UTW 45

Hitler’s yo-yo, Zisl the street musician & Dietrich Bonhoeffer with honorary horns

Art: 2001-2
Framed: 34 inches H x 50 W [86.36 cm. H x 127 W]
Media: Ink, gouache, colored pencil on paper mounted on masonite

Zisl (upper left) was drawn from a photo in the book Image Before My Eyes - A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland Before the Holocaust, authored by Lucjan Dobroszycki and Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett (Schocken Books & YIVO, NY, '77). The photo caption: Zisl, the street musician. Staszow, 1930's. Photographer: Avrom Yosl Rotenberg family / Simkhe Rotenberg Collection.

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I don't know Zisl's fate. If he was alive in 1939 is it extremely doubtful he would have survived the Nazi genocide.

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Dietrich Bonhoeffer is portrayed at lower left, from a photograph taken when he was a boy. The photo is seen in the book Dietrich Bonhoeffer - A Life in Pictures, by Eberhard Bethge, Renate Bethge and Christian Gremmels (Fortress Press, Philadelphia, '86).

A leader of the anti-Nazi  "Confessing Church" movement, Bonhoeffer was executed at Flossenburg concentration Camp, Germany, on April 9, 1945, three weeks before the war in Europe ended. The establishment Roman Catholic and Protestant church clergy were aligned with the Third Reich government as part of the “the German Church." 

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While Bonhoeffer’s anti-Nazi work is well known, his activities to save individual Jews remains in dispute.

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Bonhoeffer's horns were drawn from a stuffed and mounted antelope head I’d bought at an an English import antique store on Alaskan Way So., facing Seattle’s waterfront, early 1980's. The hand-painted wood plaque at the base of its neck states "Chanler's Reedbuck, B.C.E. Crater, 1907." 

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Bonhoeffer's arrow-through-the-head was drawn from an arrow-through-the-head toy (or prop?) someone gave the in the '80's.

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The yo-yo: upper image: A depiction of the "Bull of Pope Julius, May 29, 1554" urging Christians to burn copies of the Talmud. The Talmud is Jewish civil and religious law. It is divided into two parts: Mishnah – text, and Gemarah – commentary.

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A Bull in Vatican parlance refers to an edict or pronouncement issued by a Pope. The image was drawn from a reproduction in the book (for junior high school/middle school age students) The Holocaust / The World and the Jews,  1933-1945, by Seymour Rossel (Behrman House, NJ ’92).

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The left sphere depicts the huge dome with its Star of David spire on top of the Oranienburgerstrasse synagogue in Berlin. Built between 1859-66, it was partially destroyed during Krystallnacht in 1938 and was further damaged by Allied bombing in 1945. It has since been restored and is used as a synagogue today. Drawn from a drawing appearing in the book Synagogues of Europe / Architecture, History, Meaning, author Carol Hershelle Krinsky, pub. by Dover Books, NY, 1996. See p. 266, plate 122.

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The middle sphere depicts an Austrian-German Nazi beer coaster with an ugly cartoon image of a Jewish man. The complete text states: Wer biem Juden kauft ist ein Volksverrate - He who buys from a Jew is a traitor to his people. A contemporary American version of this image from Florida, of the 1930’s, appears in the book The Art of Hatred  - Images of Intolerance in Florida Culture, pub. by the Jewish Museum of Florida, 2001, Miami Beach.

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The right sphere depicts the top of one of the two towers of the synagogue at Pest - Dohanyi Street, Budapest, Hungary. Krinsky describes it as "Jewish Gothic" architecture, of a "Moorish architectural mode." Built 1854-59, it is the largest standing synagogue in Europe. I forgot to jot down what book photo I drew the image from.

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I replaced a depiction of Hitler's head with STURMER, the second word of Der Stürmer,  the title name and banner of the violently and rabidly anti-Semitic  magazine-newspaper of Nazi Austria-Germany. Der Sturmer translates as The Striker.

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The chicken was drawn from a photo in the book Extraordinary Chickens, photos by Stephen Green-Armitage (Harry Abrams, NY, 2000). The chicken’s head was drawn from the 2-page photo of a "Hamburg - Silver Spangled."

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Bibliography

The artwork was reproduced in the CD music album Partisans & Parasites, pub. by Oriente Musik, Germany, 2009. It is the music of Daniel Kahn, an American Jewish klezmer musician in Berlin, and his group The Painted Bird.