied for naturalization in 1921 . All German states agreed to this application - except for the Free State of Mecklenburg-Schwerin , where an agreement between the interior ministers dating from 1920 was invoked to prevent the influx of Eastern Europeans ( but de facto exclusively Eastern Jews). The Minister of the Interior of the Free State of Braunschweig then turned to his colleague in Mecklenburg-Schwerin and was able to convince him to give up his resistance. This is how Lilien got German citizenship.

Already during his time in Berlin, Lilien had campaigned for the (economic) interests of artists and was strongly committed to improving the living conditions of artists until the end of his life. So he founded the "Federal Association of Visual Artists" in Braunschweig, which later merged with the one in Hanover and was elected its first chairman and remained until his death. His wife was the secretary and executive member of the association until the Nazis banned her from doing this in 1933 . When a jury was put together in Braunschweig for a competition for the Wilhelm Raabe monument and there was not a single artist among the jurors, Lilien not only ensured that at least one artist had to be represented in each jury in the future, but also that that reasonable prices would be awarded.

Gravestone of E. M. Lilien (right) and his wife Helene, geb. Magnus, at the Jewish cemetery (2014)

Lilien, who had a heart attack in 1924 , spent July 1925 on a cure in Badenweiler, where he suddenly died. His friend René Schickele wrote an obituary for him that appeared in the Frankfurter Zeitung on July 23, 1925.

The children Otto (born December 16, 1907 in Berlin) and Hannah, married, were from the marriage. Peters (born March 20, 1911 in Berlin). In 1926 Otto Lilien graduated from the Reform Realgymnasium in Braunschweig and became an electrical engineer. In the 1930s he emigrated to the USA . After the end of the Second World War , he lived again for a while in Germany, but most recently in London . His sister Hannah became a gynecologist and also emigrated to the USA in 1933, where she met her future husband, the Poznan- born physicist Bernard Peters (1910-1993). Peters worked on the Manhattan project under Robert Oppenheimer , among others . Most recently he lived with his wife in Copenhagen , where he worked at the Niels Bohr Institute .

After E. M. Lilien's death, his widow continued to live in the house on Wolfenbütteler Strasse until 1935. At the beginning of the National Socialist era , it moved to Lachmannstrasse 6. In 1943 she also fled Germany. Helene Lilien worked as a painter and linoleum cutter until 1966 . Most recently she lived with her daughter in Copenhagen, where she died on January 18, 1971. Her body was transferred to Braunschweig and buried in a common grave with her husband. The Art Nouveau tomb is still to this day on the Jewish cemetery in Helmstedter Strasse in Braunschweig.

estate

Lilien had a printing press in his house in Wolfenbütteler Strasse , which the city of Braunschweig bought after his death and which continued to be used in the arts and crafts school . In 1928 the city organized a memorial exhibition for him. In 1939, his widow sent numerous drawings and etchings by her husband and his library to Jerusalem , where their son Otto was staying. A second shipment with etchings on copper plates was confiscated after the beginning of the Second World War . The whereabouts have been unknown since then.

