National Art Education Association

A Woman of Valor: Freidl Dicker-Brandeis, Art Teacher in Theresienstadt Concentration Camp Author(s): DAVID PARISER Source: Art Education, Vol. 61, No. 4 (July 2008), pp. 6-12 Published by: National Art Education Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20694738 . Accessed: 15/01/2014 23:26
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A Freidl

Woman Art Teacher Camp

calculated tomake teachers reflect and her colleagues of their work with

Dicker-Brandeis,

in

Theresienstadt
In 1945, a holocaust survivor named

Concentration
The camp was a setting well

Willy Groag brought two suitcasesfull Museum in ofdrawings to theJewish

were

the record they left behind, Dicker-Brandeis had no doubt about the essential usefulness children. This alone makes

were doing. To judge by on theultimatevalue ofwhat they soberly

the

Prague (Cook, 2004). These drawings

the work ofTheresienstadt

concentration

camp childrenunder the tutelageof a remark able art teacher:Freidl Dicker-Brandeis. She was theirteacherand, once she decided to Auschwitz, she follow her husband Pavel to packed as many of thedrawings and paintings
as she could into two suitcases?and hid them.

the story of her last teaching assign ment for all art teachers. From those who survived, inspirational as an intense, there emerges a picture of Dicker-Brandeis as a teacher are nurturing, and reflective teacher. Her aims summed up in her own words, cited by Makarova (2000), "The are not meant tomake artists out of all the classes drawing such sources of energy as children. They are to free and broaden to awaken to the imagination, creativity and independence, and the children's observation of powers appreciation strengthen reality" of

The drawings,paintings and collages are a testimonyto thechildren'sresilienceand to the pedagogical ability of theirteachers.
extraordinary courage, dedication, and

are fundamen respects, Dicker-Brandeis objectives same as those of contemporary art teachers who find tally the in less immediate danger, even though events in the themselves to illustrate that old Latin tag "Homo hominem world continue craft. In both

was to (p. 31). In effect, she had two clear aims: One in the visual arts, children with the present appropriate experiences their terrible and the other was to help the children to escape and however briefly on the wings of imagination surroundings,

a to man). rhetorical and theoretical lupus" (Man is wolf Although since the 1940s, the task facing art frameworks may have changed teachers is still the same: to inform, enlighten, train, and encourage in the service of personal vision. All this must be visual exploration a bare minimum at works of materials and logistical support. Before by children that illustrate aspects of her I present a brief overview of her life. Freidl

done with

looking

teaching approach, Dicker-Brandeis (Goldman, was While was born in Vienna in Vienna,

the noted

art educator

2000; Makarova, 2000; Wenig, 2003) in 1898, and as a child she began to study art. and took classes with she studied photography Franz Cizek. Between 1916 and 1919 she school. Itten was then in the later

part of Johannes Ittens private process of creating his Basic Course

in the visual

arts, which

became When

in Weimar. of the Bauhaus curriculum the centerpiece to Itten moved Dicker-Brandeis moved Weimar, also, and

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of

Valor
BY DAVID PARISER

Figure 1. Portrait photograph of Freidl Dicker-Brandeis, By permission of the JewishMuseum, Prague.

to attend courses at the Bauhaus. She studied bookbinding, began textiles, typography, and lithography. An outstanding student, she was invited to teach Iltens Basic Course to the incoming students. It was at the Bauhaus that she absorbed the fundamental Bauhaus that had to form and color?a approach a clear impact on her art work Communism growing to her species of "constructivism" and on her design projects. arsenal and she was active

In 1923,shemoved toVienna. By 1931 shehad added

anti-fascist ideological movement.

in the

In a surviving political collage, she a poem warns an incorporated by Berthold Brecht inwhich he In unborn child about the exploitation that awaits him in the world. Pavel Brandeis. Up to this point she was Singer and married In 1938 she began to active as an artist and commercial designer. a town northeast of in Hronov, teach art privately to Jewish children a visa for as Nazi In she obtained 1942, mounted, repression Prague. in Hronov Palestine, but as Pavel did not have a visa, they remained Franz

