Erich Gold

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Erich Andreas Gold (born May 12, 1899 in Vienna ; † September 20, 1979 ibid) worked under the artist name Erich Goltz in Berlin and Vienna as a press illustrator , political cartoonist , portraitist for theater and film and cartoonist . In 1933, he fled as a Jew from Germany , 1,938 from Austria . In exile in New York he created political caricatures, humorous cartoons and stories for comic books under his new name Eric Peters . In 1965 he returned to Vienna and died there childless on September 20, 1979.

life and work

Erich Gold came from a Jewish merchant family in Vienna. His father Julius Gold died in 1904, his mother Rosa Gold in 1919. Relatives in Berlin took him in 1920. He applied to the art academy on Steinplatz in vain . In Berlin he took the stage name Erich Goltz, came into contact with the Reinhardt Bühnen and created his first actor portraits. In 1925/1926 he drew cartoons in Naples for the daily Il Mattino and portrayed the exiled Russian poet Maxim Gorky . When Il Mattino came under fascist influence, Erich Gold returned to Berlin and worked for the newspapers 12 Uhr Blatt , Tempo , Der Montag Morgen , Die Welt am Montag . Actors were his main interests, but he also drew in the courtroom , boxing arenas and cycling arenas. The newspapers illustrated theater reviews and film news with his caricatures and scene drawings . In 1927 he furnished a revue by Friedrich Holländer . In addition, Goltz created numerous anti- Nazi caricatures, including for the satirical magazine of the SPD The True Jacob . In 1929 he and colleagues founded an association of press illustrators in Berlin . In 1932 he furnished the book Matadors der Macht by OB Server (i.e. Georg Schwarz) with 26 cartoons of politicians. After Hitler came to power in 1933, he had to flee. In Vienna he hired himself out at Wiener Tag , der Stunden and Tagblatt . In 1934 he was baptized as a Catholic . After the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in Austria in 1938, he fled to Zurich and portrayed there, the ensemble of the Schauspielhaus , where many immigrants from Germany and Austria a new home found.

In New York, where he arrived in 1939, Eric Peters was soon in business with cartoons for The American Mercury , Esquire , Collin's , The Saturday Evening Post , True , Look . In 1946 he was the third marriage to a young Jewish companion: Lily Renée Willheim , born on May 12, 1921 in Vienna. She designed comics under the stage name "Lily Rénee". Both created numerous covers and scenarios for the Abbott and Costello series published by St. John. After the divorce in 1952 and the end of the "golden age" of comics books, Eric Peters became impoverished. Lily Renée Peters married Randolph Godfrey Phillips in 1953 . Eric Peters married a Viennese woman again and returned to Vienna with her in 1965. He sold hundreds of the drawings he had taken with him when he emigrated in 1974 to the Austrian National Library - today the Theater Museum - and died in 1979.

The humorous cartoons from his estate were auctioned off at a Viennese auction house in 1999 . With the change of name, he also wanted to make his Jewish origins forgotten - which he succeeded so completely that his work and his fate were only rediscovered in 2017, when sheets of his hand from the estate of the historian Brigitte Hamann were to be exhibited.

Erich Gold's sister Frieda Gold , later Gold-Boulle, born in 1893, was deported from Vienna in 1941 and murdered in Modliborzyce ( Poland ).

literature

  • Hans Haider: The Snappy Pencil. Erich Gold - Goltz - Peters. Caricatures in Berlin, Vienna, New York . Christian A. Bachmann Verlag, Berlin 2019, ISBN 978-3-96234-025-4 .
  • Hans Haider: Marked by fate. Expelled from Vienna in 1938, met in New York: a visit to 96-year-old Lilly Phillips. Who drew comics for survival with Eric Peters . In: Wiener Zeitung 10/11/02/2018
  • Hans Haider: "I am not a religious emigrant, but a political refugee." With the cartoonist Gold-Goltz-Peters on the way to artistic being. In: Marcel Atze with the collaboration of Kyra Waldner (ed.): “Science can be so beautiful!” Amalthea, Vienna 2017, pp. 272–283.
  • Hans Haider: Erich Gold-Goltz-Peters. I all ladies, he all gentlemen. In: Michael Freund (Ed. On behalf of the Jewish Museum Vienna): The three with the pen: Lily Renée, Bil Spira, Peter Paul Porges . Metroverlag, Vienna 2019, pp. 56–87.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Gold, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Goltz, Erich (stage name); Peters, Eric (stage name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian press illustrator and caricaturist
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH 20th September 1979
Place of death Vienna