Helene von Taussig

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Landscape 1932

Helene von Taussig ( May 10, 1879 in Vienna - before April 21, 1942 in the Izbica Ghetto , Poland ) was an Austrian painter who was murdered by the Nazi regime.

Life

Helene von Taussig was born as the daughter of Sidonie. Schiff (1855–1936) and Theodor Ritter von Taussig (1849–1909) were born. She had three brothers and eight sisters. Her father was a respected banker and governor of the kk priv. Allgemeine Österreichische Boden-Credit-Anstalt . He was raised to the nobility at the age of 30 after, as a young banking specialist, he had restructured the Boden-Credit-Anstalt, which, among other things, managed the private assets of the imperial family, which went bankrupt after the stock market crash of 1873. Over the years he built the banking house into the leading financial institution of the Danube Monarchy. Theodor Ritter von Taussig was also represented on the board of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde von Vienna and was one of the most prominent representatives of the assimilated Jewish upper class and educated middle class of the Habsburg monarchy .

Helene von Taussig was only able to devote herself fully to her artistic inclinations after her father's death in 1909. From 1911 to 1914 she went to Paris to study for a long time with Emma Schlangenhausen . From 1915 to 1918 she worked as a Red Cross nurse on the Isonzo Front .

After the First World War , she moved to Salzburg with artist friends she knew from the arts and crafts school - with Marie Cyrenius , Hilde Exner , Magda Mautner Markhof and Emma Schlangenhausen. In 1919 she settled in Anif near Salzburg. In 1934 she commissioned the Salzburg architect Otto Prossinger to build an extravagant studio house in Anif.

Since Helene von Taussig had converted from Jewish to Catholic in 1923, she was initially spared after the annexation of Austria in 1938. On February 28, 1940 she was deported by the Gestapo to Vienna, from there she came back to Salzburg, was arrested again on April 29, 1940 and deported to Vienna. She had to move into a room in the Carmelite Convent in Töllergasse in 15 Vienna- Floridsdorf . Over seventy Catholic converted Jews found refuge there, including Franziska van Alderwerelt and Rudolf Erich Müller, both of whom were also expelled from Salzburg. Helene von Taussig was expropriated in 1941 and deported to the Izbica camp on April 21, 1942, from where she was reported as deceased on April 21, 1942. According to the Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg website , she was murdered either in the Izbica ghetto, the Belzec extermination camp , the Sobibor extermination camp or the Majdanek extermination camp .

At least two of her siblings were also victims of the Holocaust : Clara von Hatvany-Deutsch (born 1875) died in the Hungarian transit camp Kistarcsa. Alice von Wassermann-Verheyden (1874–1943) and her son Robert von Wassermann (1897–1943) were captured by the Nazi regime in Belgium and deported to Auschwitz and murdered. The circumstances of the death of her brother Karl von Taussig (born 1878) on May 25, 1944 in Budapest are unclear. So far, neither the place nor the date of her death is known of her sister Hedwig May-Weisweiller (born 1884). It is certain that the siblings Emmy Redlich (1876–1962), Flora Paul-Schiff (1881–1950), Gertrude Schüller (1886–1946), Georg von Taussig (born 1887), Felix von Taussig (1889–1958), Herma Artaria (born 1890) and Adele Mayer (1893–1972) survived the so-called “ Third Reich ”.

Her studio house in Anif was acquired by state official Josef Wojtek after its aryanization in October 1941 and donated to his daughter Leopoldina Wojtek, a Nazi artist, in 1943. She was the divorced wife of the Nazi art historian and art thief Kajetan Mühlmann . After the fall of the “Third Reich”, the restitution of the house to the legitimate heirs, Helene von Taussig's nieces Silvia and Marietta, was dragged out by Nazi clans. Only after a court settlement could the property rights for the heiresses be entered in the land register of the municipality of Anif on November 23, 1953. In the meantime, however, Taussig's unconventional studio house has been sold and demolished.

plant

Her main work is dedicated to portraits of women. Her first exhibitions took place in 1927, in Salzburg (Künstleraal Schloss Mirabell ) and in Vienna (“Wiener Frauenkunst”). In 1929 Taussig had solo exhibitions in Paris and The Hague. In 1933 the portfolio The Dancer Harald Kreutzberg was created .

  • Lady with a Yellow Hat (1920)

  • Figurative Expression Study (1920)

  • Nude Study
    (1932)

Most of the oeuvre seems lost, only three works are known in private ownership and a bundle of 19 works that the Salzburg painter Wilhelm Kaufmann is said to have found in the basement of the Salzburg Künstlerhaus and which he handed over to the Salzburg Museum Carolino Augusteum in 1988 . The exhibition “Artists in Salzburg”, held in 1991 in the Salzburg Museum Carolino Augusteum (SMCA), now the Salzburg Museum, drew attention to Taussig's art and her tragic fate for the first time after the Nazi regime and presented some of her colorful pictures. The bundle of 19 works was presented in full for the first time in the special exhibition Helene von Taussig - The Rescued Pictures in SMCA 2002, curated by Nikolaus Schaffer, who also wrote the catalog.

At the beginning of 2012, the 19 paintings kept in the Salzburg Museum were returned to the community of heirs. An heir sold his paintings back to the museum, so that today there are 11 paintings in the legal property of the museum.

Commemoration

On July 3, 2014, the Cologne artist Gunter Demnig laid a stumbling block in Anif for the artist who was murdered by the Nazi regime. Among others, Marko Feingold , the chairman of the Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Salzburg, and Anifer Mayor Hans Krüger were present. In a speech he pointed out that Helene von Taussig was “the most modern, courageous and best-known artist” of the 1930s in Austria.

On February 1, 2016, the painter Konstanze Sailer suggested, as part of her digital art project Memory Gaps , that the street named after Josef Thorak in the Salzburg district of Aigen be renamed Helene-Taussig-Strasse.

The Jewish Museum Vienna showed up to May 1, 2017 Taussig images in the group exhibition The better half. Jewish artists until 1938 .

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Helene von Taussig  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Salzburger Nachrichten , January 5, 2012, local section, p. 18.
  2. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg: Helene von Taussig , accessed on April 5, 2016.
  3. ^ ORF : Helene von Taussig restitution case - pictures exhibited in the Salzburg Museum , written by Ruth Halle, July 27, 2011, accessed on April 5, 2016.
  4. ^ Wilhelm Kaufmanns memory in: Gert Kirschbaumes: Fascination Third Reich. Salzburg 1988, p. 42.
  5. ↑ Nikolaus Schaffer: Helene von Taussig (1879–1942). The saved images. Catalog of the special exhibition at the Salzburg Museum Carolino Augusteum, Salzburg 2002
  6. ↑ Stolpersteine ​​Salzburg: Helene von Taussig , accessed on April 5, 2016.
  7. ↑ Parish Anif : Stolperstein Helene von Taussig , July 23, 2014, accessed on April 5, 2016.
  8. ↑ Memory Gaps , accessed August 17, 2016.
personal data
SURNAME Taussig, Helene von
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian painter
DATE OF BIRTH May 10, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH before April 21, 1942
Place of death Izbica