Max Weiss (painter)

Max Weiss (born February 2, 1884 in Ottensen , † May 22, 1954 in Hamburg ) was a German painter and graphic artist of the missing generation .

Life

Max Weiss was born as the son of the plumber Ignatz Weiss (from 1891 master plumber and from 1900 also tin toy manufacturer ) and his wife Henriette, née Goldschmidt , in the Große Brunnenstraße 87 in Ottensen. The Jewish family lived in Hamburg from 1885. After an apprenticeship in lithography , Max Weiss attended the arts and crafts school . In 1906 he was given "commendation" by the Society of Hamburgischer Kunstfreunde for an inlay door panel design. In 1911 or 1912 he married Wilhelmine Karoline Christine Schuchardt. In 1914 he moved to Pestalozzistraße 42 in Hamburg-Barmbek (today in Hamburg-Barmbek-Nord ). From 1914 to 1918 he did military service in the First World War . He was used as a recruit in a Czech regiment because his father was from Prague . His locations were the Dolomites and South Tyrol before he was appointed to the staff of the Austrian Archduke Karl I as a lithographer .

After the First World War, Weiss acquired German citizenship . In 1920 or 1922 he joined the Hamburg art community . He was also a member of the National Association of Visual Artists of Northwest Germany , which in 1927 became the National Association of Visual Artists of Germany . His daughter Leonore was born on December 2, 1912, his daughter Elisabeth in 1916 and their son Max Otto on July 9, 1924. In 1924 he and his family moved from Pestalozzistraße to a row house in the Fritz Schumacher housing estate at Laukamp 8 in Hamburg-Langenhorn . He also printed his etchings there in the house . The family grew vegetables and raised chickens in the large attached garden.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis , he was on 25 April 1933 because of his Jewish ancestry from the Hamburgische Künstlerschaft excluded. The Reich Association of German Artists was dissolved in 1933. Soon afterwards, the apartments, row houses or semi-detached houses in the settlement were given notice to over 50 communist, social democratic and Jewish families. Since the Weiss family lived in " privileged mixed marriage ", they were initially protected. Max Weiss sold some of his etchings to Mrs. Rave, who ran the art department of the Karstadt department store . At Christmas his wife Wilhelmine sold a number of his etchings, which then went from house to house with a portfolio. In 1937 the daughter Leonore Weiss moved to Copenhagen for personal reasons . Due to his Jewish descent, the Reich Chamber of Culture issued Max Weiss a professional ban in 1938. He could now only print etchings in secret. From February 8, 1939, he worked as a decorative painter at the Fritz Altenburg company . From November 21, 1941, the Gestapo, through the head of the Jewish labor deployment , Willibald Schallert , obliged him to do forced labor at the Christian Klood company in Hamburg-Harburg , which meant non-stop painting work outdoors, which caused rheumatism and weakness. He and his wife were also summoned to the Gestapo several times, who mistreated him and asked his wife to divorce her Jewish husband, which she did not do.

Mother Henriette Weiss' stumbling block

Max Weiss' mother, Henriette Weiss (born August 28, 1860 in Hamburg), lived in the Lazarus Gumpel Stift at Schlachterstrasse 46. ​​She was deported by train to the Theresienstadt ghetto . The transport with a total of 770 old people started on July 19, 1942 in Hamburg and arrived in Theresienstadt four days later. The transport was number VI / 2. The Roman number VI stood for the place of departure Hamburg and the number 2 for the second transport from this city. Henriette Weiss died on October 9, 1942 at the age of 82, according to a death report. The Hamburg memorial book and the federal memorial book state October 19, 1942 as the date of death, the Theresienstadt memorial book October 18, 1942. A stumbling block was later relocated to her memory on Eilbeker Weg at the corner of Kantstrasse in Hamburg-Eilbek .

In October 1943, Max Weiss and his family were forced to move out of the row house in Laukamp . She then moved into a so-called Judenhaus in Bundesstrasse 6 in Hamburg-Rotherbaum , where four families lived in one apartment and she had to share one and a half room with two other people. For the move, Weiss secretly stole away from the forced labor and managed it with his son Max and a laboriously found carter. The company boss Klood then threatened him emphatically with a report to "Judenkommissar" Claus Göttsche . Max Weiss junior was ordered to do forced labor at Maschinenfabrik Kampnagel as a “ first-degree hybrid ” .

On January 15, 1945, the Reich Security Main Office issued a letter calling for the end of protection for Jewish spouses in “privileged mixed marriages”. Those affected are to be classified in transports to Theresienstadt . Max Weiss received a message with a request to be on February 14, 1945 to no later than 14 pm in the building of the former Talmud Torah school in Grindelviertel on Grindelhof to report 30 because he was scheduled for a "foreign labor". His luggage was not allowed to weigh more than 50 kilograms and was searched in the assembly center. Then he had to fill out a declaration of assets and sign a declaration in which he left his remaining property to the German Reich. Then he was brought to the Hanover train station and forced him and 293 other Jews from “mixed marriages” to board some freight cars that were attached to a scheduled train. Because of the war situation, the train took nine days instead of the usual one or two days and reached Theresienstadt on February 23, 1945. The transport was number VI / 10. Because the transport only arrived in Theresienstadt shortly before the end of the war, the number of survivors after the liberation by the Russian army in May 1945 was comparatively high. Only two people on the transport had previously died. The guards used Weiss to draw portraits, which brought him perks in the accommodation. From February 27 to June 7, 1945 he found a job as a draftsman in the technical department of construction in the Jewish self-government. In Theresienstadt he secretly drew 24 sketches of the camp and camp life. He lost 15 kilos in the camp and later suffered severely from the consequences of his imprisonment.

