Dec 20, 2024
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Bruno Loewenberg: Artist and Survivor
by Doniphan Blair
Bruno Loewenberg, in the centerpiece photo from the feature interview in The Clinton Street Quarterly, 1982. photo: D. BlairThis article, a reprint from the summer 1982 edition of the Clinton St. Quarterly, Portland, Oregon's premier art and idea periodical, won a North-West Journalism Association Award in part because it was some of the first Holocaust material published in the region.
ONE AFTERNOON IN OCTOBER [1981],
an elderly gentleman came into Ancient Currents Gallery in San Francisco and plopped a stack of color photos down on my desk. Why this venerable man would select this gallery, known for our primitive, international and modern artists influenced by the tropics, baffled me. Soon I made an appointment to see more work in person. There, in a living room crowded with work by Mr. Loewenberg as well as lithographs by Chagall, Dali, Miro and Picasso, we sat comfortably downing rounds of schnapps while the artist, aided by quips from his wife, Lisbeth, conversed his way around nearly a century of creative living.
Suddenly, I realized the connection. I had been so busy looking into and gathering works that interrelate modern and "primitive" art, I hadn't realized that here was a patriarch in the very same field, a fellow quite modern but also of a tribe ... a tribe I share through my mother, who like Mr. Loewenberg, is one of the few members to carry our heritage, as it should be, from ancient to current.
The Jews were the first tribe to decide to enter Western Civilization and still maintain their codes. It wasn't until the 1900s that the "middle ages" were lifted from the shoulders of European Jewry. There were still pogroms as late as 1920, but in Germany the "Rights of Man" had finally filtered across the border and for a generation life seemed to open up. Jews could vote, hold office, and create their own world and art, which they did wholeheartedly, both in ethnic forms, such as the Yiddish Theater, and as major components of the Expressionists, Dadaists, Surrealists and Fantastic Realists.
It is my conviction that this change in the arts, and its obvious symbolic effect on society, was instrumental in fueling the paranoid classicist backlash arch-typified by Adolph Hitler. More schizophrenic than the average politician, who generally condones all backroom debauchery, Hitler sported some of the most small-minded aesthetics in all of Europe. The cure he instituted for his ailing fatherland was severe cultural amputation, but imagine how enraged he must have been when his "Decadent Art Show," designed to indicate the degeneration of post-1900 art, was popular among his fellow Aryans. What undoubtedly disturbed him the most in modern art was the tendency of artists to express two sides of things, equally and simultaneously (like Picasso's noses), a concept abhorrent to a schizophrenic for whom division is the basic nature of life.
As the noose of cultural control tightened around Middle Europe, the creative minds had to work faster and better. Some saw the "endgame" of such rigid cultural competition and fled; others, not so fortunate, survived through the strength of their inner vision. My personal need to understand how this could be done by sensitive souls and how they could maintain their awareness led me to encourage Mr. Loewenberg to speak on such topics. It is a delicate subject that I wouldn’t broach with the toughest “survivor” because to probe the subconscious, where such things are absorbed, would be like opening “Pandora’s Box,” unless that man is one who employs his subconscious daily and is accustomed to unearthing its contents for use in his art. Such a man, who has cultivated his awareness and dealt with the difficulties in his own mind, might be able to give us a clue how such artistic energy became the power for many to weather the dark night of Western Civilization and perhaps prove the psychic nature of creativity.
As a man who expresses himself with paint, he was sometimes uncomfortable with the precise nature of the written word. I assured him, though, as an artist, not a historian, he would be better able to paint a realistic picture of an epoch, though only forty years behind us, that had become an irreparable cipher to mankind due to its monstrous nature.
A Conversation
Bruno Loewenberg: I don’t even know when I began painting. I was always drawing, even as a boy… they were humorous drawings. I don’t know how great the influence of my father was. He was a ship’s chandler [outfitter]. I remember him having a big book into which he painted with water colors. He painted all the incoming and outgoing ships but only their funnels… a white funnel with a blue field, a golden star and the company’s insignia… I observed him always.
No one can say for sure what is the very source of their artistry. Courage of super-human dimension is necessary to present your own concept, free of all conventions. In the end art is freedom. It makes you free to think, to feel, to do your own thing. I did one of my best paintings in half an hour. Sometimes I did a beautiful painting and destroyed it.
Art is the preservation of our childhood, of fairy tales, of myths and ceremonies. Art is the growth to manhood, to grow up into the computerized world of adults. The symbiosis of both parts harmoniously is art. Everyone manages that more or less… the executive playing with miniature railroads. The fantastic world of dreams is the nucleus of our artistic creations.
To walk into nature, to feel nature, to be nature provides you with the essential means to create. Go and do it! The universe creates the music but the human heart performs it. There must be sense, a meaning in a painting, or it is all craziness. Sure the artist is crazy… he must be crazy because he cannot accept everything he sees. He has to bend it into another creation. This why Cezanne is so great, he changed the picture of the world and nature.
There is an intriguing similarity between a painting and human life. In life you move from place to place, according to your adventurous impulse. At each station you grow larger, on the way to each you destroy many things of which you are not aware, which are essential for the continuation of your life.
I was born in Stettin, which is now a Polish city, on the Oder River, which is like San Francisco, on the sea.
Bruno's first wife, Clara Muller, a cabaret dancer, circa 1933. photo: unknownDoniphan Blair: So you grew up on ships?
BL: I grew up almost on ships, yes. My father paid for my education himself.
DB: Was that at a Jewish school?
BL: No. I attended the so-called ‘gymnasium,’ which is a preparatory school for the university.
DB: But you never went to university, what did you do?
BL: I became a book man after I left school.
DB: How did you sell the books?
BL: I first started in books as an apprentice… My father brought me to a bookshop and they took me and I had to learn for three years. Without those three years you could not be a book man in Germany, no. Here you can be a book man from one day to the next.
DB: Were most of the people [involved with books] Jewish?
BL: No, everything Jewish was hidden.
DB: Did they know you were Jewish?
