Heinrich Sussmann

Heinrich Sussmann , pseudonym Henriesse (born November 20, 1904 in Tarnopol , Austria-Hungary ; died December 12, 1986 in Vienna ) was an Austrian painter, illustrator and visual artist and survivor of the Shoah .

Life

Heinrich Sussmann grew up in Tarnopol, a place in what was then the crown land of Galicia, Austria-Hungary , where he had to experience anti-Semitic pogroms as a child . When he was ten years old, his family fled their apartment to Vienna , where he attended middle school. After the end of the First World War , the adolescent went to Paris , where he learned the basics of painting and graphics at the “Académie Grand Chaumiére” . In 1927/28 he continued his studies at the Vienna School of Applied Arts. With Oskar Strnad he gained insights into the areas of interior design and stage design . He exhibited his first works in the Paris galleries "Salon du Caire" and "Au Sacre du Printemps". This was followed by a short interim stage in which he headed the advertising department for an Egyptian cigarette company in Cairo . He also worked as a set designer on various stages - the “Proletarian Stage”, the “Künstlerspiele Faun”, the “Kammerspiele”, the “Volkstheater Wien”. He also worked for various newspapers.

In 1929 he went to Berlin and became a draftsman for the Ullstein publishing house . In Berlin he met Herbert Sandberg and became a member of the KPD right away . In the UFA studios , sketches were made that made him one of the most famous caricaturists . He portrayed Hanns Eisler , Elisabeth Bergner , Hans Albers a . a. For the Berlin nightclub “Bal Musette” he designed interior and stage designs. He was represented with six sheets in the exhibition "Humor in Painting", which was organized by the Berlin Secession .

After the transfer of power to the NSDAP in 1933 , the Gestapo destroyed his studio, so that he lost all of the works he had done in Berlin. He initially fled back to Vienna, but the Nazi-friendly popular mood there made him move on via Prague and Zurich to Paris, where he wanted to create a new center of life. When the Wehrmacht marched into Vienna in 1938, his parents were killed there. Her apartment and with it his Viennese work were lost again.

Heinrich Sussmann was "conscripted" in Paris in 1939. Because the German Wehrmacht was in front of Paris in 1940, he fled to the “free zone” and went into hiding in southern France under the pseudonym “Henriesse”. A third time, all of his works and collections that were in his Paris apartment were destroyed by the Gestapo. In Marseille he met his future wife Anni, who also came from Vienna and was Jewish. He now occupied himself with book illustrations and ceramic works. In 1942 he joined the Resistance , which commissioned him to return to Paris illegally . There he was arrested in April 1944 and interned in Fresnes Military Prison . From there he was deported to Auschwitz for extermination .

In Auschwitz-Birkenau he recognized his heavily pregnant wife on the ramp without being able to contact her. The newborn baby was immediately taken care of by the camp doctor Dr. Mengele "thrown into the oven". But for both Anni and him, the liberation of the concentration camp by the Red Army saved their lives.

Memorial to the Victims of Fascism on Reumannplatz in Vienna (1981)

In order to avoid further persecution and the increasingly virulent hatred of Jews, he first went back to France, where he found his wife again. At the end of 1945 they decided to go back to Vienna. Here he filled with new energy again, and he designed the first major exhibition “Never forget!” About the crimes of the Nazi regime for the “Künstlerhaus”. Other exhibitions such as “The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising” and many others followed. In the following years and decades he again created stage sets, illustrations, caricatures, posters, mosaics, graphics and paintings. Impressive cycles and portfolios were created. Above all, his own experience in Auschwitz was reflected in the folder “I remember Auschwitz again”, which was printed in 1960. These memories reappear in his cycle “Ecce homo”. He designed u. a. also the stained glass windows of the Jewish part of the Vienna Central Cemetery . He created the votive windows for the Austrian memorial of the Auschwitz Museum . The design of the memorial for the victims of fascism, which was erected in 1981 on Reumannplatz in Vienna, goes back to him .

