Tag Archives: Czernowitz

Strohwitwer

Since reading the “Tag” dailyI am verywell informed about what happened in the town when I was only 3 years old. Many names appear that I recall from the later 1930th. In to-days’ edition there is for the first time an announcement that must have been revolutionary for the time.

A man whose wife is away for several weeks looks for a nice young woman for company. Look on page 3, November 23 1932.Edgar must have read in the next numbers of the paper if this was a hoax or indeed in 1932 they already had a “mica publicitate” that compares with our times.

Was it an April 1 announcement in  November, or did somebody really mean it, and if this is so how can we make out who that man was? Any ideas?Also why are some announcemeents in latin letters while the main text and other announcements are still gothic?

Berti.

The Third Man Enigma

Rose Ausländer, Helios Hecht, Itzik Manger, Arnold Schwarz (?)

Is the third man at the right really Arnold Schwarz, the editor of the Czernowitzer daily newspaper “Der Tag”? Experts are in doubt, me too, as Arnold Schwarz, born in 1880, would have been 48 years old on that photo from the year 1928. Please help and let us know your knowledge/supposition!

Moshe Barasch: Wunderkind & Art Historian

Begger – Moshe Barasch (Czernowitz 1920 – 2004 Jerusalem)

Barasch was born to Menachem and Gusta Barasch and grew up in Czernowitz. […] His father was a Zionist who introduced his son to the tradition of Haskala, the Jewish Enlightenment.

The young Barasch showed himself to have substantial art talent. By age 12, he had already exhibited his drawings and paintings in Czernowitz, Prague, Budapest and Boston, which he visited. He wrote daily in his notebooks, one of which was a diary. As a member of the Haggana, the Jewish military organization later to become the Israeli army, he used his artistic skills to forge passports for fleeing Jews. […]

Barasch was Senior Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Univ. Center for Italian Renaissance Studies (“I Tatti”), Florence, in 1969. He was appointed Jack Cotton Professor of the History of Art and Chair of of Institute of Fine and Performing Arts, Hebrew University in 1971, which he held until 1975, intermittently acting as a Visiting Professor and Research Associate at New York University between 1970-79. He was Senior Fellow at Cornell University’s Society for Humanities in 1981and the same year Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Pennsylvania State University.

In 1982 he taught as a visiting professor at the Freie Universität, Berlin. He published the first edition of his collected documents on the history of art theory in 1985. Between 1986-88 he taught at Yale University.  In 1987 he published his Giotto and the Language of Gesture, major contribution to the literature on that artist. He became emeritus in 1988.  In 1996 he was the recipient of the Israel Prize, and elected corresponding member of the Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. Barasch was the first Israeli art historian to attain worldwide recognition, lecturing widely at institutions in Europe and the United States (Freedman). […]

His lectures and books, many of which were written in Hebrew, helped to develop the art historical terminology in that language and drew attention to many of the themes that were to attract scholars in the humanities. Three generations of Israelis grew up on the books he wrote, edited.  He was also instrumental in having important art history texts translated into Hebrew. Francis Peters’ 1985 book on Jerusalem was dedicated to him and his wife.

Artibus et Historiae, Vol. 9, No. 17 (1988), pp. 127-135

Reflections on Tombstones: Childhood Memories

CLICK HERE FOR THE PDF DOWNLOAD OF THE ARTICLE!

Tribute to Dol and Robert Dauber

Adolf Dauber was very famous in Czechoslovakia and Austria prior to World War II. He used the stage name Dol or Dolfi as derived from his first name. He was best known for his dance and jazz band arrangements. During the war, Dauber and his wife were somehow spared from being deported to a concentration camp. But in 1943, Dauber’s son Robert was sent to Theresienstadt.

During a visit to Prague, Hitler requested that Dol Dauber play in the presence. Dauber stated that he would do so if his son were released. His request was refused. Robert Dauber was twenty when he was sent to Theresienstadt, where he performed on 23.09.1943 the legendary staging of the children’s opera Brundibár.

Later, Robert was sent to Dachau, where he perished in 1945. Dol Dauber’s rapid professional decline after the war and his relatively early death on 15.09.1950 may be linked to his depression over the loss of his son.

Wikipedia: “…Krasa and Hoffmeister wrote the opera [Brundibár] in 1938 for a government competition, but the competition was later cancelled due to political developments. Rehearsals started in 1941 at the Jewish orphanage in Prague, which served as a temporary educational facility for children separated from their parents by the war. In the winter of 1942 the opera was first performed at the orphanage: by this time, composer Krasa and set designer Frantisek Zelenka had already been transported to Theresienstadt.

By July 1943, nearly all of the children of the original chorus and the orphanage staff had also been transported to Theresienstadt. Only the librettist Hoffmeister was able to escape Prague in time.Reunited with the cast in Theresienstadt, Krasa reconstructed the full score of the opera, based on memory and the partial piano score that remained in his hands, adapting it to suit the musical instruments available in the camp: flute, clarinet, guitar, accordion, piano, percussion, four violins, a cello and a double bass.

A set was once again designed by Frantisek Zelenka, formerly a stage manager at the Czech National Theatre: several flats were painted as a background, in the foreground was a fence with drawings of the cat, dog and lark and holes for the singers to insert their heads in place of the animals’ heads.

On 23 September 1943, Brundibár premiered in Theresienstadt. The production was directed by Zelenka and choreographed by Camilla Rosenbaum, and was shown 55 times in the following year.

A special performance of Brundibár was staged in 1944 for representatives of the Red Cross who came to inspect living conditions in the camp; what the Red Cross did not know at the time was that much of what they saw during their visit was a show, and that one of the reasons the Theresienstadt camp seemed comfortable was that many of the residents had been deported to Auschwitz in order to reduce crowding during their visit.

Later that year this Brundibar performance was filmed for a Nazi propaganda film. The Brundibar footage from this film is included in the Emmy-Award winning documentary “Voices of the Children” directed by Zuzana Justman, a Terezin survivor, who sang in the chorus. Ela Weissberger who played the part of the cat, appears in the film.

Most of the participants in the Theresienstadt production, including the composer Krása, were later exterminated in Auschwitz…”

http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Bukowinabook/buk2_098.html
http://claude.torres1.perso.sfr.fr/Terezin/MyCabaret.html
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dauber
http://www.berliner-philharmoniker.de/forum/programmhefte/details/heft/und-fuer-uns-alle-gruent-ein-einzger-baum/
http://www.abruckner.com/downloads/downloadsthissite/dauberscherzo/