BL: Of course, they must have known, they only had to look at my name—Loewenberg. Do you know where the name Loewenberg comes from? In the Middle Ages the Jews were not permitted to live in the city, so to live somewhere they had to have someone who took them over, who protected them. And one of the famous dignitaries, a count who took care of my ancestors, was a fellow by the name of Graf… Count Von Loewenberg. All the Jews living under his protection took the name. This is how we have all the Silversteins, the Appelbaums, flowering names, they are all Jewish.
DB: Was there much antisemitism when you were working in the bookstore among the people in the shop?
BL: Don’t ask too much, you see it opens a gook for me. My life with antisemitism is a special chapter; I don’t know where to begin.
DB: Well, just tell us a few things to give us an idea.
BL: Sure, the Germans without being antisemitic is not a thing that you can say. That is what made it so easy for the Germans to overrun the Jews.
DB: So you never met a German who was not antisemitic?
BL: Oh, many! My first wife, she wanted to be Jewish. She kept telling me, but I had to tell her…. It’s not a question of a little water or something. You just have to be… born.
My friend Tepper… he is not only a friend but a book man like myself. He was a book man at one time in the shop where I worked. Then he opened his own shop and became very successful. When everything was over [the war] he became a supervisor of the city. We visited him, and he led us to various places of which he took care. There were some memorials erected to the memory of the people who attempted to kill Hitler. It was the house where they were executed, the [would-be] murderers of Hitler. He took care of making a temple out of this place. He was instrumental in bringing these buildings to be a monument in German history… my colleague Tepper.
DB: When were you married?
BL: From 1922 to 1929. My wife worked as a singer in the cabaret. A nice girl, but we were young… she still lives in Berlin… she’s 82. We still communicate.
DB: How about the fact she was gentile?
BL: All my friends were Aryan. Nobody asked, like America… a free country. Not until Hitler came; Hitler made an issue out of it and what an issue. He had his men working for that. Since I told you I was not politically minded… a non political person is a non-fighter… I let it go.
Hitler was there, he had his say, he took his life. He did the right thing. He delivered mankind from one of the most horrible criminals there was. Fortunately, mankind did not have to come with trial against him. He made the trial himself, by killing himself. That is enough for me.
DB: Did any of the artists know what was happening?
BL: No… not until it was too late. They were very naïve. This one woman wanted to introduce me to Goebbels [Joseph, the Minister of Propaganda], whom she knew, as if talking with me, a beloved friend of hers, a human being, would make a difference.
DB: Did you go?
BL: No.
DB: They thought they could change politics with art?
Bruno at his work desk, in house in San Francisco's Sunset neighborhood. photo: D. BlairBL: Yes. I want to tell you a story. One time we were having a party, everyone was drinking on a side street in Berlin. Across the street, a small street, was another house, where arrived a truck of S.S. men and they rounded up all the people from the house. We continued to have our fun. Some of us made jokes even… ‘What are those people doing? They must have done something.’ Politics was always very unsafe. I always heard stories, we didn’t know, we thought it was politics.
DB: But the art scene was still safe, even with the Dadaists or whoever?
BL: Sure, of course… until Hitler. Then he had his ‘Enarte Kunst’ [Decadent Art] show. All the moderns had to participate, his showing of the decadence of the arts. The artists had only one advantage: they were not Jews. I knew them all from when I had the bookstore. They all came into the bookstore. I sold many of their works, engraving and lithographs by a very good Berlin publishing house. Everyone was buying them. They were reasonably priced, etchings by whomever was having a big show, the newest thing. I put up small exhibitions in my shop.
DB: Like who?
BL: [Karl] Schmidt-Rotluff… [Max] Pechstein, [Karl] Hofer, Otto Mueller, [Max] Bechman.
DB: Who bought these works?
BL: Oh, business people with a high life style, but they a certain instinct, a nose for where they could find art. I once had Teniers… I think, the Elder—a Dutch painter. So, I took it to this guy, the owner of Lysol—you know it is a German company? He looked at it for a long time… I waited. Then he gave it back to me. He said he couldn’t buy it. And he told me from then on I should know he never buys anything for less than 50,000 marks. So the next time I come… remember.
DB: How about the artists, how did they live?
BL: Well, we were in coffeehouses mostly. It was a big enclave, all these cabaret people were coming up from Vienna and opening theaters. Everyone was in the coffeehouses… [Berthold] Brecht was there. Always talking… some of them were very poor.
There was this one painter, a friend of mine… Hoextner, a drug addict. His clothes were ruined. He used to go around in the cafes from table to table asking each person ten cents… ten cents until he had a dollar fifty, then he would run off to the pharmacy to buy drugs. Cocaine. They used to offer it to me… all the time. I never tried any, but it was everywhere, in the cafes, at all the tables. The artists would either accept it or ignore it.
Hoextner always had his equipment with him. He would inject himself in the leg, through the pants, in the café, and continue talking all the while. He lived in a bathtub—he took me there once. He walked in a stoop with a wild look on his face. Sometimes we would go to the museums and galleries… we would listen in on what people were saying and then say things to them. We had many arguments with the bourgeoisie. They would think we were crazy; we wore funny clothes. Everyone had one thing that they always wore. One guy had these funny spats, a hat, a scarf, on which one would depend.
DB: Sort of like hippies?
BL: Sure, just like them. And we hippies used to go out all the time. I think they were sort of scared of us all in the group. We used to go to the theater or to hear music. It was a very beautiful time. People were coming in from all over Europe… many artists. Some were very successful because Berlin had the quickest impulses.
DB: How about the thirties… during the inflation?
BL: Ha ha ha… you don’t know what inflation is. I was afraid to sell a book. Today 500, then the next day it is worth a thousand and next week a million.
DB: Did people help each other out during the inflation… was there sharing of food or something?
BL: No. I really don’t know how we survived. People left their houses in the city with a bag with whatever valuables and went out to the country where they would buy ham, eggs, spinach.
DB: Your wife was working in the cabaret then, so they must have continued?
BL: The arts were booming. The impulse to create is greater in people in time of danger. If you are threatened, you are extremely excited, your normal life is threatened and this impulse is the mother of art. If it is anormal time and you can anything you want at grocery store, then there is nothing to excite you. You don’t have any impulse to create. You are sitting there eating what you bought. But if you have to fight for it, you are careful; if you are careful, you have to be excited.
