Anna Dżabagina Berlin’s Left Bank? Eleonore Kalkowska in Women’s Artistic Networks of Weimar Berlin1 Abstract: The author refers to works by, e.g. Shari Benstock (Women of the Left Bank) and Cristanne Miller (Cultures of Modernism) to describe Berlin in the first decades of the twentieth century from a gender perspective and look at the opportunities that this metropolis offered to its women-settlers, who searched for their space of personal and artistic freedom. While Benstock describes the constellation of women in Paris, which consisted of such modernists as Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach or Edith Wharton, the author sheds light on a network of connections of Eleonore Kalkowska, a Polish-German writer, who shortly before the Great War started attending Max Reinhardt’s acting school, and after 1918 decided to settle in Berlin and in the late 1920s managed to succeed, e.g. in the avant-garde Zeittheater movement. This article presents Kalkowska’s relations with the artistic milieu of female painters and sculptors associated with the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen [Assosciation of Berlin Female Artists] and also efforts of “New Women” (as emancipated, ambitious, professionally active women were called since the turn of the centuries – see, e.g. Sally Ledger, The New Woman. Fiction and feminism at the fin de siècle) to create institutions and media of self-representation, which shaped the women’s metropolis until 1933. Keywords: Eleonore Kalkowska, Weimar Berlin, artistic networks, New Women, Sally Ledger, Max Reinhardt, Shari Benstock, Cristanne Miller In Women of the Left Bank, Shari Benstock created a collective portrait of Paris’s women’s literary milieu in the first half of the twentieth century. She outlined women’s topography of the city and a network of female writers, editors, literary critics and publishers, connected with each other 1 The reasearch was funded from the budget resources for education in the years 2014–2018 as a research project “Polish-German Works and Reception of Eleonore Kalkowska (1883–1937)” under the Ministry of Science and Higher Education “Diamond Grant” programme (no. DI2013 011443). Part of the project consists of the publication of a monograph on Eleonora Kalkowska’s Polish and German works and their reception scheduled for 2020. The research conducted in Deutsches Literatur Archiv in Marbach was possible due to the Marbach Scholarship, awarded to the author by Wissenschaftlicher Beirat der Deutschen Schillergesellshaft in November 2015. The author would like to thank prof. Tomasz Szarota for providing access to Kalkowska’s correspondence and documents from his private archive. 152 Anna Dżabagina by interpersonal and institutional relations, forming a unique network of “midwives of modernism,”2 which was located in the vicinity of the Latin Quarter. By bringing to the forefront the biographies and works of women such as Gertrude Stein, Natalie Barney, Sylvia Beach or Edith Wharton, Benstock made a significant reconfiguration within the understanding of female-writers participation in the process of modernism production. One of the keys to the scholar’s historical investigation was a common biographical feature of her “women of the left bank:” each was an immigrant who moved to Paris in search of personal and artistic freedom. Another key was related to interpersonal connections between the left bank’s “settlers:”3 their friendships, relationships and cooperations. Last but not least was the characteristic of Paris itself – a characteristic that allowed these women to “discover themselves as women and as writers in Paris.”4 Furthermore, Berlin was examined from a similiar perspective by Cristanne Miller in Cultures of Modernism: Gender and Literary Community in New York and Berlin, which analyzes the impact of Berlin’s environment on the development of Else Lasker-Schüler’s literary career. Miller states that it was Berlin – and not the other metropolis – that enabled the writer to succeed, and also “allowed her to make the most of her interests, minimal formal educations, and ambitions.”5 At the same time Miller, citing the work of Benstock, notes that in the literary circles of Berlin this type of women’s “self-help” network was lacking, while the “female visual artists seemed more active in providing each other pragmatic support and generally in the infrastructure of modernism than were writers.”6 It is undoubtedly true that female visual artists of that time seemed to be more self-organized; however, writers of Weimar Berlin were also searching support in women’s communities, and the city itself was favourable to the development of such networks, in some cases even surpassing Paris in opportunities offered. Just as Paris, it was like a magnet that attracted women, artists and immigrants. For the purpose of this paper, I would like to suspend the division into “visual” and “literary:” from this wider perspective, I would try to outline the constellation of female artists, who – similarly to Benstock’s settlers – “invaded” Berlin in the first decades of twentieth century in the search of artistic and personal freedom. 