1936 she ended a difficult with thedesigner relationship long-term

and from there they were sent to Terezin, where she taught art in the where she perished. camp. In 1944 she followed Pavel to Auschwitz, survived. did Dicker-Brandeis get the courage of her convictions? an artist, a constructivist, a Communist. So perhaps her came from a combination of belief in art as spiritual strength faith. She was not (a Bauhaus notion) and her ideological expression Where to live it.And while 2003). we are here, we have her best was to do the best that we

Pavel

She was

but said, "Ifyou have only one day, thenyou have blindlyoptimistic,
can"(Wenig, art, as ithad in a crowded with the world Doing long been her passion. camp or a middle-class via imagery, and easy for her when Itmade no difference it came to

The drawings, paintings and collages are a testimony to the children's resilience and to the extraordinary courage, dedication, and pedagogical of their teachers. ability

if she were

sitting room, she had to engage to show others how to do the same.

in her life seem to have been based mostly on The key decisions not to to emotion rather than ideology. So, her decision emigrate art in Palestine was based on her desire to stay with Pavel. Teaching was an inevitable and natural way for her to Theresienstadt spend was her time, given her commitment also an emotional step?one to art. To motivated follow Pavel to Auschwitz by love, not fear.

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Theresienstadt, for Genocide

Dicker-Brandeis that was

the Arts as a Fig Leaf

and her husband were in a camp a part of the Nazis final solution to the An unusual "cultural" ghetto "Jewish problem"

atWork: Dicker-Brandeis Children's Art from Theresienstadt The 4,000 plus drawingsand paintingshidden in the
camp, that now constitute an

& Milton, 1981)was established in the (Blatter

town of Terezin. The town was

Czechoslovakian

built in 1780by the originallya fortress Hapsburg

emperor Theresa. Bohemia, renamed Joseph II in honor of his mother, Maria of Itwas located in the scenic mountains

the camp, and a sense of the teaching approach used and her fellow teachers. The by Dicker-Brandeis artwork can be organized under several headings: sketches

us a glimpse of lifein Museum inPrague, afford Jewish

important

archive

at the

Theresienstadt

childrenhad died or had been executed in thisold town (Potok, 1993).During the same period, 88,202 Theresienstadtandwere people passed through
swallowed up in the death cultivated intended went camps. in this ghetto for their value to fool well-meaning The arts were as theater props

some By the end of 1945,

and became thehigh profilefaceof the "finalsolution"

33,456 men, women, and

not far from Prague. In 1941 Terezin was victorious Germans the by

The observational studiesare chillingfor what they

show. Some

of everyday life, portraits, studies and still-lifes, formal exercises dealing with the visual illustrations. elements, and imaginative and narrative the wretched drawings document Others disease, and overcrowding.

humiliation.

naivewitness tobrutalpublic hangings and

conditions,

housing are

organizations liketheRed Cross. As Potok (1993)

observed, the Nazis to some

We can get a sense of Dicker-Brandeis' teaching from the records of a lecture on art education approach that she gave teachers in the camp (Makarova, 2000, pp. 106-115). Dicker-Brandeis urged her fellow teachers to heed three points: work. Here she was clearly influenced was

2001) thatthecampwas a safe believing (Dutlinger,

haven from War. The fact that the Nazis with encouraged high art at

to conceal lengths visitors such their apocalyptic goal. And well-meaning as Red Cross were often fooled into delegations

1. Cooperative group work is preferable to

competitive by her socialist anathema. 2. Children's work leanings. should Competition

& Milton, 1981) remindsus that thecamp (Blatter

acquaintance stamina. Hughes does it engender moral (1993) observed that it is one of the oldest conceits among the arts does not ennoble, nor

adultwork, but should be valued for itsown

qualities. attitudes the In echoes taking this stand, Brandeis artists such as Klee, who of modernist

not be seen as imperfect the

be saints, and as iswell known,

or "culturati" that the production of the appreciation arts is a sure sign of moral rectitude. If that were true, art collectors, artists, and critics would all says Hughes, they are not.

looked to child artas the sourceof a distinctive aesthetic (Fineberg,1997).