DB: Now you said in 1937-8, there was a lot of artistic activity going on around Berlin.
BL: You know where I was living, near the Kurfurstendamm [a famous Berlin avenue], where all the activities were. It was sort of an enclave. They even permitted one coffeehouse. Here the Jews could come in and have their coffee. The only place where there was no sign, ‘No Jews Permitted.’ It was a very nice coffeehouse. I went there everyday to have my coffee. In the enclave, if [the Nazis] wanted to change, they would have to change every shop, every theater, every cabaret.
DB: They would lose the business.
Lisbeth Loewenberg: But [the Nazis] did it anyway.
BL: Til a certain point, then came the time you could not see a Jew on the streets. They just took them off the streets to the concentration camps. Then came the ‘Crystal Night’ [Kristallnacht, Nov 9, 1938]. This was the reason for the famous ‘Crystal Night’ when they took everyone Jewish. Every shop was smashed to pieces.
DB: In Berlin?
BL: In Berlin and all over, in every city. Still, as you know, the Jews were not brought in silence. They are not silent. They made their jokes. They had nothing more to live by [financially]. They had their forced labor, digging or whatever, trying to live by these government stamps. At the end of the week, you received maybe 75 cents to live [by], but as the Jews say—
LL: You get used to your worries and learn to live with it.
DB: This is a general question: The Jewish people, do you see them as a more speculative people or are they more realistic?
BL: They are both.
DB: How about in terms of being dreamers, dreaming of something?
BL: I think they have every trait.
DB: They are not particularly pessimistic or optimistic? So even in the Berlin time or during the time in the camp you found the same thing, some were pessimistic and some were optimistic? There wasn’t a sort of general flow?
BL: Well, I would say fortunately, in every moment in our life, something takes over and helps you to continue your life [to] have the greatest pleasure out of life. If you come into a concentration camp or prison, your mind changes right away; you are no longer the old person. Where do I sleep? Where do I get my food? These questions get so majestic and go over you, so that all metaphysical questions disappear. You don’t ask would I live this life over again; there is no such questions. There were a few philosophers in the camp [Buchenwald, where Bruno was 1938-9], known philosophers, who managed to raise such a question. We dared and we had the strength to think about such metaphysics.
One of my friends was named Heinemann [Gustav, perhaps]. He was a very famous politician. He was in the German ‘Landtag’ [state parliament]. They caught him and he was there in the concentration camp. And we always managed to come together for work, to get the same handle on the same box of sand, to carry it up and down. And we talked sometimes, somehow metaphysical talks. But most of the time you have no other idea but to stay alive.
DB: But when you raised those metaphysical questions, what did you come up with? Blame for the German people? Or did you question why this was happening?
BL: Very difficult to answer such a question. If you are 13 months in concentration camp, you have how many days? Almost 400 to come up with metaphysical questions. Questions that have nothing to do with your naked life, these I call metaphysical.
DB: This fellow, the politician, as someone in the German political structure, did he offer any reasoning or philosophy behind what was happening?
BL: No. We talked about living writers, poets and so forth. He knew under no circumstances he would come out of the camps alive. Because they swore he would die in the camp. There was a whole company of Viennese artists, actors, in the same part I was living. All the famous actors from Vienna were sitting there darning socks.
One day I got a horrible pain like sciatica, so they sent me to this place were I could sit. This was not great. They only sent me there because if I could not do anything worthwhile for the camp, at least I could darn socks. There we were all sitting, all the Viennese artists. Mr [Fritz] Grünbaum [popular cabaret artist], Farkas Beda Loehner, [Hermann] Leopoldi [composer]… cabaret people, all very sad, no one was laughing. There was a sign there which you found near the door, ‘Only the birds are singing.’
DB: Who put that there?
BL: The authorities—Hitler.
DB: Because they knew there were artists there?
BL: So that nobody had the idea to sing. Could be that someone starts to sing, ah, ah, no such thing—only the birds are singing. Ha ha, I must laugh if I think about it. But I am sitting here telling you about the camp. I should smash the [tape] machine. I didn’t have the idea to tell you about the camp. It was forbidden to me. They swore if I ever told anything about the camp that they would send an undersea boat to catch me on the high seas. They would get me anywhere; I was not supposed to speak about it… This they told me as I was leaving.
DB: So there was absolutely no artistic expression amongst these cabaret people? Did they ever sing, was there any small theater? Any [art] form?
BL: No songs, we had no songs. The birds never sang. We had an orchestra, a band. There were professional musicians among the thousands of prisoners, and they formed the band. And every afternoon they played when you came back from work; we came through the big gate to our various barracks where we lived, but before we went to our barracks, the whole camp had to be standing on the parade place to make roll call, every afternoon about 5 o’clock. There was music. On this side there were whipping posts. If you were marked for punishment, you were strapped in on a wooden horse on one side and there would stand an S.S. man with a big whip, and on the other an S.S. man would count one . .. two . . . till 25. It happened every day, and during the punishment of the poor fellow, who was very badly hurt, we saw their bottoms all cut, and during their punishment the damn orchestra played the famous band song, popa… pie… da… die. There we had song, we were not only suffering, ha ha.
DB: I was thinking, was there nothing amongst the people privately?
BL: No, there was no private connection, not even in discussion, not a talk. Silently we were sitting there, not talking.
IB: There were no [religious] services?
BL: No! How could you? This is a company, over which is spread a dark cover, a dark thin blanket of dark material, over your head, over your body, and there you will live all day and all night! Only sadness.
DB: So that dark blanket extinguished all expression of art?
BL: All expression. Terrible.
DB: I was wondering if there was any artistic reflection of that experience?
BL: My face here [referring to his painting ‘Ecce Homo’ on the wall] is from the life in the camp. It makes you bloated. You see everybody was blistered off, everybody had sick faces. And the clothes you had . . . you could not recognize a person who comes out of the camp. I never met a person who was in the camp. I don’t know who was ever in the camp, because we were all naked. Maybe it’s illusion. Maybe I dreamt it—nobody saw me there. Did you see me there? No. My wife didn’t see me. It’s all an illusion. Hitler is an illusion.
