Leo Haas

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Leo Haas' grave in the series of artist graves in the Friedrichsfelde central cemetery.
Cross-border commuters, poster by Leo Haas.

Leo Haas (born April 15, 1901 in Troppau , Austria-Hungary , † August 13, 1983 in East Berlin ) was a German painter , graphic artist , draftsman and caricaturist .

Life

Leo Haas studied from 1919 to 1922 at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe and then in Berlin with Emil Orlik and Willy Jaeckel . From 1926 he worked as a painter, graphic artist, press illustrator and caricaturist in Vienna and later in his hometown Opava in Czechoslovakia .

According to the Munich Agreement , Leo Haas, who came from a middle-class Jewish family, was imprisoned and brought to Ostrava for forced labor . In 1939 he was deported to the notorious "Jewish concentration camp" Nisko , the experimental field initiated and personally supervised by Adolf Eichmann and the forerunner of Auschwitz. Leo Haas was among the 500 inmates who were later returned to their hometowns.

In late autumn 1942 he and his wife were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp , where he joined the group of painters from Theresienstadt led by Bedřich Fritta from Prague. Among other things, they managed to smuggle drawings about the atrocities in Theresienstadt into neutral countries. The Gestapo officers of the concentration camp headquarters and Adolf Eichmann accused them of this in personal interrogations in 1944. The artists and their family members were taken to the cells of the Small Fortress and later to other concentration camps. Leo Haas was the only painter from Theresienstadt who survived imprisonment. Immediately before they were brought for interrogation, the artists managed to hide hundreds of drawings and also the picture book For Tommy for his third birthday in Theresienstadt on January 22, 1944 by Bedřich Fritta for his son Tomáš. After the liberation , Leo Haas was able to recover this treasure. The book was published in 1985.

On October 28, 1944 Leo Haas became prisoner no.199 885 in Auschwitz . There, too, he succeeded in drawing. On November 27, 1944, Leo Haas was transferred to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp, together with other “specialists” and the comment “ Return undesirable ”, to the special detachment for counterfeiting . There he was commissioned, among other things, to forge British postage stamps . Towards the end of the war, the prisoners of the forgery detachment were brought to Mauthausen and later to the Ebensee subcamp together with the printing machines . There they were liberated by American troops shortly after their arrival on May 6, 1945.

After 1945 Leo Haas lived with his wife Erna, who had also survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp, the small fortress Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and other concentration camps, as a press illustrator in Prague. In his biography he emphasized that because of the concentration camp experiences he consciously decided to take this path and against the “pure” artistic career as a painter. His wife died in 1955 as a result of medical experiments in Auschwitz.

Erna Haas took great care of Bedřich Fritta's three-year-old son , Tomáš, in the Gestapo prison in the Small Fortress of Theresienstadt . After their liberation in 1945, they adopted Tomáš Fritta. Bedřich Fritta died in Auschwitz in November 1944, his wife died in the Small Fortress Theresienstadt.

From 1955 Leo Haas lived in East Berlin, where he worked as a draftsman for New Germany , Eulenspiegel and other newspapers. From the first issue (1954) to 1982 he contributed a total of 1185 drawings to the latter magazine. For his 70th birthday, DEFA created the documentary film illustrator - witness - contemporary .

Leo Haas was buried in the artist department of the Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery in East Berlin.

literature

  • Wolf H. Wagner: escaped from hell. Stations of a life. A biography of the painter and graphic artist Leo Haas , Henschel, Berlin, 1987, ISBN 3-362-00147-5
  • The devil's workshop: in the forgery detachment of the Sachsenhausen concentration camp . by Adolf Burger. [With drawings from the forgery workshop in Sachsenhausen by Peter Edel and Leo Haas], Neues Leben, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-355-00494-4 DNB 891236813 .
  • Terezín / Theresienstadt , by Leo Haas, Eulenspiegel, Berlin 1971, 24 plates, DNB 57624757X ; Oswald, Praha 1983, ISBN 80-85433-73-7 . (Czech and English).
  • Bedřich Fritta: For Tommy's third birthday in Theresienstadt, January 22, 1944 , Pfullingen 1985 (picture book), ISBN 3-7885-0269-X , DNB 850676169 .
  • Arie Goral-Sternheim: KZ-Transit Theresienstadt: Pictures and documents from ghettos and camps / Jewish Museum Rendsburg . [Ed. from the Rendsburger Kulturkreis in cooperation with the Schleswig-Holstein State Museum]. Presented and commented on by Arie Goral-Sternheim. With a contribution by Frauke Dettmer and with texts by HG Adler and Leo Haas, DNB 944375952 .
  • Bodo Schulenburg. Illustrations by Leo Haas: Once upon a time there was a dragon ... a Christmas story , Junge Welt, Berlin 1983, DNB 840088736 .
  • Children in the concentration camp. ... and flowers bloom outside ; with children's drawings from Theresienstadt, drawings by the Theresienstadt painters Leo Haas and Fritz Fritta, photos and documents, edited by Dorothea Stanić, Elefanten-Press, Berlin (West) 1982, ISBN 3-88520-021-X , DNB 820697966
  • Bernd-Rainer Barth :  Haas, Leo . In: Who was who in the GDR? 5th edition. Volume 1. Ch. Links, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-86153-561-4 .

Web links

Commons : Leo Haas  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Obituary of the editors. In: Eulenspiegel , 30./38. Vol., No. 34/83, ISSN  0423-5975 , p. 3.
  2. ↑ a b c d e Wolf H. Wagner: Escaped from hell. Stations of a life. A biography of the painter and graphic artist Leo Haas. Henschel Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-362-00147-5 .
  3. ↑ "With the pen against oblivion". The Holocaust artists Fritz Lederer (1878–1949) and Leo Haas (1901–1983) . Exhibition in the Museum bei der Kaiserpfalz Ingelheim , September 3, 2009 - March 28, 2010.
  4. ^ Bedřich Fritta : For Tommy's third birthday in Theresienstadt, January 22, 1944. Neske, Pfullingen 1985, ISBN 3-7885-0269-X . DNB
  5. ↑ Peter Edel : When it comes to life. 1st edition, part 2, pp. 54 ff., Verlag der Nation, Berlin 1979, ISBN 3-87682-714-0 (autobiography).
  6. ^ Tomáš Fritta in the Theresienstadt Lexicon
  7. ↑ Sylvia Klötzer: Satire and power. Film, newspaper, cabaret in the GDR . Böhlau Verlag, Cologne / Weimar / Vienna 2006, ISBN 3-412-15005-3 , p. 100.
  8. ↑ Eulenspiegel special edition. The years 1980–1989 . Berlin 2004, p. 209.
personal data
SURNAME Haas, Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Haas, Lev
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German draftsman and caricaturist
DATE OF BIRTH April 15, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Troppau
DATE OF DEATH August 13, 1983
Place of death Berlin