literature

  • C. Heussler: Lilien, Ephraim Mose . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 84, de Gruyter, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-11-023189-2 , p. 447.
  • Lilies, Ephraim Mose . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 23 : Leitenstorfer – Mander . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1929, p. 223-224 .
  • Salomon Wininger : Great Jewish National Biography. Volume 4. Chernivtsi 1930, pp. 115–116.
  • Lilies, Ephraim Moses. In: Encyclopaedia Judaica . Vol. 11, 1973 (1971), col. 239-240.
  • Oz Almog , Gerhard Milchram (ed.): E. M. Lilien: Art Nouveau, Eroticism, Zionism. Mandelbaum, Vienna 1998.
  • M. Bar-Am, O. Bar-Am, N. Feldman (Eds.): Painting with Light: the Photographic Aspect in the Work of E. M. Lilien. Tel-Aviv 1991.
  • Reinhard Bein : Eternal House. Jewish cemeteries in the city and country of Braunschweig. Braunschweig 2004, ISBN 3-925268-24-3 .
  • Reinhard Bein: You lived in Braunschweig. Biographical notes on the Jews buried in Braunschweig (1797 to 1983). In: Messages from the Braunschweig City Archives. No. 1, Döring Druck, Braunschweig 2009, ISBN 978-3-925268-30-4 .
  • Reinhard Bein: Contemporary witnesses made of stone. Volume 2. Braunschweig and its Jews. Braunschweig 1996, ISBN 3-925268-18-9 , p. 97 ff.
  • Bert Bilzer , Richard Moderhack (eds.): BRUNSVICENSIA JUDAICA. Memorial book for the Jewish fellow citizens of the city of Braunschweig 1933–1945. In: Braunschweiger Werkstücke, Volume 35.Braunschweig 1966.
  • Lothar Brieger : EM lilies - an artistic development around the turn of the century. Benjamin Harz Publishing House, Berlin 1922 ( archive.org ).
  • Luitgard Camerer: Lilien, Ephraim Mose. In: Luitgard Camerer , Manfred Garzmann , Wolf-Dieter Schuegraf (eds.): Braunschweiger Stadtlexikon . Joh. Heinr. Meyer Verlag, Braunschweig 1992, ISBN 3-926701-14-5 .
  • Haim Finkelstein: EM Lilien in the Middle East, Etchings (1908-25). Ben Gurion University, 1988.
  • Mark H. Gelber: EM Lilien and the Jewish Renaissance. In: Bulletin of the Leo Baeck Institute, 87 (1990), 45-53.
  • Alfred Gold : EM lilies . In: Martin Buber (ed.): Jewish artists. Jüdischer Verlag, Berlin 1903, pp. 73-104 ( judaica-frankfurt.de ).
  • Lionel Gossman: Art Nouveau in Firestone: The Jewish Illustrator EM Lilien (1874-1925). In: Princeton University Library Chronicle, Volume LXVI, Number 1, Autumn 2004, pp. 11-78.
  • Dirk Heißerer : The eraser and light draftsman Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874–1925). Michael Hasenclever Gallery, Munich 2004.
  • Ekkehard Hieronimus : The graphic artist EM Lilien (1874–1925). In: Working reports from the Braunschweig Municipal Museum. Issue 25. Städtisches Museum Braunschweig, Braunschweig 1974.
  • MS Levussove: The New Art of An Ancient People: The Work of Ephraim Mose Lilien. B. W. Huebsch, New York 1906 ( archive.org ).
  • EM Lilien: Letters to His Wife 1905–1925. Edited by Otto M. Lilien / Eve Strauss. Jewish publishing house Athenaeum, Königstein / Ts. 1985.
  • Regine Nahrwold: Lilien, Ephraim Moses. In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Günter Scheel (ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 19th and 20th centuries . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 , p. 383 f .
  • NN: EM lilies. His work. With an introduction by Stefan Zweig . Schuster & Loeffler, Berlin / Leipzig 1903.
  • Hans Ries:  Lilien, Ephraim Mose. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 14, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1985, ISBN 3-428-00195-8 , pp. 550 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Michael Stanislawski: From Art Nouveau to 'Judenstil': Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in the Work of Ephraim Moshe Lilien. In: Ders .: Zionism and the Fin-de-Siècle: Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism from Nordau to Jabotinsky. University of California Press, Berkeley 2001, pp. 98-115.