2 3 4 5 6 Shari Benstock, Women of the Left Bank: Paris 1900–1940 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986), p. 20. Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, p. ix. Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, p. ix. Cristanne Miller, Cultures of Modernism. Gender and Literary Community in New York and Berlin. Marianne Moore, Mina Loy, and Else Lasker-Schüler (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2007), p. 21. Miller, Cultures of Modernism, p. 45. Berlin’s Left Bank 153 Ill. 1: Author Uknown. Eleonore Kalkowska, ca. 1920s–1933. photo, Berlin. Source: Private collection of Tomasz Szarota. Looking at the metropolis from their perspective, we can also draw a topography of relations between women onto the map of Weimar Berlin. Like the author of Women of the Left Bank, in this paper I would like to focus on an immigrant writer, who – alike Benstock’s heroines — searched for freedom of the cosmopolitan metropolis, established her own women’s network and managed to make her entry into literary avant-garde. Such a person was Eleonore Kalkowska (1883–1937),7 Polish-German writer, 7 Kalkowska was born in a Polish-German family in Warsaw in 1883, and she went to German-language schools in Breslau and St. Petersburg. She studied at the Sorbonne in Paris. Debuted in 1904 with Polish-written collection of short stories – Głód życia [Hunger for Life] – but continued her literary career as a German-speaking writer. After the Great War she divorced her husband, Marceli Szarota, and moved to Berlin. For more on Kalkowska’s works and biography, see, e.g., Agnes Trapp, Die Zeitstücke von Eleonore Kalkowska (Münich: Marin Meidenbauer, 2009); Anna Dżabagina, “Life trajectories and constellations of Eleonore Kalkowska,” Comparative Yearbook, Vol. 8 (2017), pp. 317–336; Anne Stürzer, Dramatikerinnen und Zeitstücke. Ein vergessenes Kapitel der Theatergeschichte von der Weimarer Republik bis zur Nachkriegszeit (Stuttgart-Weimar: Metzler,1993); Joanna Ławnikowska-Koper, “W obronie sprawiedliwości: Eleonora Kalkowska (1883–1937): między Warszawą a Berlinem” [In the defence of justice: Eleonore Kalkowska (1883–1937) between Warsaw and Berlin], Roczniki Humanistyczne, Vol. 63, No. 5, 2015, pp. 143–158. 154 Anna Dżabagina who shortly before the Great War started attending Max Reinhardt’s acting school, after 1918 decided to settle in Berlin and in the late 1920s managed to succeed by her involvement in the avant-garde Zeittheater movement (Ill. 1). Among her closest connections were active and politically engaged women (some of them more, and some of them less known), such as the anarchist Emma Goldman;8 journalists Milly Zirker and Margit Freud; the composer with communist sympathies Grete von Zieritz; painters like Gabriele Münter, or related to Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen [Association of Berlin Female Artists] : Milly Steger, Käthe Münzer-Neumann, Rahel SzalitMarcus and Alice Michaelis. They all shared something in common: for each of them Berlin had become the homeland of choice. Although, unlike the Women of the Left Bank, not every one of these women was an immigrant in the strict sense (like Kalkowska, born in Warsaw, or Szalit-Marcus from a Jewish family from Łódź),9 each one of them was a settler, who conquered and co-created metropolis of New Women. Each one of them tried to make the most of the opportunieties, which emancipated, internationalist, avant-garde Berlin had to offer. What’s more, a look at the map and the topography of these women shows that while the “left bank” of Paris was centerd around the Quartier Latin, the “left bank” of Kalkowska’s Berlin was placed in the vicinity of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf (neighborhood, where at the same time some centers of modernist exchange, such as the Romanisches Cafe or the residence of the Berliner Secession, were placed). Looking at these points on the not only to sheds some light on this particular network, but also reminds us what Berlin had to offer to its women settlers. New Women’s Berlin In the first decades of the twentieth century, Berlin was in the avant-garde of women’s emancipation. At the turn of the century, the city on the River Spree had become a scene of dynamic changes,10 as architect Despina Stratigakos wrote: “Around the turn of the twentieth century, women began to claim Berlin as their own…. From residences to restaurants a visible network 8 Kalkowska’s connections with Goldmann was mentioned by Jan Zieliński, “Sprawa Jakubowskiego. Doniesienia drobne. Dramaty” [Jakubowski’s Case. Small Reports. Dramas], Rzeczpospolita, No. 6, 2006, p. 15. 