Madame d'Ora

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Portrait of Dora Kallmus ( Oskar Stocker ).

Madame d'Ora (artist name from 1907) or Dora Kallmus (actually Dora Philippine Kallmus ; born March 20, 1881 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary , † October 30, 1963 in Frohnleiten / Styria ) was an Austrian photographer .

Life

Dora Kallmus came from a Jewish family. She was the daughter of Dr. Philipp Kallmus (1842–1918), a Viennese court and court advocate , and Malvine Sonnenberg (1853–1892). The father's family came from Prague , the mother's from Krapina in Croatia . After her mother died at the age of 39, Dora and her sister Anna Malvine (1878–1941) were raised by their paternal grandmother.

Back then it was difficult for a woman to get an education as a photographer. Kallmus was able to gain experience by visiting the studio of the photographer Hans Makart junior and was the first woman to be admitted to the theory courses of the Vienna Graphic Teaching and Research Institute , but not to its practical seminars. From 1906 she took photography and retouching lessons in Berlin with Nicola Perscheid and in 1907 she opened the photo studio d'Ora in Vienna's first district together with Arthur Benda under her artist name Madame d'Ora . He was initially the studio manager, from 1922 a partner and took over it in 1927 and continued it under the name d'Ora BENDA . She took portraits of “unknown” people, but was best known for portraits of the Viennese artist and intellectual scene, such as Alma Mahler-Werfel , Arthur Schnitzler , Anna Pawlowa , Gustav Klimt and Emilie Flöge , Marie Gutheil-Schoder , Pau Casals , Berta Zuckerkandl-Szeps and Anita Berber .

In 1916 she photographed the coronation of Charles I as King of Hungary and made a series of portraits of the entire imperial family. With increasing domestic and international success, she also worked as a fashion photographer from 1917. There were close contacts with the fashion department of the Wiener Werkstätte .

Madame d'Ora gave the Atelier d'Ora to Arthur Benda in 1927 and moved to Paris, where she had her own photo studio since 1925. In Paris, she built her fame as a society and artist photographer and became the main photographer of actor and singer Maurice Chevalier . She made recordings of Josephine Baker , Tamara de Lempicka , Fritzi Massary , Marlene Dietrich and Coco Chanel . She also worked as a fashion photographer for Die Dame , Madame and Officiel de la Couture et de la Mode and the major Parisian fashion houses such as Rochas , Patou , Lanvin and Chanel .

The beginning of the Second World War also meant the end of the society photographer Madame d'Ora. When the German troops marched in in 1940, she had to leave her Paris studio in a hurry and hid in a monastery and a farm in the Ardèche as a refugee in southern France . Her sister, with whom she had lived in Paris, was deported to Auschwitz and murdered, along with numerous other relatives.

Madame d'Ora returned to Austria in 1946 and photographed refugee camps and the devastated Vienna. Although she found her way back to society photography and created portraits of Somerset Maugham , Yehudi Menuhin and Marc Chagall , her late work also includes the "Schlachthof-Serie", whose pictures in drastic colors, for example, horse embryos in a garbage can, butchered rabbits and skinned lambs demonstrate.

Madame d'Ora lost her memory as a result of a car accident in 1959. She spent the last years of her life with a friend of her murdered sister Anna in Frohnleiten, where she died in 1963 and was initially buried in the local cemetery. The grave was later dissolved and the grave monument removed, but the corpse remained in the then re-allocated grave.

Through the intervention of the President of the Jewish Community of Graz, Elie Rosen , the remains of Dora Kallmus were exhumed on October 24, 2019 in Frohnleiten and transferred to the Jewish cemetery in Graz , where they were reburied in a grave of honor on the same day. However, Kallmus had already been baptized Protestant on June 4, 1919, as the parish book of the parish of Vienna-Innere Stadt shows.

estate

A total of around 90,000 photos were taken between 1907 and 1927. The majority of these recordings are now in the possession of the picture archive of the Austrian National Library (picture archive and theater collection), the Albertina in Vienna and the Museum of Art and Crafts in Hamburg.

Exhibitions

Awards

The Royal Imperial Photographic Society accepted Madame d'Ora as the first female member in 1905.

literature

  • Fritz Kempe (ed.): Documents of photography. Volume 1: Nicola Perscheid, Arthur Benda, Madame d'Ora. Museum of Arts and Crafts, Hamburg 1980, ZDB -ID 236488-8 .
  • Monika Faber: Madame d'Ora, Paris. Portraits from Art and Society 1907–1957. Edition Christian Brandstätter, Vienna 1983, ISBN 3-85447-069-X .
  • Claudia Gabriele Philipp: To the slaughterhouse pictures of Madame d'Ora. In: Photo history . 12, 1984, ISSN  0720-5260 , pp. 55-66.
  • Anna Auer (Ed.): Übersee. Flight and emigration of Austrian photographers 1920–1940. = Exodus from Austria. Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna 1997, ISBN 3-85247-14-5 (Caution: ISBN wrong, but usable) .
  • The century of women. Artists in Austria. 1870 until today. Kunstforum Wien, Vienna 1999.
  • Sabine Schnakenberg: Dora Kallmus and Arthur Benda. Insights into the working methods of a photographic studio between 1907 and 1938. Univ. Diss., Kiel 2000.
  • Monika Faber, Janos Frecot : Portrait on the move. Photography in Germany and Austria 1900–1938. Hatje Cantz Verlag, Ostfildern-Ruit 2005, ISBN 3-7757-1563-0 .
  • Jutta Dick, Marina Sassenberg (ed.): Jewish women in the 19th and 20th centuries . Lexicon to life and work, Reinbek 1993 ISBN 3-499-16344-6
  • The History of European Photography 1900-1938, FOTOFO., 2011. ISBN 978-80-85739-55-8 .
  • Monika Faber, Esther Ruelfs, Magdalena Vuković (eds.): Make me beautiful, Madame d'Ora! Dora Kallmus, photographer in Vienna and Paris 1907-1957 . Brandstätter, Vienna 2017. ISBN 978-3-7106-0221-4 (hardcover with blue cut), ISBN 978-3-7106-0245-0 (paperback)

Web links

Commons : Madame d'Ora  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Monika Faber: Madame d'Ora. Portraits from art and society 1907-1957. Edition Christian Brandstätter, Vienna 1983, p. 8.
  2. ↑ Faber, p. 37
  3. ↑ APA press release of the Graz Jewish Community of October 24, 2019
  4. ^ Collection of the Austrian National Library "Madame Dora"
  5. ↑ Collection of the Austrian National Library "Kallmus, Dora"
  6. ^ Albertina Collection
  7. ↑ Faber, p. 15
  8. ↑ Vienna's Shooting Girls. Jewish Women Photographers from Vienna | Jewish Museum Vienna. Retrieved March 8, 2020 .
  9. ↑ MAKE ME LOOK BEAUTIFUL, MADAME D'ORA! | Archives | EXHIBITIONS | Leopold Museum. Retrieved March 8, 2020 .
  10. ↑ The great break. Accessed March 8, 2020 (German).
  11. ↑ Susanne Blume Berger, Michael Doppelhofer, Gabriele Mauthe: Manual Austrian authors of Jewish origin 18th to 20th century. Volume 2: J-R. Edited by the Austrian National Library. Saur, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-598-11545-8 , p. 631.
personal data
SURNAME Madame d'Ora
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kallmus, Dora; Kallmus, Dora Philippine
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian photographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 20, 1881
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH October 30, 1963
Place of death Frohnleiten