Käthe Loewenthal

Käthe Loewenthal, before 1920

Käthe Loewenthal - Path through the forest

Käthe Frida Rosa Loewenthal (* 27. March 1878 in Berlin , † 26. April 1942 in a transit camp Izbica ) was a German painter of modernity and victims of the Holocaust .

Life

Käthe Loewenthal: Bernese Pre-Alpine Landscape , 1910

Käthe Loewenthal: Dünenheide before Vitte (Hiddensee) , 1930

Vitte / Hiddensee stumbling block: Käthe Loewenthal

Käthe Loewenthal was born in Berlin as the eldest of five daughters of the ophthalmologist and hygienist Wilhelm Loewenthal and his wife Clara. The family lived in Geneva, Lausanne, Paris, Belgrano (Argentina) and Berlin, where the father worked at the respective universities. In 1890 the family moved to Bern. Käthe, who came from a Jewish family, made friends with a Protestant pastor's family. She lived with this family and was baptized and confirmed. During this time she got to know the works of the Bernese painter Ferdinand Hodler .

After her return to Berlin in 1892, she attended secondary school there until graduation in 1895. Her artistic talent was already evident during her school days. From 1895 to 1897 she studied with Ferdinand Hodler. She made several trips abroad. In Paris , Käthe Loewenthal met the painter Leo von König . She followed him to Berlin and studied in the private painting school he founded. In September 1890 she took lessons in the painting school Zeven , which was founded by Hans Müller-Brauel on the model of Worpswede and was attended mainly by women, from the heathen painter Wilhelm Feldmann . In 1902 she went to Italy with her sister Susanne, who also became a painter. The friendship with the painter Erna (Raabe) Freiin von Holzhausen (1882–1938) began.

Around 1904/1905 she worked as a freelance artist in Munich , became an extraordinary member of the Munich Artists' Association and traveled to the Bernese Oberland. The Bernese Oberland becomes the main motif of her early landscapes. In 1909 she moved to Tübingen, then to Stuttgart, where she became a member of the Württemberg painters' association.

In 1910 she took up academic studies at the Königlich Württembergische Kunstschule in Stuttgart , in the "Ladies Painting Class" directed by Adolf Hölzel . In addition to portraits, he created landscapes that have the Black Forest, the Swabian Alb, the Neckar Valley and the Taunus as their subject. After graduating in 1914, she moved into a studio apartment of the Württemberg painters' association .

In 1912 her sister Susanne bought a half of a fisherman's house in Vitte on Hiddensee . Käthe Loewenthal visited Hiddensee regularly in the summer until 1935 and painted a large number of pictures that deal with the sea, the coast and the landscape of Hiddensee. She also belonged to the circle around Henni Lehmann and to the Hiddensoer Künstlerinnenbund , which was dissolved in 1933.

From 1914 to 1934 she worked as a freelance painter and earned her living by painting portraits, among other things. She was represented with her work at various exhibitions, u. a. at the Stuttgart Secession and in the Munich Glass Palace .

During the National Socialist era , Käthe Loewenthal was banned from painting as a Jew from 1934. She could no longer take part in exhibitions or sell paintings. Her urban studio was terminated and she was expelled from the Württemberg painters' association. Her existence as a freelance painter came to an abrupt end. Between 1935 and 1941 she made trips to Switzerland to Grindelwald in the Bernese Oberland. Life was getting more and more difficult for her, she was secretly supported by some people, u. a. by the Stuttgart artist family Dondorf and their former cleaning lady Marie Nothdurft.

In 1941, her apartment in Stuttgart was terminated and she had to move into a so-called Jewish apartment . In February 1942, Käthe Loewenthal was relocated to a collection camp, the former Jewish old people's home in Weißenstein in the Göppingen district. From there she was in occupied Poland because of racial assignment deported and in the transit camp Izbica near Lublin murdered. Her sister Agnes Schaefer (born 1882 in Berlin) ended her life in the mountains of Greece. Her sister Susanne Ritscher (1886–1975) was the only one in the family to survive the Holocaust.

Stumbling blocks in Vitte and Stuttgart are reminiscent of them . A senior citizens' home in Fürth bears her name. The Hidden Museum in Berlin dedicated an exhibition to the artist in 1993.

literature

in order of appearance

Maja Riepl-Schmidt : Käthe Loewenthal. Jewish painters in Stuttgart . In: Maja Riepl-Schmidt (Hrsg.): Against the overcooked and ironed out life. Women's emancipation in Stuttgart since 1800 . Silberburg, Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-925344-64-0 , p. 222-228 .
Käthe Loewenthal 1877–1942. Oil paintings, pastels, drawings. October 7th – 5th December 1993, The hidden museum, documentation of the art of women e. V., Berlin-Charlottenburg. The hidden museum, Berlin 1993.
Edith Neumann: Artists in Württemberg. On the history of the Württemberg Association of Women Painters and the Federation of Women Artists of Württemberg (= publications of the Stuttgart City Archives, vol. 81). Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 1999, Vol. 1, pp. 172-191; Vol. 2 pp. 104-105.
Ruth Negendanck : Hiddensee. The special island for artists. Atelier in the farmhouse, Fischerhude 2005, ISBN 978-3-88132-288-1 , pp. 87ff.
Marion Magas: How the painters conquered the Baltic coast. Self-published, 2008, ISBN 978-3-00-023779-9 .
Grete Grewolls: Loewenthal, Käthe. In: Who was who in Mecklenburg and Western Pomerania. The dictionary of persons. Hinstorff, Rostock 2011, ISBN 978-3-356-01405-1 .
Angela Rapp: The Hiddensoer Künstlerinnenbund - we are not painters. Berlin 2012, ISBN 978-3-00038-345-8 .
“A backpack full of colors” - female artists and outdoor painting. Museum of Modern Art - Wörlen Passau; Gabler, Josephine. 2014. ISBN 978-3-928844-64-2 .
Modern artists - Magda Langenstraß-Uhlig and her time. Jutta Götzmann (ed.), Anna Havemann (ed.), Potsdam-Museum (ed.), 2015.

Web links

Commons : Käthe Loewenthal - Collection of images, videos and audio files

personal data
SURNAME	Loewenthal, Käthe
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Loewenthal, Käthe Frida Rosa (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	German painter and Nazi victim
DATE OF BIRTH	March 27, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH	Berlin
DATE OF DEATH	April 26, 1942
Place of death	Izbica transit camp