Discovering a Forgotten Artist, Fritz Ascher

Villa Oppenheim in Berlin, which hosts besides a permanent art collection by local artists also a museum dedicated to the Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf neighbourhood, offers until the 11 of March a retrospective of Fritz Ascher, a Jewish-born artist. Originally, the villa, which can be visited for free, belonged to the banker Alexander Mendelssohn and his wife, Marianne, but since 1911 was sold to the then town of Charlottenburg. 

Fritz Ascher, an artist whose value was recognized and supported by Max Liebermann, that survived the WWII into hiding, offers an impressive emotional display of styles and outburst of colours. Most of his works were lost during the bombings, many of the works presented being part of private collections. During the war, he concentrated solely on creating poetry, with his poems being reproduced on the wall near some of the paintings. 

Encouraged and recommended by Liebermann, he studied at the Königsberg/East Prussia Academy, his painting being a mix of influences from various styles, from Goya in his late Golem paintings or Munch - with whom he met in 1914 in Oslo, to the German expressionism of the Blaue Ritter or the Neue Secession of Liebermann. 

Ascher was born in a Jewish family, his father Hugo Ascher being a dentist that co-founder a dental technology company specialized in the development of artificial enamel. As the Mendelssohns, whose house hosts the exhibition of Asher, he decided in 1901 to baptize Fritz and his two younger sisters. Their mother, Minna Luise, born Schneider, stayed Jewish. Once the NSDAP came to power, the the troubles of Ascher started regardless of his assumed - or not - religion. The family villa in Zehlendorf was expropriated and since 1942 used as barracks. Fritz himself was banned from exercising his profession and was labeles as 'degenerate' and 'politically suspect'. He was twice arrested and brought to Sachsenhausen and Potsdam and saved from longer imprisonement by friends who intervened on his behalf. Warned in time that he was on a list of arrests, he was hid by Martha Graßmann who supported him throughout his life afterwards. After the end of the war, he slowly returned to painting, but he remained a recluse refusing many public teaching opportunities. He was burried in Wannsee cemetery in 1970, but the gravesite does not exist any more. 

Underskin, by Orit Arfa: It is more than the milky challenge

After The Settler, a book which I greatly enjoyed for the inquisitive challenges and painful dilemma raised after the Gush Katif episode, Orit Arfa is back with an equally interesting literary investigation. A Berlin-Tel Aviv love story between Nilly, the 'settler' girl with a Shoah survivor grandmother and Sebastian, the handsome German.

The two of them met accidentaly on a beach but feel 'some twisted way' of being connected 'by our tragic history'. The past, but also the weight of the present and the political views and mishaps are shadowing the relationship and at a certain extent it makes the communication almost impossible, and this is not because the mother tongues are different. However, there are ways to put on hold the non-stop historical buzz: over the food and by developing the physical relationship. Or through music. After all, does it matter to be 'politically aligned with a romantic partner'?

What really matters at the end of the story - at least for now - is that every generation is writting its own story, although the past is always and will always be there. I really loved that this book is creating, for the first time, a framework for discussion about what might really mean a relationship in the everyday life between an Israeli and a German, especially for Jews of European descent. And if the young people themselves are carefree and careless, their parents and relatives are not. For me, it is one of the most noticeable contribution to the discussion about the 'Israeli exodus' to Berlin written in the English language - although, a community of Israeli living in Berlin and in Germany in general exists since the late 1970s in fact, but as far as I know, without a significant literary presence. 

The book also has a noticeable erotic component, and it is labelled accordingly, but I would rather consider that this aspect is just part of the story, but not the story itself. 

A book recommended to anyone looking for some fresh, bold voices and point of views about the human German-Israeli story.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the author in exchange for an honest review

At the death of a kosher store

Situated in the Western side of Berlin, Schalom used to be one of the oldest kosher store in the city, created after the war as a family business. I discovered it on Sybelstrasse, close to Adenauerstrasse metro station, shortly after moving in the city, and for a long time it was my only source of kosher food. There were not too many at the time, with another one, bigger, but much expensier, close to the KaDeWe, closed one year ago because of the debts accumulated. 

