Erich Brill

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Erich Arnold Brill (born September 20, 1895 in Lübeck ; died March 26, 1942 in the Jungfernhof camp near Riga ) was a German painter and victim of the Holocaust .

Falls of the Itu (Brazil) (1935)
Stolperstein in Brahmsallee 41 in Hamburg-Harvestehude

Life

Erich Brill was born on September 20, 1895 as the third child into the Jewish family of Sophie and Wolf Brill. When he was two years old, he and his family moved from Lübeck to Hamburg. Later Erich does an apprenticeship there in his father's wood wholesaler “Gebr. Brill ”, which he should actually take over. But instead he studies philosophy and political science in Hamburg. In addition to his doctorate in Frankfurt / Main, he attends arts and crafts schools in Frankfurt and Hamburg. In 1920 Erich began working as a freelance artist.

Brill graduated with a doctorate in economics . He then studied at the arts and crafts schools in Hamburg and Frankfurt am Main . In 1920 he married Martha Leiser , a Jew , and they had a daughter, Alice (1920–2013). Already in 1921 the marriage was divorced and Erich Brill was free again for a life as an independent artist. He stayed in Italy, Palestine, Switzerland and France. Initially expressionistic, his pictures became increasingly impressionistic in the course of the 1920s. By 1933 he had 25 exhibitions. His first sponsor, Alfred Lichtwark , bought three paintings from him for the Kunsthalle Hamburg , Emil Ludwig, and had him portray him. Brill was a member of the Hamburg Artists' Association from 1832 and since 1920 a member of the Hamburg Art Association .

After the handover of power to the National Socialists , he had to flee to the Netherlands because he was of Jewish origin . In addition, his art is viewed by the National Socialists as degenerate and partially destroyed.

His ex-wife, who had also emigrated, tried to gain a foothold in Brazil in 1934 and initially left the daughter with him in Amsterdam , the two of whom were able to follow to São Paulo in 1935 . But Brill returned to Germany alone in 1936, under the illusions of German anti-Semitism . In Germany, because he had an Aryan girlfriend as a Jew , he was denounced and arrested in 1937, sentenced to four years in prison in 1938 for racial disgrace and imprisoned in Bremen-Oslebshausen . On December 6, 1941, he was deported from Hamburg to Riga to the Jungfernhof camp. In the camp he was initially assigned to light administrative tasks. On March 26, 1942, Erich was shot in a mass shooting in the Bi vonernieki forest near Riga ( Dünamünde operation ).

His last picture is a self-portrait with the title "Sylvester 36/37".

In 1995, when he was 100 years old, his daughter Alice Brill Czapski organized an exhibition in the State Gallery of Sao Paulo .

exhibition

  • Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo: Erich Brill: pintor e viajante , São Paulo: Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 1996. (pt)

literature

  • Marlen Eckl: Martha Brill - committed journalist and literary chronicler of the Brazilian exile. In: John M. Spalek [Ed.]: Deutschsprachige Exilliteratur since 1933 , Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010 ISBN 978-3-11-024056-6 , Volume 3, Supplement 1, pp. 352–354.
  • Marlen Eckl: "The melting pot" - the representation of Sao Paulo in painting, literature and photography by the Brill family. In: Martius-Staden-Jahrbuch, No. 58, São Paulo 2011, pp. 8–35.
  • Katherine Morris: German-Jewish Women in Brazil: Autobiography as Cultural History . In: Quack, Sibylle (Ed.): Between Sorrow and Strength. Women Refugees of the Nazi Period. Cambridge, 1995. pp. 147-158.
  • Erich Brill . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 1 : A-D . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1953, p. 315 .
  • Joseph Walk (ed.): Short biographies on the history of the Jews 1918–1945. Edited by the Leo Baeck Institute, Jerusalem. Saur, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-598-10477-4 .
  • Werner Röder; Herbert A. Strauss (Ed.), Biographisches Handbuch der Deutschensprachigen Emigration nach 1933 / International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Emigrés 1933-1945 , Vol II, 1 Munich: Saur 1983 ISBN 3-598-10089-2 , p. 156 entry on Alice Brill.
  • Obituary in Aufbau 1946, No. 12, p. 7.
  • Maike Bruhns: Fled from Germany. Hamburg artist in exile 1933-1945. In: Maike Bruhns (Ed.): Art in the Crisis. Artist Lexicon. 1st edition. Volume 2, Bremen 2001.

Web links

Commons : Erich Brill  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Maike Bruhns: Fled from Germany. Hamburg artist in exile 1933-1945 . In: Maike Bruhns (Ed.): Art in the Crisis. Artist Lexicon . 1st edition. tape 2 . Edition Temmen, Bremen 2007, ISBN 3-86108-890-8 , p. 87-90 .
  2. ↑ Grace Fan: Alice Brill: a life in paint and photographs , at Time out Brazil , São Paulo, 2011
personal data
SURNAME Brill, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Brill, Erich Arnold (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and victim of the Holocaust
DATE OF BIRTH September 20, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Lübeck
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 1942
Place of death Jungfernhof estate near Riga