Manfred Weil

Manfred Weil ( November 29, 1920 in Cologne - May 6, 2015 in Meckenheim ) was a German Holocaust survivor, painter , graphic artist and recipient of the Federal Cross of Merit .

Life

His parents were Emil Weil , a Jew from Breisach , and his wife Emmam, born in Bremen, who were Catholic. Weil was born as a premature baby, the doctors gave the parents little hope. Thinking that a skeptical attitude by the doctors would not help their son, his parents took him home. He had a younger brother, Anatol.

After the seizure of power of Adolf Hitler 's lives Because family became increasingly difficult. His father lost several jobs and Manfred Weil's parents separated physically in the hope of being able to better protect the family from anti-Semitic attacks. Emil Weil was forward-looking, sent his sons to a Zionist youth organization with the prospect of being able to emigrate to Palestine , and urged the brothers to learn a profession that would be needed there. Manfred Weil and his brother both trained as a carpenter from 1937 to 1938.

Manfred Weil's first attempts to illegally cross the border into Holland failed. After completing his apprenticeship, this time with his brother Anatol in January 1939, he followed his father via Luxembourg to Belgium, who had fled to Antwerp in 1937 , although the brothers almost drowned in the Sauer during the escape. In Antwerp he was accepted at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts , and he also attended an evening school for interior design. His brother, who was still a minor, was sent to the Eksaarde youth labor camp.

In 1940 rumors increased that the Germans would attack Belgium. Manfred Weil and his father were now considered suspicious, "undesirable foreigners" and had to report to the authorities regularly. Ultimately, they were expelled and deported to France, Anatol remained in the labor camp. Manfred Weil and his father were brought to the French border, put into cattle wagons and deported to the St. Cyprien camp without food or drink . Conditions in the camp were bad, it was overcrowded and typhus broke out. In October 1940 there was a severe storm, the camp was devastated and some inmates drowned. The camp was closed, Manfred Weil and his father were put in cattle wagons and transferred to the Camp de Gurs . There they met an aunt who had recently been deported to Gurs. Manfred Weil planned his escape from the camp, tried to motivate his father to come along, but he felt too sick and weak, but supported him in his escape efforts and also gave him some of his own bread rations. Manfred Weil managed to escape after several unsuccessful attempts. Unnoticed by the guards, he untangled the barbed wire with his bare hands, a farmer hid it.

He went 150 kilometers to Bordeaux . There he went to the "Feldkommandantur", a provisional office of the Wehrmacht . Manfred Weil, the Jew, went in, pretending to be an Reich German kidnapped by the French, even his passport would have been taken from him. The indignant German officer took care of Weil and gave him a temporary identity card without the stamped “J” for Jude. He got a job in the army supply camp. An SS inspection commission for German returnees arrived, Manfred fled. He returned to Antwerp via Paris and Lille . There he continued to pretend to be an Aryan gentleman, ate in the officers' mess and received a real alien's passport, again without the "J". Aryan foreign workers were wanted for German factories. Itself as Flame spending, he received a certificate was to Wiesbaden brought there and assigned to a wood factory. When uniformed men came into the factory, Manfred Weil fled immediately. He took the train via Koblenz and Malmedy to Calais , looked for a job there, but never stayed anywhere long for safety reasons.

He went back to Antwerp, which was occupied, and there he found his brother Anatol. He also tried to get an alien's passport without the "J" mark, but was less lucky than his brother and failed at the town hall due to an official. Manfred Weil called this officer from the nearest telephone booth and snapped into the receiver: “This is War Inspector Gangsor, Field Command 520. I'm sending you a young man named Anatol Weil for the second time. And then you finally issue him with a passport. For you, I hope this is done. Heil Hitler! ”His brother received the coveted passport. The Jewish-German brothers found work as Belgian foreign workers, first building bunkers in Calais, then in a furniture factory in Detmold . The manager in Detmold sensed a dizziness: “You have black hair. You are not Flemish at all, you are definitely Walloons. And Walloons are not Aryans. "

