The Nazis failed to destroy the artist David Friedmann

Now his daughter is searching for his Nazi-looted and lost artwork

David Friedmann in 1936 in his apartment at Paderborner Straße 9, Berlin-Wilmersdorf. His painting of the Berlin Cathedral appears in the background. After World War II, it was found in his sister-in-law’s apartment. Friedmann’s painting of the Schlossbrücke und Zeughaus (castle bridge and arsenal), today the German Historical Museum, also appears there. These paintings are among hundreds of Nazi-looted and lost artworks

Since childhood I watched my father paint with an intensity and passion that struck a chord within me. I was intrigued by his successful pre-war career and the fate of his Nazi-looted art. He had little to show from a collection of hundreds of paintings, drawings, lithographs and etchings, fuelling my passion to find these works and rescue him from obscurity.

David Friedmann was born on 20 December, 1893, in Mährisch-Ostrau, Austria-Hungary, now Ostrava, Czechia. He studied etching with Hermann Struck and painting with Lovis Corinth in Berlin. He painted some of the most important events in modern history, surviving both World War I and World War II as an artist. Friedmann produced late impressionist landscapes, still lifes, interiors and nudes, and achieved acclaim as a painter known for his portraits drawn from life. He exhibited at the Akademie der ­Künste, Berliner Secession and numerous galleries throughout Germany and Czechoslovakia. His use of light and dark, ability to convey facial expressions, and compositional technique are all hallmarks of his work. Using pencil and paper, he captured the great chess champions of the 1920s. In 1924, his quick-sketching skills launched a secondary career as a freelance press artist. He sketched hundreds of famous contemporary personalities from the arts, music, theatre, sports, politics, and industry, published mainly in the Berlin newspapers and the radio programme magazine, Der Deutsche Rundfunk. Among the luminaries portrayed were Albert Einstein, Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, Max Liebermann, and Emanuel Lasker.

“Havel River Landscape, Berlin”, Oil, 1923. This painting spent decades hanging in the home of Andrea Kress, who became curious about David Friedmann. She learned about the artist’s daughter’s pursuit for lost art and sent this photo

Friedmann’s flourishing career in Berlin was terminated in 1933 by the Nazi regime. As his options narrowed, he continued to produce art illustrating the events and his personal experiences of the time. In 1938, Friedmann fled with his family to Prague, escaping from the Nazis with only his artistic talent as a means to survive. He depicted human fate as a refugee in Prague, as a prisoner in the Lodz Ghetto, in the Auschwitz subcamp, Gleiwitz I, and as a survivor. His wife Mathilde and little daughter Mirjam Helene were murdered in Auschwitz.

In 1941, the Gestapo looted his oeuvre left behind in Berlin. He lost his studio furniture and materials, hundreds of oil paintings, watercolours, drawings, etchings and lithographs. After Friedmann’s deportation to the Lodz Ghetto, Nazi officials looted his Prague art production. In 1946, when a mail service from Berlin to Prague was finally restored, Friedmann received portrait prints and photos of his work in an album. The Prague portraits dated 1940 to 1941 gave a face to numerous known and unknown victims — historically significant evidence of a dynamic Jewish community destroyed by the Nazi regime. Additional portrait prints were found at the National Museum in Prague, Beit Theresienstadt in Givat Haim (Ihud), Israel, and in two family-owned collections. Numerous works, including portraits and landscapes, surfaced at the Jewish Museum in Prague.

Artwork was systematically confiscated and sold at auction by the Nazi regime. The whereabouts of the remainder of Friedmann’s looted art is unknown.
Originating from his incarceration period, a portrait drawing of a Polish prisoner in Gleiwitz I was discovered at the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Evidence also surfaced of Friedmann’s work in the ghetto. His 1942 etching of the Lodz Ghetto bridge appeared as a header on pages of The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto, 1941–1944. A handmade album with thirty-three drawings documenting the activities of a hat-manufacturing workshop (“Ressort”) in the Lodz Ghetto in 1943 is also held in the collection of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw.

Liberated at age 51, significantly older than most survivors, Friedmann believed there was a reason he survived. The responsibility of bearing
began at a refugee’s pace. One year later, the couple fled communist Czechoslovakia to Israel, witness weighed heavily on his conscience even before deportation. His burning desire was to show to the world the ruthless persecution and inhumanity as practiced by the Nazis, in the hope such barbarism would never happen again. Friedmann captured the scenes he could not erase from his memory — forced labour, torture, killings and the death march. He called the series “Because They Were Jews!”.

“Liegender Häftling” (“Lying Prisoner”), charcoal, 1945. Last seen in Israel, the location of this drawing of a Gleiwitz I concentration camp prisoner is unknown. The drawing, one of eight from the collection of Zeev Shek, was intended as a donation by his widow Alisa Shek to the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem. Three drawings from this collection are on permanent display at the Holocaust History Museum, Yad Vashem

Friedmann continued to paint throughout his postwar journey. In 1948 in Prague, he wed Hildegard Taussig, a survivor of several concentration camps. Their marriage where their daughter, also named Miriam, was born.
Friedmann worked in a sign shop and contributed to the founding of Israel’s commercial art industry.