3. Children learn from, and should be to copy from the work of great encouraged differed artists. In this respect, Dicker-Brandeis was an influential Romantic greatly with what stream in art education: Cizek (1927) and, later, can

The 4,000plus drawingsand paintingshidden

in the camp, that now constitute an important archive at the JewishMuseum inPrague, afford

copy from adult work, or any other source, was a of the child. crime against the visual innocence Even though she was not an art therapist, Dicker Brandeis believed that visual art can have therapeutic value. Makarova clinical (2000) presented Dicker-Brandeis* She sought analysis of children's drawings. clues about their inner lives and psychic organiza

Lowenfeld (1957) taughtthatallowing children to

us a glimpseof lifein thecamp,and a senseof

the teaching approach used byDicker-Brandeis and herfellow teachers.

made.

tion from what theysaid about the imagesthatthey

still remains

with Dicker-Brandeis 1938. Kramer was some

EdithKramer studied 1986). The noted art therapist

in Prague between 1934 and said that what Brandeis did in Terezin

was In this respect, Dicker-Brandeis using what a powerful clinical technique (Lewis,

few resources and little professional Despite training as a therapist, she to strengthen and heal the sought traumatized children.

not "art therapy" but rather art education 2000, therapeutic elements"(Makarova,

"with p. 138).

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"laissez-faire"

Her teachingapproach includeda selective

component. She counseled teachers,

Drawings

"In any case, childrendevelop theirabilities invery different ways. In imposingon children the road that we cut themofffromtheircreative must travel, they
potential, and we cut ourselves

Ethnic Racial Identity

encouraged the children

and the Construction

of

Dicker-Brandeis Wenig (2003)mentioned that

tomake portraits

and made

natureof thesepotentialities"(Makarova,2000, p. 115). who tookher classes (Makarova, According to those with color 2000), Dicker-Brandeis presented students
exercises

off from knowing

the

sure thatall thechildrensigned them,as a way of Indeed,among the4,000 validating theiridentities.

there are many self-portraits and portraits drawings some of fellow child as a memory prisoners?such disappeared from Terezin. on theMoses Eisler also made a

had thechildrenstudystill-life, work from observa

tion, and draw from imagination. She dictated

and experiments

with

texture and

line. She

who

a boy sketch by 11-year-old Georg Eisler of his friend,

stories

more

as thebasis forsome of her lessons. In one typical as itproceeded lesson,children listenedto the story and had todraw only thoseobjects thatshementioned
than once. An artist herself, she did not use the

written

Moses (seeMakarova, 2000 p. 129).Eisler's drawingof

comment portrait is strangely

materials at her disposal forher own work but saved forthechildren touse. The ingenuity that everything materials isbest illustrated she showed infinding by the which she used scrapoffice materials to way in A number supplementthechildren's collage supplies. of children's among them thisone by collages survive, Sona Spitzova (see Figure 2) showinga guardwith a
baton

uninformative?he says that he had no ideawhy he made thedrawing?that itjust "happened."But is it thatthisdisplaced Jewish surprising boy, threatened an imageof for his should sketch explicitly ethnicity, the Jewish liberator? The portraitsthat Dicker-Brandeis
encouraged camp the children to make were a

to thatotherbadge of Jewish forcedon all identity

inmates?the Star of David.

good

antidote

are scrapsof office out papers, and file foldersthrown were in the bureaucrats who tools fatal the machine by and background. (Thefigure of a woman foreground in the foregroundisproportionatelylargerthan the otherfigures?therebycreatingthe impression of depth.) The Drawings Claire Golomb (1992) devoted a chapterto child art from Terezin. She asserted thatthereisnothing about the work thesechildren left extraordinary behind. The imagesare typicalin terms of the
children's that ran the camp. There is even a suggestion of

in a tower, monitoring

a crowd.

The materials

of accomplishments. They are also typicalin terms thechildren'sthematicchoices.Golomb referred to theemotional impactof thedrawings.There isa means of the powerful tensionbetween the simplicity at thechildren's horrors disposal, and the fathomless
that we know surrounded them. But to my mind, an "aesthetic'' assessment are values seems

age-related

technical

and compositional

Holocaust (1981) commenton adult artworksfromthe ones and situationsin which it isunseemly to continue going throughthepaces of aesthetic judgment... Like to the works testify will of thedoomed ... human out their stretch who hands to thoseof us they beings
could not know as the poems and memoirs written in the camps, these is apt: "There that supersede the aesthetic

inappropriate.