On June 30, 1945 he returned to Hamburg. The row house in Laukamp was repaid to him. He found his old copper printing plates and most of his earlier work in the attic of the house . In redress, he received compensation for detention and imprisonment. From 1948 he also received a pension from the city of Hamburg. In 1949 he drew a cycle in which he processed his memories of Theresienstadt. In the same year he and his wife moved from Laukamp to Birkenkamp 6 in Hamburg-Wellingsbüttel , which was renamed Moorbirkenkamp in 1950 . In 1952 both moved from Moorbirkenkamp 6 to Alsterkrugchaussee 600 in Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel .

Although Max Weiss died in 1954, his name was recorded in the Hamburg address book until 1957 . Max Weiss was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ohlsdorf , grave location L2-51. His wife Wilhelmine Karoline Christine (born January 18, 1891) died on February 16, 1966 and was buried next to him, grave location L2-52. The father Ignatz Weiss (born July 23, 1857 in Prague) died on April 2, 1923 and was also buried in this cemetery, grave location ZX12-177. As a reminder, the name of his wife Henriette Weiss was incorporated into his tombstone.

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  Gravestone of Max and Wilhelmine Weiss ( white )

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  Gravestone of Ignatz Weiss (partial view)

plant

After portraits in the Impressionist style based on the model of Max Liebermann at the beginning, he later concentrated on precise drawings based on nature, based on which he printed etchings and colored them in part. Thematically, his focus was on Hamburg's old town before the bombings in World War II . Motifs of the Alster , the Port of Hamburg , the Elbe beach and the marsh villages expanded the spectrum. At the age watercolors he color bright and light directly from nature. In addition, designs for bookplates and advertising graphics were created. The motives of the sketches from Theresienstadt composed it into a kind of dance of death . The sketches are now in the collection of the Altona Museum . Further works can be found in the collection of the Museum of Hamburg History . In addition to handwritten signatures , he also often added an "M" in a "W" to the etchings.

Exhibitions (selection)

Solo exhibition

• 1962: Theater & Gallery on Marschnerstrasse , Volksheim , Marschnerstrasse 46, Hamburg

Group exhibitions

• 1920–1933: Jury-free exhibitions by the Hamburg Art Association , Hamburger Kunsthalle

Posthumously

• 1991–1992: 400 Years of Jews in Hamburg , Museum of Hamburg History
• 2001–2002: Art in crisis 1933–1945 , crypt of St. Nikolai am Hopfenmarkt , Hamburg (80 works by 70 artists)
• 2002: Art in the Crisis 1933–1945 , Jewish Museum Rendsburg
• 2002–2003: Art in Crisis 1933–1945 , Higher Regional Court of Bamberg

literature

• Weiss, Max . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. tape 5 : V-Z. Supplements: A-G . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1961, p. 104 .
• Maike Bruhns : Art in Crisis. Volume 1: Hamburg Art in the “Third Reich”. Dölling and Galitz, Munich / Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-933374-94-4 , pp. 45, 105, 279, 287, 414, 446, 453, 455-457.
• Maike Bruhns: Art in Crisis. Volume 2: Artist Lexicon Hamburg 1933–1945. Dölling and Galitz, Munich / Hamburg 2001, ISBN 3-933374-95-2 , pp. 404-406.
• Maike Bruhns: Weiss, Max. In: The new rump. Lexicon of the visual artists of Hamburg. Ed .: Rump family. Revised new edition of Ernst Rump's dictionary . Supplemented and revised by Maike Bruhns, Wachholtz, Neumünster 2013, ISBN 978-3-529-02792-5 , p. 503

Web links

Commons : Max Weiss  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Family biography, written by Hildegard Thevs, in the entry of mother Henriette Weiss on Stolpersteine-Hamburg.de
• Handwritten signatures from Max Weiss on antikbayreuth.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ From 1886 registered in the Hamburg address book in Hamburg.
2. ↑ From the address book of 1915 he is listed at Pestalozzistraße 42 as a painter or painter's business, in 1924 as an artist. The address is also listed in Art in the Crisis .
3. ↑ New rump
4. ^ Art in crisis
5. ↑ In the Hamburg address book he is listed as an etcher or painter from 1925 at the address. The address is also given in the New Rump .
6. ↑ Mention of the terminations on: A stumbling block for Carl Suhling ( Memento from March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ Henriette Weiss on the website of the International Institute for Holocaust Research
8. ↑ Henriette Weiß on Stolpersteine-Hamburg.de
9. ↑ Source: Transport VI / 10 from Hamburg, Hanseatic City of Hamburg (Hamburg), Hanseatic City of Hamburg, German Empire to Theresienstadt, Ghetto, Czechoslovakia on 14/02/1945 on the website of the International Institute for Holocaust Research
10. ↑ Main sources: Der neue Rump , 2013. Art in the Crisis , Volume 1 and 2. Biography of the mother on stolpersteine-hamburg.de

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