DB: Some people are trying to say that now. There are historical groups trying to establish that fact. But in a U.S. court of law it was ruled that it is not an illusion. There really were camps. An historically established fact.
BL: And you should think that a story like Hitler’s would be an atom bomb and change the whole of mankind, somehow opposite the Jews. No, not at all; it didn’t take away from antisemitism .. . not a bit. You think we left antisemitism? I have nothing to represent of my family, no one. All my aunts, all my uncles, all my nephews, all my nieces, all my cousins there were all killed, all of them. My sister and her little boy, they were all killed in concentration camps. I have nothing to represent my family.
DB: But your sister was the one who got the ticket for you to get out?
BL: She got a ticket for me, and then she was taken to the concentration camp.
DB: Why didn't she get out, too?
BL: I don’t know; that is another question. Why didn’t I get out before? I was warned, I was repeatedly warned, by well-meaning persons, and I didn’t get out. One day I was sitting in the coffeeshop, having coffee, and this fellow sitting next to me turns and says, ‘Listen, you should not even go home to get your things; you should just leave as fast as possible.’ I looked at him as if he were crazy. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Because we are planning to do terrible things.’ ‘How can you do these things?’ I asked, and he replied only, ‘We are developing ways.” But you can’t go out, if you live in a city that is your home. Better not to mention these things.
DB: You don’t think it is important for the young people of today to know these things?
BL: What good is it?
DB: Maybe the whole world can learn from the mistakes. We as human beings…
BL: Try, try, you are young enough.
DB: So, you didn’t follow politics much in those days?
BL: Unfortunately, I am completely unpolitical, apolitical entirely.
DB: Is this from your own nature or a philosophy?
BL: No, my nature. To live in peace, it is an illusion. I have the illusion, I live in peace. I don’t want any arguments. I don’t want to know another man is a Christian. I am invited tomorrow afternoon at six o’clock by a very nice fellow; he is from Lebanon. He was at his window today and he calls over, we always greet, and asks if I can come over tomorrow for a glass of wine. Ho ho ho, with the greatest of pleasure, for a glass of wine I will come over at six o’clock. I don’t want to know if he is Lebanese, if he is anti-Jew or what. Leave me alone. We are human beings; let me have my glass of wine… that is all I want. I think a person who loses the basic naivete and spontaneity can hardly be called young. To be creative he needs these two basic qualities, and if you are able to maintain these traits you stay young to create your own work . . . independent of old age.
DB: One time during our conversation, you said you went into the concentration camp as if you were a ‘puppy.’ Somehow the same naivete and spontaneity you seem to feel carried you through them. Am I correct?
BL: Oh yeah, it has a lot to do with survival because the reality of things doesn’t touch you. At least not as much as your own fantasies. Your own image of your own self, they are stronger. You eat once a day in the concentration camp; you get a bowl of soup—no meat, but you eat this soup with great hunger, eager to have it, on long tables. If somebody died, the same moment he died everyone was grabbing his bowl.
In the camp, after this operation, when they cut open my hand—you can still see here—and they took out the pus and then they threw me… out of a back door into a field, with twenty or thirty people all with bandaged arms and legs. There was no anesthesia, nobody had any. They operated as you were, in full consciousness . . . they cut you up everywhere.
As I came out into this field where everyone was sitting, I had to start work. Because in the concentration camp, it is forbidden to have time to rest. This is the principle. They make you work even if you are drowsy. They gave me a basket of twigs and some sharp glass splinters which you took between your knees, and with your one free hand you had to shave the skin off the limb; this is what you had to do. There was another basket where you put the shavings.
All this you had to do but all this kept you very healthy. I never was hungry. I never was… I never desired more than a bowl of soup. It is still my habit here in San Francisco. When we go to the restaurant, I order a bowl of soup. It’s good enough for me, wonderful, clam chowder. Who thought clam chowder in the camps? Nobody.
Now this all makes you strong… If you want to become 91 years old, take a hard life on you. A life of a Spartan warrior. You have to take such a life, then when you become old you will never be sick… For there is no reason to be sick because there is nothing unhealthy that you are doing… working.
If you are 91 years old, you have many thoughts of dying; everybody older thinks of dying. I am not willing to die… to extinguish my consciousness. I’m not willing to give this up. But the question is, what ability do I have to influence this? Everyone wants to die in their sleep, a wonderful death.
Okay, this is a book written by Michel Georges-Michel [French painter and writer, 1883-1985]; he wrote about all the artists of the twenties in Montmartre and about [Marcel] Vertes, a great German painter. Vertes was close to the circus. He made some studies of aerial acrobats. There was a young girl, he invited her up to his studio. They had the following talk—now I will tell you what life is, right away!
‘When you are up there suspended between life and death, I suppose it must be an exhilarating and terrifying moment in spite of your being used to it?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘We are just used to it as you say.’
‘But you talk to each other, don’t you? I saw you talking last night when you stopped for a second.’
‘Oh, that was nothing.’
‘I’m sure you said something.’
‘It wasn’t anything. My partner said there is a coat that a woman was wearing in one of the boxes. He said it was fur, and I thought it was monkey. When we were on the ground again, we found out which one of us was right.’
That is what life is! In a moment, you are hanging between life and death—which you always do. Any moment you are between life and death… and you are having such conversations. I love this book.
Historical Note
Bruno was born on December 16th, 1890, and died on October 29th, 1986, at 95. After his sister's petitioning got him released from Buchenwald, he sailed from Marseille to Shanghai, the only place on the planet that would accept Jews without visas. He lived there the entire war, in the famous foreign enclave, managing a lending library on Ward Road which also did lectures and shows. Despite the Japanese occupation, he was able to tour some of China, including Kaifeng, where Jews had lived centuries prior.
In Shanghai, he met and married Lisbeth, when she was around eighteen. She had fled Vienna with her mother and father, although he died of cancer in Shanghai. She worked as a secretary.