Schalom was small, with very few products, but it had meat, which was a high commodity at the time. For Pesach, they used to have some gorgeous crunchy French matza that made me come back year after year, although I was already won over by other kosher options. It also used to be a source of information for various Jewish things going on in the city. I omitted to mention 'reliable' on purpose, because as the financial situation of the store was getting a bit worse, the information offered generously to the visitor was sometimes too much and not always friendly.

The other kosher options created, especially in the close neighbourhood, were killing the store. Bigger variety, better prices, neutral service, more space...The customers were more or less the same everywhere, but they were becoming people more interested in having at least once the week a full kosher meal as they had in Israel or America. When the overall prices of food are so cheap in Berlin, to convince non-religious people to buy kosher and thus, twice the usual price, needs a lot of persuasion. And even the religious families will prefer to save some money buying from a more convenient store, guaranteed that the kosher conditions are meet. Nowadays, you can find meat  with different hechshers accomodating various religious options and although Berlin is far way from the kosher richness of England it is much easier to survive Pesach or to prepare a fine family kosher dinner.

Meanwhile, Schalom store was sold shortly after Pesach, the space being probably used for an art gallery. It is over now, and a chapter is closed. This is the way of things. 

Memories of Jewish life in Schöneberg, Berlin

In the Western part of Berlin, Schöneberg is one of the areas where used to live many Jewish intellectuals, among which Albert Einstein, that used to live on Haberlandstrasse 8, Gisele Freund, Leo Baeck on Fritz Elsasstrasse 15 or Erich Fromm, on Bayerischer Platz 1. Marcel Reich-Ranicki, the leading literary critic of German literature also lived here for a while, and in his memory, a local school is bearing his name.

Aiming to remember the terrible times, an artistic project of Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock is aimed to raise awareness about the absurdity of the racist legislation at the time. Near the street lamps, on the main streets from the Bayerische Viertel, where Jews used to live, small billboards were placed with the texts of the interdictions the Jews were victims thereof. 

Jews were not allowed to go to school, own dogs or visit the doctors. Even though, later in the project, various mentions were added aimed to specify the context where those decisions were taken, reading all those messages on the light of the day in 2014, doesn't sound very pleasant.

The 80 signs are doubled signed: on one side there is a fragment of the German Nuremberg law and on the other side, there is a graphic description of the interdiction. 

As the signs are written in German, the target of the live exhibition is the German speaking population, but I suppose that after a while, those living around got used with the signs ending up by completely ignoring them. 

This exhibition is part of the larger project 'Places of Remembrance', aimed to outline the lost Jewish heritage of Berlin and can be considered as one of the most significant in the Western part of the city.

In the Schöneberg area used to live around 16,000 Jews, out of which 6,000 were deported from the Munchenerstrasse. At no. 37, there used to be a synagogue and Jewish school, mostly destroyed first during Kristallnacht and after by the bombings. The Orthodox synagogue was opened in 1909, answering the spiritual needs of the growing Jewish population. 

Schöneberg used to be called the 'Jewish Switzerland', but nowadays, there are only the Stolpersteine and the various memory projects that reminds about the past. This is how things are in this part of the world. 

Jewish Berlin: Minna-Schwarz-Heim

On Brunnenstrasse 41, a glass plate reminds of what once used to be a philanthropic Jewish institution in the Eastern part of Berlin. Minna Schwarz was born in Pyritz, Poland, at the end of the 19th century, and died in 1936. In 1888, she created the first Bnai Brith Lodge for women in Berlin. Bnai Brith is the oldest Jewish service organization for social service, philanthropy and mutual aid.  

In the yard of this block of houses was created at Schwarz's initiative a kindergarten for abandoned children and a refuge for single mothers. Between 1932-1940, the 'Heim' was named after the founder, who dedicated her time and energy to help the women and children in need, although herself childless. From 1940, the building was used as a 'Judenhaus', a residence where Jews were living in a kind of ghetto. From here, many of them were sent to death.