Paula goose

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Paula Gans: In prayer at the Feast of Tabernacles , oil on canvas, 86 × 62.5 cm, 1920, Museum for Hamburg History

Paula Gans (born May 9, 1883 in Hronov , Bohemia ; † November 7, 1941 in Hamburg ) was a Czech still life , portrait and nude painter who lived and worked in Hamburg.

life and work

Paula Gans was born as the daughter of Ignaz Gans and Johanna (née Goldberg). She emigrated to Germany with her brother Richard (1877–1941) and settled in Hamburg in 1920. Soon after arriving in Hamburg, she became friends with the painter Hertha Spielberg (1890–1977) and shared a studio with her in the Curiohaus in Rothenbaumchaussee 15. Hertha Spielberg attended the Altona School of Crafts and Applied Arts and for three years from 1910 studied at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris .

Her landscape pictures, nudes and still lifes show that Paula Gans oriented herself towards the French Impressionists . The picture In Prayer at the Feast of Tabernacles , which shows a rabbi at prayer, was made as early as 1920 . “ The ascetic face with the strong beard, the prayer shawl and the open prayer book characterize the situation of concentrated immersion in prayer. It is the only picture that indicates Paula Gans' Jewish-Orthodox origins . ”Her Hamburg friends and colleagues also included the painter Gertrude Schaeffer and the photographer Charlotte Rudolph . In 1932 the Freundinnenkreis traveled to southern France and Paris. In her oil painting Paris Montmartre, Place du Tertre (1932, 66 × 50 cm) made there, the French influence can be clearly identified.

In the early 1930s, Gans also worked as a portraitist. Several portraits of the pianist Wilhelm Barg and his father as well as a portrait of the artist Gertrud Schaeffer were found in the estate.

persecution

Stumbling block for Paula Gans

For the Jewess Paula Gans, living conditions in Hamburg were increasingly restricted, and her assets were placed in a blocked account, although she was a Czech citizen, which, however, no longer offered her protection after the establishment of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia . On April 25, 1933, she was excluded from the Hamburg artist community because of her Jewish descent . In November 1941 Paula and Richard Gans received the decision to be deported to the Minsk ghetto . On November 7, 1941, one day before the deportation, Paula Gans committed suicide. Richard was murdered in Minsk that same year. In front of the house at Eppendorfer Baum 10 there are two stumbling blocks for Paula and Richard Gans.

Large parts of her work were found in the Hertha Spielberg estate in 1977 and reveal the scope and themes of her work.

literature

Web links

Commons : Paula Gans  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paula Gans on the Stolpersteine ​​Hamburg website