In 1948 they emigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco, where Bruno opened a bookstore on Polk Street and Lisbeth worked for Collier's magazine and then as the accountant at the JCC. Although Bruno's show at Ancient Currents Gallery, in April 1983, didn't sell any paintings, it was a successful display of his work, it had a well-attended opening, and initiated the gallery director, Doniphan Blair, into researching and writing about the Holocaust. Posted on Jun 02, 2023 - 12:03 PM
by Doniphan Blair
Bruno Loewenberg, in the centerpiece photo from the feature interview in The Clinton Street Quarterly, 1982. photo: D. BlairONE AFTERNOON IN OCTOBER [1981],
an elderly gentleman came into Ancient Currents Gallery in San Francisco and plopped a stack of color photos down on my desk. Why this venerable man would select this gallery, known for our primitive, international and modern artists influenced by the tropics, baffled me. Soon I made an appointment to see more work in person. There, in a living room crowded with work by Mr. Loewenberg as well as lithographs by Chagall, Dali, Miro and Picasso, we sat comfortably downing rounds of schnapps while the artist, aided by quips from his wife, Lisbeth, conversed his way around nearly a century of creative living.
Suddenly, I realized the connection. I had been so busy looking into and gathering works that interrelate modern and "primitive" art, I hadn't realized that here was a patriarch in the very same field, a fellow quite modern but also of a tribe ... a tribe I share through my mother, who like Mr. Loewenberg, is one of the few members to carry our heritage, as it should be, from ancient to current.
The Jews were the first tribe to decide to enter Western Civilization and still maintain their codes. It wasn't until the 1900s that the "middle ages" were lifted from the shoulders of European Jewry. There were still pogroms as late as 1920, but in Germany the "Rights of Man" had finally filtered across the border and for a generation life seemed to open up. Jews could vote, hold office, and create their own world and art, which they did wholeheartedly, both in ethnic forms, such as the Yiddish Theater, and as major components of the Expressionists, Dadaists, Surrealists and Fantastic Realists.
It is my conviction that this change in the arts, and its obvious symbolic effect on society, was instrumental in fueling the paranoid classicist backlash arch-typified by Adolph Hitler. More schizophrenic than the average politician, who generally condones all backroom debauchery, Hitler sported some of the most small-minded aesthetics in all of Europe. The cure he instituted for his ailing fatherland was severe cultural amputation, but imagine how enraged he must have been when his "Decadent Art Show," designed to indicate the degeneration of post-1900 art, was popular among his fellow Aryans. What undoubtedly disturbed him the most in modern art was the tendency of artists to express two sides of things, equally and simultaneously (like Picasso's noses), a concept abhorrent to a schizophrenic for whom division is the basic nature of life.
As the noose of cultural control tightened around Middle Europe, the creative minds had to work faster and better. Some saw the "endgame" of such rigid cultural competition and fled; others, not so fortunate, survived through the strength of their inner vision. My personal need to understand how this could be done by sensitive souls and how they could maintain their awareness led me to encourage Mr. Loewenberg to speak on such topics. It is a delicate subject that I wouldn’t broach with the toughest “survivor” because to probe the subconscious, where such things are absorbed, would be like opening “Pandora’s Box,” unless that man is one who employs his subconscious daily and is accustomed to unearthing its contents for use in his art. Such a man, who has cultivated his awareness and dealt with the difficulties in his own mind, might be able to give us a clue how such artistic energy became the power for many to weather the dark night of Western Civilization and perhaps prove the psychic nature of creativity.
As a man who expresses himself with paint, he was sometimes uncomfortable with the precise nature of the written word. I assured him, though, as an artist, not a historian, he would be better able to paint a realistic picture of an epoch, though only forty years behind us, that had become an irreparable cipher to mankind due to its monstrous nature.
A Conversation
Bruno Loewenberg: I don’t even know when I began painting. I was always drawing, even as a boy… they were humorous drawings. I don’t know how great the influence of my father was. He was a ship’s chandler [outfitter]. I remember him having a big book into which he painted with water colors. He painted all the incoming and outgoing ships but only their funnels… a white funnel with a blue field, a golden star and the company’s insignia… I observed him always.
No one can say for sure what is the very source of their artistry. Courage of super-human dimension is necessary to present your own concept, free of all conventions. In the end art is freedom. It makes you free to think, to feel, to do your own thing. I did one of my best paintings in half an hour. Sometimes I did a beautiful painting and destroyed it.
Art is the preservation of our childhood, of fairy tales, of myths and ceremonies. Art is the growth to manhood, to grow up into the computerized world of adults. The symbiosis of both parts harmoniously is art. Everyone manages that more or less… the executive playing with miniature railroads. The fantastic world of dreams is the nucleus of our artistic creations.
To walk into nature, to feel nature, to be nature provides you with the essential means to create. Go and do it! The universe creates the music but the human heart performs it. There must be sense, a meaning in a painting, or it is all craziness. Sure the artist is crazy… he must be crazy because he cannot accept everything he sees. He has to bend it into another creation. This why Cezanne is so great, he changed the picture of the world and nature.
There is an intriguing similarity between a painting and human life. In life you move from place to place, according to your adventurous impulse. At each station you grow larger, on the way to each you destroy many things of which you are not aware, which are essential for the continuation of your life.
I was born in Stettin, which is now a Polish city, on the Oder River, which is like San Francisco, on the sea.
Bruno's first wife, Clara Muller, a cabaret dancer, circa 1933. photo: unknownBL: I grew up almost on ships, yes. My father paid for my education himself.
DB: Was that at a Jewish school?
BL: No. I attended the so-called ‘gymnasium,’ which is a preparatory school for the university.
DB: But you never went to university, what did you do?
BL: I became a book man after I left school.
DB: How did you sell the books?
BL: I first started in books as an apprentice… My father brought me to a bookshop and they took me and I had to learn for three years. Without those three years you could not be a book man in Germany, no. Here you can be a book man from one day to the next.
DB: Were most of the people [involved with books] Jewish?
BL: No, everything Jewish was hidden.
DB: Did they know you were Jewish?
