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Article Excerpt
Charlotte Salomon completed her autobiography, Life? or Theater? during the height of Nazi occupation in Europe and as a German-Jewish woman experienced first hand the trauma of Nazi oppression. This essay examines how Salomon in her autobiography uses a combination of written text and visual representations to create an extraordinary work of resistance and preservation.
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By age twenty-six, Charlotte Salomon had finished what may be one of the most creative and ambitious artistic undertakings of the twentieth century. Completed in 1942, Salomon's autobiography, Life? or Theater? (1) is an innovative blend of textual narration, dramatic dialogue, and hundreds of paintings. Unlike traditional autobiographies, Salomon's narrative is written in the form of a play. Her drama opens with a playbill introducing the audience to the main characters in the drama. Each character corresponds to a significant person in Salomon's life. Although the names have been altered, those familiar with Salomon's life can identify easily each character. Astrid Schmetterling describes this cast of characters as "performers of a dramatized life in which reality and imagination are ingeniously intertwined" (51). The autobiography is constructed around approximately 760 separate, small gouache paintings that function to stage the play through the creation of vivid scenes. The narrative text and dialogue are written in pencil on tracing paper overlays that are carefully attached to each painting with an adhesive. As the autobiography progresses, however, the written text is painted directly on the artwork. Mary Lowenthal Felstiner describes the work as "at once a diary and a drama; it turns events into episodes, people into personae; it tells a true story and treats it like a script" ("Taking" 320). Despite the extraordinary nature of Life? or Theater? it has only been during the past twenty years that the general public has become aware of Salomon's project. The work is usually housed at the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam, but international tours of much of the collection in the early 1980s, exhibits at the Royal Academy in 1998, the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2000, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts also in 2000, and the New York Jewish Museum in 2001 have finally earned Salomon the recognition she deserves.
One possible reason for the early obscurity of Salomon's work could be the conditions under which it was completed. As a Jewish woman born in Berlin in 1917, Charlotte Salomon spent much of her young adult life in the midst of social turmoil and racial discrimination. The oppressive force of the Nazi regime weighed heavily on her. She was subjected to intense discrimination at school, which eventually led to her refusal to return to classes. Her father, a talented physician, and her stepmother, a well-known opera singer, both lost their employment opportunities due to Nazi policies.
The Salomons' experience during the early 1930s was not unique. Other students reported feeling marginalized in the public school system. Ruth Sass-Glaser, a German-Jewish woman about the same age as Charlotte Salomon, writes in her memoir, "I was fifteen years old and heard in my history lessons that the Jews were second-class citizens. I heard that Jews do not do any hard work, that they want to be doctors and lawyers, but never an elevator operator or mailman" (14). As anti-Semitism continued to be taught at public schools, an increasing number of Jewish students stopped attending. Many others also suffered the loss of their jobs and civil positions in the aftermath of Boycott Day. Boycott Day was initiated by the Nazis in response to what they believed to be an outpouring of "atrocity propaganda" by international Jews. Germans were ordered to halt all transactions with Jewish businesses and release Jewish employees. Jews were dismissed from civil-service positions, the courts, and public health service (Angress 70). Although many members of the Jewish community attempted to establish alternative organizations in which to utilize their skills, the loss of their status, economic stability, and respect as valued citizens was a strong blow.
Jewish suffering due to Nazi policies intensified as anti-Semitic demonstrations turned violent. The 9th of November 1938 was a night of terror for German Jews, as the mobs burned and destroyed homes, synagogues, and Jewish institutions. Approximately seven thousand Jewish businesses were looted and destroyed (Dawidowicz 102). So much plate glass was shattered that the pogrom was appropriately named Kristallnacht, or crystal night. Nora Rosenthal recalls the night in her memoir, writing, "Mobs roamed the streets, went into homes and smashed what they could lay hands on. They threw crystal glasses out of the windows. [...] That day I will remember: it spoiled my life" (52). During the Kristallnacht pogram, Salomon's father was one of nearly thirty thousand Jewish men arrested and sent to Buchenwald, Dachau, or Sachsenhausen. Although her father was eventually released, his time in Sachsenhausen had severely weakened him. These experiences led Salomon's parents to send their daughter to Nice, France, to live there in exile with her grandparents, who had already fled Germany.
When asked in an interview if they had attempted to make plans to leave Germany themselves following Kristallnacht, Salomon's stepmother, Paula Salomon-Lindberg, responded: "My husband had lost half his body weight. He had to lie in bed, and we had to give him something every twenty minutes. [...] Nobody knew then. There was no model for what was happening. You would have had to go back a thousand years to find something that you could have learned from" (Felstiner, Paint 84). Although Paula and Albert did not seek an immediate escape from Germany, many German Jews chose to escape the country and live in exile. Following Kristallnacht and increased Gestapo pressure, approximately 150,000 Jews departed Germany (Dawidowicz 191). Although the Nazis encouraged the Jews to leave Germany, they made the process of applying for emigration visas exhausting and humiliating. Applicants were required to stand in long lines at a variety of different agencies. Often they were told to come back at another time. Rosenthal offers her recollection of seeking emigration papers for her...
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