Every spare moment he painted for himself. Friedmann’s colour palette changed to brighter, sun-filled hues as he left behind his old dark world to explore his newly adopted country. After two years, he established his own advertising business and freelanced for the newspapers, permitting more time for artistic pursuits. Besides portraits, he painted landscapes of Lake Kinneret, Jaffa, Haifa, Tel Aviv, Netanya, Naharia and Tiberias. Some works are signed “Dfri” in Hebrew letters Daled, Peh, Resh, Yod.

He also enjoyed painting Yarkon River views and Hadar Yosef, where we lived. Sympathetic to the impoverished Jews who had emigrated from Yemen, he portrayed beggars on the streets to express their plight. David Friedmann had captured the landscape of the beginnings of the Jewish state. Decades later, I had immense pleasure tracking down the dramatically changed scenery he painted, now difficult to find or non-existent.

“Death March from Camp Gleiwitz I to Camp Blechhammer”, Oil, 1947. David Friedmann depicts himself as the prisoner with the eyeglasses as a reminder that his art is a first-person witness to evil. He was liberated at Blechhammer by the Red Army on January 25, 1945

Israel was a new state in poor economic circumstances. Undeterred by his 61 years, Friedmann set his ambitions on America, arriving in New York in 1954. He had to forget what was hidden in his heart, the paintings from the concentration camps, and make a living. Straight off the boat, he auditioned for the billboard company, General Outdoor Advertising (GOA). He painted as fast as possible, the only way to save our family from poverty. GOA did not care about his age or that he barely spoke English.

They were impressed with an accomplished artist who painted at astonishing speed — the same skill that saved his life in 1944 in Gleiwitz I. In order to show the SS officers his artistic ability and spare him from death, Friedmann had improvised with primitive materials, making his own paints and brushes out of camp supplies to paint a mural across a barrack’s wall. What could he produce to impress them? He thought of the Havel River, painted in Berlin with “white clouds in the blue sky, trees, and in-between a few small houses with red roofs, water, white sailboats and their reflections on the surface of the water”.

David Friedmann adds final touches to his charcoal drawing, “Liberation?” The artist depicts himself as the prisoner with eyeglasses

GOA first moved the family to Chicago and then to St. Louis. After only fifteen months in America, Friedmann had been appointed to the position of top artist at this branch. Instead of pictures from the concentration camps, he painted two-story tall billboards with iconic Clydesdales and happy folks selling beer. The new career brought recognition and satisfaction with life in America. In 1960, the Friedmann family became proud United States citizens and symbolically dropped the double “n” spelling of the surname.

After retirement in 1962, his art would not be silent. He produced a second series of Holocaust art to fight antisemitism and race hatred of all people. The David Friedman Exhibition opened first in St. Louis in 1964, followed by Baltimore, Maryland in 1965, marking the 20-years anniversary of liberation, and was even reported on in the Israeli press.

Friedmann died at the age of eighty-six on February 27, 1980. He is recognized internationally with works on permanent display at the Holocaust History Museum, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem; the St. Louis Holocaust Museum & Learning Center; and the Sokolov Museum in Czechia. His works are in the collections of numerous institutions and museums, such as the Leo Baeck Institute, New York and Germany; the New Synagogue Berlin-Centrum Judaicum; the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, Poland; and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC. Exhibition venues include the Berlin Philharmonic Hall in Germany, the Terezín Memorial in Czechia, the United Nations Headquarters and the German Consulate General in New York.

In 1954, Friedmann was among the first to win restitution from Germany for Nazi-looted art. The sum incorporated claims for all his looted property. He continued to fight for justice. In 1961, the International Supreme Restitution Court in Berlin adjudicated an upward adjustment.

David Friedmann was a successful artist with both Jewish and non-Jewish clientele. Art was sold privately, at galleries, exhibitions and auctions. Fleeing the Third Reich, most emigrants found it necessary to sell their art to finance an escape. Others managed to flee with their art.

Artwork often continues to find new owners — sold at auction or through private sales — purchased by people who are not known as collectors. Pieces are displayed on walls of family homes for generations, art they enjoyed all these years, not knowing the paintings have a history and the artist’s daughter is searching to find them. David Friedmann artwork has surfaced all over the world — the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Belgium, England, France, Germany, Italy, Czechia, Poland, Israel, Australia, China, Canada and the United States. I have just started to find his pre-war art over the last two decades.

Every painting to emerge is a victory against the Third Reich. David Friedmann made important contributions both in the realms of 20th century art and in the creation of materials that play a powerful humanitarian role in educating people about the reality of the Holocaust.
My goal is to publish a catalogue of his works, evidence of the brilliant career the Nazis could not destroy.

For more about David Friedmann and to provide information you may have about existing works, please visit: www.­davidfriedmann.org or the “David Friedmann – Artist as Witness” Facebook page.

With thanks to the National Library of Israel, who originally published this article in its blog. https://blog.nli.org.il/en/lbh_friedmann

Miriam Friedman Morris, USA