BL: Of course, they must have known, they only had to look at my name—Loewenberg. Do you know where the name Loewenberg comes from? In the Middle Ages the Jews were not permitted to live in the city, so to live somewhere they had to have someone who took them over, who protected them. And one of the famous dignitaries, a count who took care of my ancestors, was a fellow by the name of Graf… Count Von Loewenberg. All the Jews living under his protection took the name. This is how we have all the Silversteins, the Appelbaums, flowering names, they are all Jewish.
DB: Was there much antisemitism when you were working in the bookstore among the people in the shop?
BL: Don’t ask too much, you see it opens a gook for me. My life with antisemitism is a special chapter; I don’t know where to begin.
DB: Well, just tell us a few things to give us an idea.
BL: Sure, the Germans without being antisemitic is not a thing that you can say. That is what made it so easy for the Germans to overrun the Jews.
DB: So you never met a German who was not antisemitic?
BL: Oh, many! My first wife, she wanted to be Jewish. She kept telling me, but I had to tell her…. It’s not a question of a little water or something. You just have to be… born.
My friend Tepper… he is not only a friend but a book man like myself. He was a book man at one time in the shop where I worked. Then he opened his own shop and became very successful. When everything was over [the war] he became a supervisor of the city. We visited him, and he led us to various places of which he took care. There were some memorials erected to the memory of the people who attempted to kill Hitler. It was the house where they were executed, the [would-be] murderers of Hitler. He took care of making a temple out of this place. He was instrumental in bringing these buildings to be a monument in German history… my colleague Tepper.
DB: When were you married?
BL: From 1922 to 1929. My wife worked as a singer in the cabaret. A nice girl, but we were young… she still lives in Berlin… she’s 82. We still communicate.
DB: How about the fact she was gentile?
BL: All my friends were Aryan. Nobody asked, like America… a free country. Not until Hitler came; Hitler made an issue out of it and what an issue. He had his men working for that. Since I told you I was not politically minded… a non political person is a non-fighter… I let it go.
Hitler was there, he had his say, he took his life. He did the right thing. He delivered mankind from one of the most horrible criminals there was. Fortunately, mankind did not have to come with trial against him. He made the trial himself, by killing himself. That is enough for me.
DB: Did any of the artists know what was happening?
BL: No… not until it was too late. They were very naïve. This one woman wanted to introduce me to Goebbels [Joseph, the Minister of Propaganda], whom she knew, as if talking with me, a beloved friend of hers, a human being, would make a difference.
DB: Did you go?
BL: No.
DB: They thought they could change politics with art?
Bruno at his work desk, in house in San Francisco's Sunset neighborhood. photo: D. BlairDB: But the art scene was still safe, even with the Dadaists or whoever?
BL: Sure, of course… until Hitler. Then he had his ‘Enarte Kunst’ [Decadent Art] show. All the moderns had to participate, his showing of the decadence of the arts. The artists had only one advantage: they were not Jews. I knew them all from when I had the bookstore. They all came into the bookstore. I sold many of their works, engraving and lithographs by a very good Berlin publishing house. Everyone was buying them. They were reasonably priced, etchings by whomever was having a big show, the newest thing. I put up small exhibitions in my shop.
DB: Like who?
BL: [Karl] Schmidt-Rotluff… [Max] Pechstein, [Karl] Hofer, Otto Mueller, [Max] Bechman.
DB: Who bought these works?
BL: Oh, business people with a high life style, but they a certain instinct, a nose for where they could find art. I once had Teniers… I think, the Elder—a Dutch painter. So, I took it to this guy, the owner of Lysol—you know it is a German company? He looked at it for a long time… I waited. Then he gave it back to me. He said he couldn’t buy it. And he told me from then on I should know he never buys anything for less than 50,000 marks. So the next time I come… remember.
DB: How about the artists, how did they live?
BL: Well, we were in coffeehouses mostly. It was a big enclave, all these cabaret people were coming up from Vienna and opening theaters. Everyone was in the coffeehouses… [Berthold] Brecht was there. Always talking… some of them were very poor.
There was this one painter, a friend of mine… Hoextner, a drug addict. His clothes were ruined. He used to go around in the cafes from table to table asking each person ten cents… ten cents until he had a dollar fifty, then he would run off to the pharmacy to buy drugs. Cocaine. They used to offer it to me… all the time. I never tried any, but it was everywhere, in the cafes, at all the tables. The artists would either accept it or ignore it.
Hoextner always had his equipment with him. He would inject himself in the leg, through the pants, in the café, and continue talking all the while. He lived in a bathtub—he took me there once. He walked in a stoop with a wild look on his face. Sometimes we would go to the museums and galleries… we would listen in on what people were saying and then say things to them. We had many arguments with the bourgeoisie. They would think we were crazy; we wore funny clothes. Everyone had one thing that they always wore. One guy had these funny spats, a hat, a scarf, on which one would depend.
DB: Sort of like hippies?
BL: Sure, just like them. And we hippies used to go out all the time. I think they were sort of scared of us all in the group. We used to go to the theater or to hear music. It was a very beautiful time. People were coming in from all over Europe… many artists. Some were very successful because Berlin had the quickest impulses.
DB: How about the thirties… during the inflation?
BL: Ha ha ha… you don’t know what inflation is. I was afraid to sell a book. Today 500, then the next day it is worth a thousand and next week a million.
DB: Did people help each other out during the inflation… was there sharing of food or something?
BL: No. I really don’t know how we survived. People left their houses in the city with a bag with whatever valuables and went out to the country where they would buy ham, eggs, spinach.
DB: Your wife was working in the cabaret then, so they must have continued?
BL: The arts were booming. The impulse to create is greater in people in time of danger. If you are threatened, you are extremely excited, your normal life is threatened and this impulse is the mother of art. If it is anormal time and you can anything you want at grocery store, then there is nothing to excite you. You don’t have any impulse to create. You are sitting there eating what you bought. But if you have to fight for it, you are careful; if you are careful, you have to be excited.
DB: Now you said in 1937-8, there was a lot of artistic activity going on around Berlin.