The brothers continued to flee, briefly visited their mother in Cologne and found work at the shipyard in Oberkassel. Again they became aware of them, a town hall clerk in Beuel realized that it was not a question of passports, but of simple certificates that were presented to her. Her escape continued, by train to Lake Constance and in the night over the green border to Switzerland. But even here they were not free, Switzerland interned all refugees. Manfred Weil and Anatol ended up in prison and were taken to a labor camp in the canton of Valais . They fled and wanted to make their way to southern Italy to join the Americans and fight the Nazis. But they were caught again by the Swiss. In total, they passed through 15 different camps in Switzerland.

After the end of the war they wanted to go to Cologne, where they could not find any accommodation. They settled in Bonn. Manfred Weil was registered as a "Displaced Person" and received 6,000 DM in compensation. He studied from 1946 to 1951 at the Cologne factory schools , among others with Heinrich Lützeler . From 1951 he was a freelance painter and graphic artist. He was a co-founder of the Bonn artist group . From 1968 to 1987 he taught painting and life drawing at the Volkshochschule Bonn. From 1989 he was a member of the Taylor Foundation . For many decades he drew caricatures in Vorwärts , he designed some facades in the Rhineland using the sgraffito technique, and there are wall paintings by him on some public buildings.

He died in 2015, his grave is in the old Jewish cemetery in Bonn .

Manfred Weil had a daughter and was married to Alisa, nee Levin, granddaughter of Else Höfs and niece of the painter Julo Levin , in 1971 . The Weil couple were the first Jewish couple to be married in the synagogue in Bonn after the Shoah . Alisa Weil was a member of the Hagana .

His father Emil Weil was deported to Auschwitz in 1942; he did not survive the Shoah. The brothers did not find out about his death until years later. Manfred Weil was present at the laying of the Stolperstein 2011 in Eichstetten for his father Emil Weil.

Two documentaries deal with the life of Manfred Weil: In 1981 the terrible happiness of Manfred Weil appeared , in 2016 “You won't get me!” .

Works by him are in various museums in Bonn, including the Kunstmuseum Bonn and museums in Wesseling and Meckenheim, but his works are also in private hands, for example Willy Brandt and Annemarie Renger own works by him.

Exhibitions (selection)

He exhibited nationally, but also in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Poland.

• 1973 Cologne
• 2015 Düsseldorf
• 2017 Eichstetten: "Manfred Weil. The pictures. His life"
• 2018 Königswinter

Documentation

• 1981 The terrible happiness of Manfred Weil
• 2016 "You won't get me!"

Awards

• 1995 Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon

literature

• Hans Juan Dotter Weich, Manfred Weil , Haus d. City Art collections 1961 (catalog)
• Manfred Weil [Cologne: Gallery in C: 21.11.1978-15.1.1979], 1978 (catalog)
• Manfred Weil: Fantasies in Mediterranean Spaces , Meckenheim 1985 (catalog)
• Carsten Teichert: Alisa Weil. Germany, Palestine and Back: Biographical Talks , 2019
• Mechthild Kalthoff: Manfred Weil - To be or not to be , Elen-Verlag 2020

Web links

• About Manfred Weil

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Painting was his elixir of life , accessed on April 16, 2020
2. ↑ Obituary Manfred Weil SA, in tachles of 19 June 2015 p 11
3. ↑ General-Anzeiger : "I do not contrite myself" , accessed on April 14, 2020
4. ^ Jüdische Allgemeine : Die Agentin , accessed April 16, 2020
5. ↑ Credits The terrible luck of Manfred Weil
6. ↑ You won't get me - the film , accessed April 15, 2020
7. ↑ Stadtmuseum Düsseldorf shows Manfred Weil , accessed on April 16, 2020
8. ↑ Invitation to the exhibition "Manfred Weil. The Pictures. His Life" , accessed on April 16, 2020