Genja Jonas

Genja Jonas: self-portrait , around 1935

Signature of Genja Jonas (1933)

Genja Jonas (born September 2, 1895 in Rogasen , Obornik district , Posen province as Jenny Jonas, † May 8, 1938 in Dresden ) was a German photographer .

family

Genja Jonas was born as the second child of the Jewish cigar dealer Simon Sigismund Jonas (born 1866) and Laura Loewenthal (born 1867). She had three siblings: the older brother Max Jonas (born 1894) became a cigar dealer like his father and, after Hitler came to power , was able to emigrate with his family to the Netherlands , where he worked in Rotterdam . The younger brother Kurt (1898–1974) became a doctor in Dresden. He went to America after the Nazis came to power. Her sister Erna (1907–1959), married Rosenbaum, who ran a bespoke tailoring business in Dresden's Seevorstadt district, managed to emigrate to Israel.

From 1923 Genja Jonas' parents lived with their children in Dresden. At first they were able to emigrate to the Netherlands like their son Max. In Rotterdam they were both arrested in March 1943 and deported to the Westerbork concentration camp and from there to the Sobibor extermination camp . Here they were murdered on July 23, 1943.

From 1925 until her death, Genja Jonas was married to Alfred Günther , writer and editor ( Dresdner Latest News ) (born 1893). The marriage remained childless.

Live and act

Logo that Genja Jonas used in a photo album she made

Jonas grew up in Bromberg and possibly went to Berlin in 1914 , where she trained as a photographer until 1918. She then settled in Dresden like her siblings and opened her “Portikus Photo Studio” here in 1918 on Bürgerwiese 6. In the 1920s she worked with the photographer Erica Stroedel (1899–1984), who was trained by Hugo Erfurth ; the artist Wols apprenticed to her for a few months in 1931. The London photographer Richard N. Haile visited the studio on a reportage trip through Europe. From 1934 she lived with her husband in the neighboring house at Bürgerwiese 4, after the couple had lived in separate apartments for a long time.

Jonas became one of the most sought-after portrait photographers in Dresden, took part in international exhibitions and took orders abroad, including in France . In England she was allowed to portray members of the royal family. Her photographs of the dancer Gret Palucca gained importance . She was friends with Jonas' husband Alfred Günther. It was through him that contact was established with Jonas, who photographed Palucca for a day in her studio on the Bürgerwiese.

“We worked there for a whole day. I ran the same record until it just croaked. I couldn't dance without music. I didn't care if it was the same music for many hours. We both had a good day. There these beautiful pictures were taken, all in one day. There was some kind of relationship like that sometimes. We were both fascinated by that. "

- Gret Palucca on Genja Jonas

Various recording series were created, which Jonas had bound in Leporellos . Jonas also photographed other dancers such as Sent M'Ahesa , Käthe Diekmann and Hilde Brumof. Via her sister Erna, in turn, Jonas came into contact with the actor Adolf Wohlbrück , whom she also portrayed. She also took portraits of Pol Cassel , Jenny Schaffer-Bernstein , Erich Ponto , Ottomar Enking , Heinrich Zerkaulen , Fritz Reiner , Antonia Dietrich , Kurt Schwitters and Theodor Däubler , among others ; Jonas portraits of both are in the possession of the Kupferstich-Kabinett of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Jonas' apartment was a meeting place for the intellectual and artistic elite of their time.

In addition to well-known personalities, Jonas also created portraits of Dresden citizens. Her children's recordings in particular earned the praise of her contemporaries, as she “ felt the real, enigmatic childhood, far from cuteness and kitsch .” A total of around 20,000 recordings were made, some of which were printed in contemporary publications. “Your peculiar technical method was based on the brief exposure of the snapshot and on a highly sensitive retouch ; But the decisive factor was always her deeply penetrating psychological look. "

There are a few known landscapes by Genja Jonas from 1934, which were taken on the Samland peninsula. Jonas also made surrealistic photo collages. She came into contact with the Dada movement through Kurt Schwitters , with whom she was friends and whom she portrayed several times . In addition to his own photo collages, the one published in Joachim Ringelnatz 'posthumously in 1936 poetry for fashion, not against is man. Poems for Venus appeared, photo collages were also created in collaboration with Schwitters, which were shown at the Werkbund exhibition “Film and Photo” in Stuttgart in 1929 . Schwitters dedicated a collage to her, Pol Cassel created an oil portrait of her in 1926, and Edmund Kesting made an experimental multiple exposure photo of her.