BL: You know where I was living, near the Kurfurstendamm [a famous Berlin avenue], where all the activities were. It was sort of an enclave. They even permitted one coffeehouse. Here the Jews could come in and have their coffee. The only place where there was no sign, ‘No Jews Permitted.’ It was a very nice coffeehouse. I went there everyday to have my coffee. In the enclave, if [the Nazis] wanted to change, they would have to change every shop, every theater, every cabaret.
DB: They would lose the business.
Lisbeth Loewenberg: But [the Nazis] did it anyway.
BL: Til a certain point, then came the time you could not see a Jew on the streets. They just took them off the streets to the concentration camps. Then came the ‘Crystal Night’ [Kristallnacht, Nov 9, 1938]. This was the reason for the famous ‘Crystal Night’ when they took everyone Jewish. Every shop was smashed to pieces.
DB: In Berlin?
BL: In Berlin and all over, in every city. Still, as you know, the Jews were not brought in silence. They are not silent. They made their jokes. They had nothing more to live by [financially]. They had their forced labor, digging or whatever, trying to live by these government stamps. At the end of the week, you received maybe 75 cents to live [by], but as the Jews say—
LL: You get used to your worries and learn to live with it.
DB: This is a general question: The Jewish people, do you see them as a more speculative people or are they more realistic?
BL: They are both.
DB: How about in terms of being dreamers, dreaming of something?
BL: I think they have every trait.
DB: They are not particularly pessimistic or optimistic? So even in the Berlin time or during the time in the camp you found the same thing, some were pessimistic and some were optimistic? There wasn’t a sort of general flow?
BL: Well, I would say fortunately, in every moment in our life, something takes over and helps you to continue your life [to] have the greatest pleasure out of life. If you come into a concentration camp or prison, your mind changes right away; you are no longer the old person. Where do I sleep? Where do I get my food? These questions get so majestic and go over you, so that all metaphysical questions disappear. You don’t ask would I live this life over again; there is no such questions. There were a few philosophers in the camp [Buchenwald, where Bruno was 1938-9], known philosophers, who managed to raise such a question. We dared and we had the strength to think about such metaphysics.
One of my friends was named Heinemann [Gustav, perhaps]. He was a very famous politician. He was in the German ‘Landtag’ [state parliament]. They caught him and he was there in the concentration camp. And we always managed to come together for work, to get the same handle on the same box of sand, to carry it up and down. And we talked sometimes, somehow metaphysical talks. But most of the time you have no other idea but to stay alive.
DB: But when you raised those metaphysical questions, what did you come up with? Blame for the German people? Or did you question why this was happening?
BL: Very difficult to answer such a question. If you are 13 months in concentration camp, you have how many days? Almost 400 to come up with metaphysical questions. Questions that have nothing to do with your naked life, these I call metaphysical.
DB: This fellow, the politician, as someone in the German political structure, did he offer any reasoning or philosophy behind what was happening?
BL: No. We talked about living writers, poets and so forth. He knew under no circumstances he would come out of the camps alive. Because they swore he would die in the camp. There was a whole company of Viennese artists, actors, in the same part I was living. All the famous actors from Vienna were sitting there darning socks.
One day I got a horrible pain like sciatica, so they sent me to this place were I could sit. This was not great. They only sent me there because if I could not do anything worthwhile for the camp, at least I could darn socks. There we were all sitting, all the Viennese artists. Mr [Fritz] Grünbaum [popular cabaret artist], Farkas Beda Loehner, [Hermann] Leopoldi [composer]… cabaret people, all very sad, no one was laughing. There was a sign there which you found near the door, ‘Only the birds are singing.’
DB: Who put that there?
BL: The authorities—Hitler.
DB: Because they knew there were artists there?
BL: So that nobody had the idea to sing. Could be that someone starts to sing, ah, ah, no such thing—only the birds are singing. Ha ha, I must laugh if I think about it. But I am sitting here telling you about the camp. I should smash the [tape] machine. I didn’t have the idea to tell you about the camp. It was forbidden to me. They swore if I ever told anything about the camp that they would send an undersea boat to catch me on the high seas. They would get me anywhere; I was not supposed to speak about it… This they told me as I was leaving.
DB: So there was absolutely no artistic expression amongst these cabaret people? Did they ever sing, was there any small theater? Any [art] form?
BL: No songs, we had no songs. The birds never sang. We had an orchestra, a band. There were professional musicians among the thousands of prisoners, and they formed the band. And every afternoon they played when you came back from work; we came through the big gate to our various barracks where we lived, but before we went to our barracks, the whole camp had to be standing on the parade place to make roll call, every afternoon about 5 o’clock. There was music. On this side there were whipping posts. If you were marked for punishment, you were strapped in on a wooden horse on one side and there would stand an S.S. man with a big whip, and on the other an S.S. man would count one . .. two . . . till 25. It happened every day, and during the punishment of the poor fellow, who was very badly hurt, we saw their bottoms all cut, and during their punishment the damn orchestra played the famous band song, popa… pie… da… die. There we had song, we were not only suffering, ha ha.
DB: I was thinking, was there nothing amongst the people privately?
BL: No, there was no private connection, not even in discussion, not a talk. Silently we were sitting there, not talking.
IB: There were no [religious] services?
BL: No! How could you? This is a company, over which is spread a dark cover, a dark thin blanket of dark material, over your head, over your body, and there you will live all day and all night! Only sadness.
DB: So that dark blanket extinguished all expression of art?
BL: All expression. Terrible.
DB: I was wondering if there was any artistic reflection of that experience?
BL: My face here [referring to his painting ‘Ecce Homo’ on the wall] is from the life in the camp. It makes you bloated. You see everybody was blistered off, everybody had sick faces. And the clothes you had . . . you could not recognize a person who comes out of the camp. I never met a person who was in the camp. I don’t know who was ever in the camp, because we were all naked. Maybe it’s illusion. Maybe I dreamt it—nobody saw me there. Did you see me there? No. My wife didn’t see me. It’s all an illusion. Hitler is an illusion.
DB: Some people are trying to say that now. There are historical groups trying to establish that fact. But in a U.S. court of law it was ruled that it is not an illusion. There really were camps. An historically established fact.