Howe's

(p. 11).

anything

but an unseen

future"

Figure 2. Sona Spitzova, 11-13 years. Guard with a stick. Collage of office paper and ledger pages. By permission of the Jewish Museum, Prague. Inventory # 125499.

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Images of the Environment

A poignant from Terezin aspect of the artworks is that some children

ment

environ the picturesque of the camp. For example, a who was drawing by Petr Weidman, document 13 years old, shows Terezin in a

bucolic setting(see Figure 3). There are rolling hills, castlesperched on and a lake with a sailboat high bluffs,
in the distance. As Simon Schama

(1996) statedof anotherdeath camp,

Treblinka: Holocaust "In our mind

of the accustomed to think

as or at best one having no

s eye, we

are

landscape? emptied of features in night and and color, shrouded

pulverised shocking Treblinka,

gray: the gray of smoke, of ash, of It is bones, of quick-lime. then, to realize that to a too, belongs vivid countryside..."

fog,blanketedby perpetualwinter, collapsed intoshades of dun and

brilliantly

water

(p. 26). A more appropriate imageof thedeath camp is conjured up by a

color and

Courtyard,

work. (see Figure4). This isa skilled

It captures the brooding and of the atmosphere ismore congruent with

by Pavel

ink painting, The Sonnenschein

oppressive town, and the nature

of the place.

Above: Figure 3. PetrWeidman, 13 years old, view of Terezin, crayon drawing. By permission of the Jewish Museum, Prague. Inventory # 121991. Right: Figure 4. Pavel Sonnenschein, 11 years.Watercolor and ink, The Courtyard. By permission of the Jewish Museum, Prague. Inventory # 125515.

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ART EDUCATION 2008 /JULY

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Images Based
As we have

on Imagination
encouraged

seen, Dicker-Brand?is

There were adult artists who paid with their lives

pictures thatshowed aspects of everydaylifein to She also believed in indulging Theresienstadt. fantasy,
create evocative here images. The last image to be discussed is representative of such an imaginative flight.

out imagesthatspokeopenlyof the for smuggling

brutality in the camp, but Dicker-Brandeis job as a balancing act?encouraging themwith the duty to observe. saw her the children

A fanciful pencil drawingbyKarel Sattler(10-11 world old) (see years Figure 5) shows an intrepid on thevalise he has packed. To judgeby the stickers
to?or will Prague. caravan baseline. Karels Paris, and London, go to?Oslo, the camel difficulties with organizing indicate the pack a common solution traveler on his two-humped camel, with his suitcase

to escape via their imaginations, and acquainting

been

in the distance Karel

to

on a sloping theproblem of placing verticalfigures

oriented

train of other camels

Conclusion
Freidl Dicker-Brandeis' teacher she was ordeal and triumph as a is of special interest to art educators today, for concerned with the formal, as well as narrative as "closer may to nature." Some contemporary these views as obtuse

on a distant sand dune to theedge of that dune itself, ratherthan to theverticalaxis of thepage. This is a ' "local solution to theproblem of orientingfiguresto a
non-horizontal baseline a more

which is typical of neophytegraphists who are

struggling with space. naturalistic pictorial

(Wilson

& Wilson,

1985),

of children

aspects of the image.She also subscribed to thenotion

characterize

way In fact, this distinctive arrangement suggests that, in this instance, Karel did not receive any instruction from Dicker-Brandeis technical and was

of rendering

art educators

and elitist, forafter all it iscommon knowledge that formalismis a bastion of aestheticprivilege,and that
the Romantic view of the child as a "natural Above innocent"

left alone tograpplewith a drawingproblem common to all beginners (Wilson& Wilson, 1998).

patronizes childrenand ignoresthe "socially

constructed" features of childhood. all,

JULY 2008 /ART EDUCATION

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She believed in the

importance of giving the children the technical and formal tools with which tomake their own images. There were no
nuances, there was