Jonas' husband Alfred Günther was expelled from the Reichsschrifttumskammer in 1936 and Jonas himself was expelled from the “ Society of German Photographers ” in 1935 because of her “non-Aryan origin” , according to the GDL's 1935 conference regulations report: “To be deleted from the Society's membership list: the Ladies and gentlemen Kurt Schallenberg [1883–1953], Hamburg; Genja Günther-Jonas, Dresden; Annelise Kretschmer-Silberbach , Dortmund; Josef Rosner , Chemnitz; Josef Grieshaber , Frankfurt am Main; Prof. Dr. Pistor , Jena. "

Jonas, who wanted to emigrate to England , fell ill with cancer and died on May 8, 1938 in Dresden. In her memoirs, Gret Palucca reported on the death of Jonas, at whose bedside she danced to an aria from Il trovatore . Genja Jonas was buried in the Tolkewitz urn grove . In 1968 the grave was leveled. By then her husband, who died in Stuttgart in 1969, had paid the fee. However, the grave site was not re-occupied. In the obituary for her it was said: "Genia Jonas has acquired a reputation as a portraitist, which has spread and consolidated through her pictures at international exhibitions and through her more than 20,000 photos."

The Atelier Portikus was initially taken over by Alfred Günther and sold in autumn 1938 to Charlotte Rudolph (1896–1983), who specializes in dance photography . It was destroyed in the bombing of Dresden in February 1945, and a large part of Genja Jonas' photographic work was also lost. Only some of her photos have been preserved in the collections of theaters, galleries or in private collections.

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  Children's photography: girl in knitted dress 1922

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  Portrait photography: Merz 20 from 1927 with a cover photo of Kurt Schwitters' by Genja Jonas

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  Family photo: Elsa Brändström with daughter Brita in 1932

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  Dance photography: Gret Palucca 1936

literature

• Jonas family. In: Society for Christian-Jewish Cooperation (Hrsg.): Book of memory. Jews in Dresden - deported, murdered, missing 1933–1945. web, Dresden 2006, ISBN 3-939888-14-1 , pp. 166–168.
• Genja Jonas . In: Birgit Dalbajewa (ed.): New Objectivity in Dresden . Sandstein Verlag, Dresden 2011, ISBN 978-3-942422-57-4 , p. 329 .
• Alexander Atanassow: Genja Jonas. A Dresden photographer. Kunstblatt, Dresden 2013, ISBN 978-3-9815797-0-3 .

Web links

Commons : Genja Jonas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Article on the fate of the parents of Genja Jonas ( Memento from March 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
• Genja Jonas in the Deutsche Fotothek
• Literature by and about Genja Jonas in the Saxon Bibliography

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Alexander Atanassow: Genja Jonas. A Dresden photographer. Kunstblatt, Dresden 2013, p. 14.
2. ↑ Alexander Atanassow: Genja Jonas. A Dresden photographer. Kunstblatt, Dresden 2013, p. 24.
3. ↑ Frank-Manuel Peter : The dancing light picture. Hugo Erfurth as a documentarist of early expressive dance. In: Bodo von Dewitz, Karin Schuller-Procopovici (ed.): Hugo Erfurth, 1874–1948. Photographer between tradition and modernity. Cologne 1992.
4. ^ Geißler, Hans: The German and I. International Exhibition of the VDAV 1932 Leipzig . In: The technical assistant . No. 11 . Berlin 1932, p. 287-288 .
5. ↑ ^{a b c} artists around Palucca. Another way to get to Palucca. Exhibition catalog Kupferstich – Kabinett Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. Dresden 1987, p. 30.
6. ↑ Alexander Atanassow: Genja Jonas. A Dresden photographer. Kunstblatt, Dresden 2013, pp. 35–36.
7. ↑ Cf. skd-online-collection.skd.museum ( Memento of the original from October 7, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
8. ↑ ^{a b} E. Büttner: The photographer Genja Jonas [obituary]. In: Gemeindeblatt der Israelitische Religionsgemeinde , No. 12, June 15, 1938, p. 9.
9. ↑ Cf. u. a. Alfred Günther: The portrait of the child. With illustrations by Genja Jonas. In: Joh. Erich Gottschalch (Hrsg.): Dresden calendar. Yearbook about the artistic, intellectual and economic life in Dresden. Carl Creutzburg, Dresden [1927], pp. 177-180.
10. ↑ See: Samland 1934. In: Alexander Atanassow: Genja Jonas. A Dresden photographer. Kunstblatt, Dresden 2013, pp. 50–52.
11. ↑ ^{a b} Alexander Atanassow: Genja Jonas. A Dresden photographer. Kunstblatt, Dresden 2013, p. 21.
12. ^ Franz Grainer: Annual Report 1935. Quoted from: Christiane Kuhlmann: Charlotte Rudolph: Tanzfotografie 1924–1939. Steidl, Göttingen 2004, p. 11.
13. ↑ Theater Studies Collection, University of Cologne (ed.): Shine Roles: Actor Photography from the 19th Century to 1933. German Photo Days 1995, p. 113.
14. ↑ Alexander Atanassow: Genja Jonas. A Dresden photographer. Kunstblatt, Dresden 2013, p. 22.