Exhibitions

• 1926 Paris: "Sacre du Printemps" gallery
• 1927 Cairo: "Salon du Caire"
• 1928 Berlin: "Berlin Secession"
• 1936 Paris: "Studio"
• 1937 Paris: "Atelier Exhibition"
• 1941 Marseille: "Salon Artistique"
• 1946 Vienna: "Never Forget", Künstlerhaus
• 1947 Vienna: "I. Austrian Art Exhibition", Künstlerhaus
• 1948 Vienna: "International Poster Exhibition", Künstlerhaus
• 1948 Vienna: "Caricature Show", Künstlerhaus
• 1954 Vienna, Wiener Festwochen: "Stage Design", Künstlerhaus
• 1954 Vienna: "Resistance and Art", Künstlerhaus
• 1954 Warsaw: "Exhibition of Contemporary Art"
• 1955 Vienna: "International Caricature Exhibition"
• 1956 Vienna, Wiener Festwochen: "Looked at and designed", Künstlerhaus
• 1957 Vienna, Wiener Festwochen: Landscape, Man and Animal ", Künstlerhaus
• 1959 Vienna: "Autumn Exhibition", Künstlerhaus
• 1960 Vienna: "Spring Exhibition", Künstlerhaus
• 1960 Vienna: "Autumn Exhibition", Künstlerhaus
• 1960 Vienna: "Construction of the metropolis Vienna in the caricature", Bauzentrum
• 1961 Vienna: "Art Exhibition BVÖ", Chamber of Labor
• 1961 Paris: own exhibition "Maison de la Pensée Francaise"
• 1962 Jerusalem: own exhibition "Studio Nora"
• 1963 Vienna: "On many ways", Kupferstichkabinett
• 1964 Vienna: own exhibition "Small Gallery"
• 1965 Paris: own exhibition "Galerie du Passeur"

Images and graphics in collections

Public collections

Albertina - Austrian Gallery - Ministry of Education - Department of Culture of the City of Vienna - Kupferstichkabinett - Museum of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde - Palais des Beaux Arts Cairo - National Museum Bezalel Jerusalem - Museum Yad Vashem Jerusalem - Museum Lochamei Hagethaot Israel - Musée de l'art Juif Paris - Musée de la Ville de Marseille .

Private collections

Paris - Marseille - Lyon - New York City - New Brunswick - Mexico City - Brussels - Zurich - Belgrade - Jerusalem - Tel Aviv - Haifa - Ramat Gan - Berlin - Warsaw - Krakow - Auschwitz - The Hague - Vienna.

Prices

• Antifa badge "Never forget", 1946
• "International Poster Exhibition", 1948
• "International Caricature Exhibition", 1955
• "Theodor-Körner-Förderungspreis", 1962
• "Theodor-Körner-Förderungspreis", 1966

Estate and aftermath

An extensive artistic estate is in a collection in the Jewish Museum Vienna. The Heinrich Sussmann Foundation Vienna supports young Austrian artists. A public exhibition of Heinrich Sussmann's works was opened three years after his death on April 26, 1989 in the Otto-Nagel-Haus in Berlin . It was organized by the Association of Visual Artists of the GDR (VBK), the Society of Visual Artists Austria (Künstlerhaus), the Heinrich Sussmann Foundation Vienna and the Foundation " New Synagogue Berlin - Centrum Judaicum ".

literature

• Peter Michel : Arrival in Freedom. Essays against the loss of value over time , Verlag am Park Berlin 2011
• Fine arts issue 8/1985: Votive window for Auschwitz (burning of Jews). 220 x 150 cm. Lead glass
• Who's Who in Austria, Intercontinental Book & Publishing Co. Ltd., Montreal 1967
• I remember Auschwitz again , Europa Verlag Vienna 1963
• Vollmer Künstlerlexikon, Vol. 6, Verlag EA Seemann, Leipzig 1962

References and comments

1. ↑ Anna Sussmann: Germany is black . In: Karin Berger, Elisabeth Holzinger, Lotte Podgornig, Lisbeth N. Trallori: I'll give you a coat that you can still wear freely. Resist in the concentration camp. Austrian women tell. Promedia, Vienna 1987, pp. 247-252; here: 248. ISBN 3-900-478-20-1 .
2. ↑ Anni, b. 1909 as Anne Goldscheider, also Anna, died on October 6, 1985
3. ↑ Peter Michel: Arrival in Freedom. Essays against the loss of value over time , Verlag am Park Berlin 2011, p. 129ff.