Dicker-Brandeis

did

little to instill that touchstone

of

dominant

artistic excellence?the quest for social contemporary a came to "critique" justice. The closest she developing she encouraged the children of the situation was when their grim and threatening surroundings including the gallows and the crowded, dehumanized There were adult artists and threatening environment. who to document

of the arts and art education conceptions the hierar today, for she respected and recognized chical in art, encouraging the children to copy from lacked "old master" all, her approach paintings. Above the self-mockery and the irony that characterizes in the importance She believed the technical their own and formal tools were no images. There self-doubt. Above all, she was an

moment. postmodern of giving the children with which nuances, to make there was

Dicker-Brandeis

as a saw her act? job balancing the children to escape via their imagina encouraging them with the duty to observe. tions, and acquainting Dicker-Brandeis commitment, resourcefulness, story epitomizes and a belief in the visual arts as a means

thatspoke openly of thebrutalityin the camp,but

paid with

their lives for smuggling

out images

no

her gesture in hiding the children's optimist?for artwork shows her faith in the future, when a child's drawing jackboot. David Canada. Pariser isProfessor, Department ofArt Concordia Quebec, University, Montreal, E-mail: d.pariser@gmail.com would carry more weight than a fascist

no self-doubt.

as a for personal expression, healthy escape, and to solve problems. We note that in which medium Dicker-Brandeis' beliefs are out of step with some

Education,

& Milton, S. (1981). Art of the holocaust. Historical introduction by Henry Friedlander, Preface by Irving Howe. New Blatter, J., York: The Routledge Press. Cizek, F. (1927). Children's coloured paper work. Vienna:Schroll. 1917). (Translation of Papier-Schneide-und-Klearbeiten, Retrieved 4/15/07 from theNew statesman database. Cook, W. (2004). Escape artists,www.newstatesman.com/200404260036. as strategiesfor survival: Theresienstadt 1941-45. New York: Herodias. Dutlinger, A. (Editor) (2001). Art, music and education art innocent The children's and the modern artist. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. J. (1997). eye: Fineberg, Goldman, S. (2000). Fireflies in the dark: the story ofFreidl Dicker-Brandeis and the children ofTerezin. London: Holiday House. Golomb, C. (1992). The child's creation of a pictorial world. Berkeley: University of California Green, G (1978). The artists ofTerezin. New York: Hawthorne Books. Howe, Hughes Press.

I. (1981) Preface toArt of the holocaust. Blatter & Milton, New York: The Routledge Press. R. (1993). The culture of complaint. The fraying ofAmerica. New York: Oxford University Press.

Lewis, L. (1986). Perceptions of parents among women with eating disorders: Implications for the experience of the self. Phd. thesis inHuman Development, The University of Chicago. Lowenfeld, V. (1957). Creative and mental growth (3rd edition). New York: MacMillan. Makarova, E. (2000). Freidl Dicker-Brandeis Vienne 1898-Auschwitz 1944. Los Angeles: Tallfellow/Every Picture Press. Parik, A. (1988). Freidl Dicker-Brandeis. Judaica Bohemiae, XXIV(2) pps. 69-81. H. Volavkova, (Ed.). New York: Shocken Books, pp. xi-xxi. Potok, C. (1993). Foreword. / never saw another butterfly. Schaefer-Simmern, H. (1970). The unfolding of artistic activity. Berkeley: University of California Press. Schama, S. (1996). Landscape and memory. New York: Vintage Books. , H. (1993). I never saw a butterfly:Children's drawings and poems from Terezin concentration camp, 1942-1944). New York: Schocken Books.

Volavkova

Women artists and theweaving workshops. London: Thames and Hudson. Weltge, S. (1993). Bauhaus textiles. Wilson, B., & Wilson M. (1985). The artistic tower of Babel: Inextricable links between cultural and graphic development. Visual Arts Research, 11 (1), 90-104.

WEBSITES
(2001). Life in art and teaching. http://www.sharat:co.il/lel/friedl/time/timel.html data base. Retrieved 06/17/ 2006 from Sharat Communications Freidl Dicker-Brandeis. Museum Press Release, June 08 2004. www.Jewishmuseum.org/site/pages/press.php?id=401PHPSA Jewish Retrieved 06/05/2006 from the Jewish Museum database: Wenig, G. (2003). Artists' works from Death Camps Live On. http://www.jewishjournal.com/home/print.php?id=9857 Retrieved 05/25/06 from Jewish Journal on line database.

ENDNOTE
This manuscript March 2006. is a revised version of a paper presented at theNational Art Education Association Convention, Chicago,

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