BL: And you should think that a story like Hitler’s would be an atom bomb and change the whole of mankind, somehow opposite the Jews. No, not at all; it didn’t take away from antisemitism .. . not a bit. You think we left antisemitism? I have nothing to represent of my family, no one. All my aunts, all my uncles, all my nephews, all my nieces, all my cousins there were all killed, all of them. My sister and her little boy, they were all killed in concentration camps. I have nothing to represent my family.
DB: But your sister was the one who got the ticket for you to get out?
BL: She got a ticket for me, and then she was taken to the concentration camp.
DB: Why didn't she get out, too?
BL: I don’t know; that is another question. Why didn’t I get out before? I was warned, I was repeatedly warned, by well-meaning persons, and I didn’t get out. One day I was sitting in the coffeeshop, having coffee, and this fellow sitting next to me turns and says, ‘Listen, you should not even go home to get your things; you should just leave as fast as possible.’ I looked at him as if he were crazy. ‘Why?’ I asked him. ‘Because we are planning to do terrible things.’ ‘How can you do these things?’ I asked, and he replied only, ‘We are developing ways.” But you can’t go out, if you live in a city that is your home. Better not to mention these things.
DB: You don’t think it is important for the young people of today to know these things?
BL: What good is it?
DB: Maybe the whole world can learn from the mistakes. We as human beings…
BL: Try, try, you are young enough.
DB: So, you didn’t follow politics much in those days?
BL: Unfortunately, I am completely unpolitical, apolitical entirely.
DB: Is this from your own nature or a philosophy?
BL: No, my nature. To live in peace, it is an illusion. I have the illusion, I live in peace. I don’t want any arguments. I don’t want to know another man is a Christian. I am invited tomorrow afternoon at six o’clock by a very nice fellow; he is from Lebanon. He was at his window today and he calls over, we always greet, and asks if I can come over tomorrow for a glass of wine. Ho ho ho, with the greatest of pleasure, for a glass of wine I will come over at six o’clock. I don’t want to know if he is Lebanese, if he is anti-Jew or what. Leave me alone. We are human beings; let me have my glass of wine… that is all I want. I think a person who loses the basic naivete and spontaneity can hardly be called young. To be creative he needs these two basic qualities, and if you are able to maintain these traits you stay young to create your own work . . . independent of old age.
DB: One time during our conversation, you said you went into the concentration camp as if you were a ‘puppy.’ Somehow the same naivete and spontaneity you seem to feel carried you through them. Am I correct?
BL: Oh yeah, it has a lot to do with survival because the reality of things doesn’t touch you. At least not as much as your own fantasies. Your own image of your own self, they are stronger. You eat once a day in the concentration camp; you get a bowl of soup—no meat, but you eat this soup with great hunger, eager to have it, on long tables. If somebody died, the same moment he died everyone was grabbing his bowl.
In the camp, after this operation, when they cut open my hand—you can still see here—and they took out the pus and then they threw me… out of a back door into a field, with twenty or thirty people all with bandaged arms and legs. There was no anesthesia, nobody had any. They operated as you were, in full consciousness . . . they cut you up everywhere.
As I came out into this field where everyone was sitting, I had to start work. Because in the concentration camp, it is forbidden to have time to rest. This is the principle. They make you work even if you are drowsy. They gave me a basket of twigs and some sharp glass splinters which you took between your knees, and with your one free hand you had to shave the skin off the limb; this is what you had to do. There was another basket where you put the shavings.
All this you had to do but all this kept you very healthy. I never was hungry. I never was… I never desired more than a bowl of soup. It is still my habit here in San Francisco. When we go to the restaurant, I order a bowl of soup. It’s good enough for me, wonderful, clam chowder. Who thought clam chowder in the camps? Nobody.
Now this all makes you strong… If you want to become 91 years old, take a hard life on you. A life of a Spartan warrior. You have to take such a life, then when you become old you will never be sick… For there is no reason to be sick because there is nothing unhealthy that you are doing… working.
If you are 91 years old, you have many thoughts of dying; everybody older thinks of dying. I am not willing to die… to extinguish my consciousness. I’m not willing to give this up. But the question is, what ability do I have to influence this? Everyone wants to die in their sleep, a wonderful death.
Okay, this is a book written by Michel Georges-Michel [French painter and writer, 1883-1985]; he wrote about all the artists of the twenties in Montmartre and about [Marcel] Vertes, a great German painter. Vertes was close to the circus. He made some studies of aerial acrobats. There was a young girl, he invited her up to his studio. They had the following talk—now I will tell you what life is, right away!
‘When you are up there suspended between life and death, I suppose it must be an exhilarating and terrifying moment in spite of your being used to it?’
‘No,’ she said, ‘We are just used to it as you say.’
‘But you talk to each other, don’t you? I saw you talking last night when you stopped for a second.’
‘Oh, that was nothing.’
‘I’m sure you said something.’
‘It wasn’t anything. My partner said there is a coat that a woman was wearing in one of the boxes. He said it was fur, and I thought it was monkey. When we were on the ground again, we found out which one of us was right.’
That is what life is! In a moment, you are hanging between life and death—which you always do. Any moment you are between life and death… and you are having such conversations. I love this book.
Historical Note
Bruno was born on December 16th, 1890, and died on October 29th, 1986, at 95. After his sister's petitioning got him released from Buchenwald, he sailed from Marseille to Shanghai, the only place on the planet that would accept Jews without visas. He lived there the entire war, in the famous foreign enclave, managing a lending library on Ward Road which also did lectures and shows. Despite the Japanese occupation, he was able to tour some of China, including Kaifeng, where Jews had lived centuries prior.
In Shanghai, he met and married Lisbeth, when she was around eighteen. She had fled Vienna with her mother and father, although he died of cancer in Shanghai. She worked as a secretary.
In 1948 they emigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco, where Bruno opened a bookstore on Polk Street and Lisbeth worked for Collier's magazine and then as the accountant at the JCC. Although Bruno's show at Ancient Currents Gallery, in April 1983, didn't sell any paintings, it was a successful display of his work, it had a well-attended opening, and initiated the gallery director, Doniphan Blair, into researching and writing about the Holocaust. Posted on Jun 02, 2023 - 12:03 PM