  • Claus Stephani : The image of the Jew in modern painting. An introduction. / Imaginea evreului în pictura modernă. Introductiv study. Bilingual edition (Romanian / German). Editura Hasefer, Bucharest 2005, ISBN 973-630-091-9 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Lionel Gossman: Art Nouveau in Firestone: The Jewish Illustrator EM Lilien (1874-1925), last page ( princeton.edu PDF).
  2. ↑ a b c Reinhard Bein: You lived in Braunschweig. P. 465 (date of death July 17th [sic!] In two obituaries and on the tombstone (see photo from 2014)).
  3. ↑ Reinhard Bein: You lived in Braunschweig. P. 462.
  4. ↑ Reinhard Bein: Contemporary witnesses made of stone. P. 97 (quoted from a letter from Liliens from 1901).
  5. ↑ a b Reinhard Bein: Contemporary witnesses made of stone. P. 99 (quoted from a letter from Liliens from 1901).
  6. ^ Mark H. Gelbert: Melancholy Pride, Nation, Race, and Gender in the German Literature of Cultural Zionism. M. Niemeyer, Tübingen 2000, p. 227.
  7. ↑ quoted from Haim Finkelstein: Lilien and Zionism. FN 1. ( Memento of the original from September 19, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / arts-old.tau.ac.il
  8. ^ Encyclopaedia Judaica, Volume 11, Col. 240.
  9. ^ Commemorative sheet of the Fifth Zionist Congress in Basel. In: East and West. Volume 2, 1902, Col. 17-18.
  10. ↑ Regine Nahrworld: lilies, Ephraim Moses. In: Horst-Rüdiger Jarck , Günter Scheel (ed.): Braunschweigisches Biographisches Lexikon - 19th and 20th centuries . Hahnsche Buchhandlung, Hannover 1996, ISBN 3-7752-5838-8 , p. 383 .
  11. ^ A b Reinhard Bein: You lived in Braunschweig. P. 463.
  12. ↑ Information on Ferdinand Rahlwes.
  13. ↑ Information on Eduard Reuss.
  14. ↑ a b c Walter Heinemann: Memories of a Braunschweig Jew after 30 years abroad. In: Bilzer, Moderhack (ed.): BRUNSVICENSIA JUDAICA. Memorial book for the Jewish fellow citizens of the city of Braunschweig 1933–1945. P. 129.
  15. ↑ a b c d Reinhard Bein: You lived in Braunschweig. P. 464.
  16. ↑ Armin A. Wallas (Ed.): Eugen Hoeflich. Diaries 1915 to 1927. Böhlau, Vienna 1999, ISBN 3-205-99137-0 , p. 268.
  17. ↑ Information about the Hornburg synagogue. ( Memento from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  18. ^ The Hornburg Synagogue in the Fatherland Museum in Braunschweig. by Kurt Wilhelm In: Menorah: Jewish family paper for science, art and literature. Issue 5-6, May 1930, pp. 257-260.
  19. ^ Website of the Jewish Museum in the Hinter Aegidien exhibition center.
  20. ↑ a b c Reinhard Bein: Eternal House. Jewish cemeteries in the city and country of Braunschweig. P. 227.
  21. ↑ Reinhard Bein: You lived in Braunschweig. P. 430 f.
  22. ↑ Wolfgang Kimpflinger: Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . Architectural monuments in Lower Saxony. Volume 1.2 .: City of Braunschweig. Part 2, Hameln 1996, ISBN 3-8271-8256-5 , p. 140.
  23. ↑ Reinhard Bein: Contemporary witnesses made of stone. P. 99.
  24. ↑ Walter Heinemann: Memories of a Braunschweig Jew after 30 years abroad. In: Bilzer, Moderhack (ed.): BRUNSVICENSIA JUDAICA. Memorial book for the Jewish fellow citizens of the city of Braunschweig 1933–1945. P. 130.
  25. ^ Obituary for Peters from April 1993.
  26. ↑ Bilzer, Moderhack: BRUNSVICENSIA JUDAICA. P. 189.
  27. ↑ Walter Heinemann: Memories of a Braunschweig Jew after 30 years abroad. In: Bilzer, Moderhack (ed.): BRUNSVICENSIA JUDAICA. Memorial book for the Jewish fellow citizens of the city of Braunschweig 1933–1945. P. 130.
personal data
SURNAME Lilies, Ephraim Moses
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lilies, Ephraim Moses; Lilien, Maurycy (Polish); אפרים משה בן יעקב הכהן ליליען (Hebrew)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-German Art Nouveau artist, Zionist
DATE OF BIRTH May 23, 1874
PLACE OF BIRTH Drohobych
DATE OF DEATH July 17, 1925
Place of death Badenweiler