9 Carola Muysers, “Rahel Szalit-Marcus,” in: Fortsetzung folgt! 150 Jahre Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen 1867 e.V. [To be continued! 150 years of the Association of Berlin Women-Artists 1867 e.V.], ed. Birgit Möckel (Berlin: Vice Versa Verlag, 2017), p. 145. 10 Miller, Cultures of modernism, p. 26. Berlin’s Left Bank 155 of women’s spacIo accomodate changing patterns of life and work.”11 These changes took place both in the physical and symbolic space: female journalists, artists, activists and reformers “portrayed women as influential actors on the urban scene, encouraging female audiences to view their relationship to the city.”12 A symptomatic example of these changes may be a guidebook Was die Frau von Berlin wissen muss [What the Woman of Berlin Needs to Know], which was published in 1913. It was a guidebook written by women for women. Unlike previous home and family handbooks, this one in a revolutionary way encouraged its women-readers to go beyond their private space – “to find their lives and identities in the streets and institutions of the modern city”13 – and to explore areas previously reserved exclusively for men. Berlin was shown from an “aristic, scientific, literary, political, theatrical, musical, and social standpoint”14 in twenty-five essays by women-experts, who delivered to the readers a “know-how” of the women’s metropolis. For example, Dr. Rhoda Erdmann, a pioneer in cellular biology, listed paths available to women who wanted to devote themselves to scientific research.15 Another event analyzed by Stratigakos was an exhibition that took place in 1912 in the exhibition building at the Zoological Garden: Die Frau in Haus und Beruf [The Woman in Home and Work]. During this exhibition “women designers had arranged the halls filled with display of women’s labor, an all-female orchestra serenaded the crowd with music by female composers, and female writers stocked a library with books authored and bound by women.”16 The New York Times noted that the exhibition – which was visited by four million people in just four weeks – presented “every sphere of activity, domestic, industrial, and professional, which women have so far invaded.”17 For the young, self-aware women who had dreamed about developing their own artistic career – one of which was Kalkowska, who at that time first paved her way in Berlin – the city might have looked as though it were the fulfillment of dreams. Probably women’s “success stories” – the scene for which was Berlin of that time – mattered as well. Miller in Cultures of Modernism draws attention to the role played by Lasker-Schüler in shaping the female literary scene of Berlin. Recalling the names of writers who 11 Despina Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin. Building the Modern City (MineapolisLondon: University of Minnesota Press: 2008), p. ix–x. 12 Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin, p. x. 13 Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin, p. 1. 14 Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin, p. 1. 15 Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin, p. 1. 16 Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin, p. 97. 17 Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin, p. 97. 156 Anna Dżabagina moved to the capital of the Weimar Republic at the end of the 1920s (e.g. Ilse Langer, Irmarg Keun, Vicky Baum or Gertrud Kolmar), Miller states that “while there is no evidence that Lasker-Schüler provided assistance to these women, her stature must have faciliated their entrance into the literary avant-garde.”18 However, if you look at the development of the literary career of Lasker-Schüler, it would not be an overstatement to say that the position of an expressionist could also affect the writers of the younger generation (such as Kalkowska). Since her debut (Styx, 1902), the career of Lasker-Schüler took on a staggering pace – until 1911. The writer published three volumes of poetry, an album with sketches, a collection of stories and poems, and a play. By the end of the first decade of the twentieth century, the poet became “one of the most widely noted writers of the time.”19 In this context, it is not a surprise that after the Great War Kalkowska – by then also as the author of the acknowledged feminist pacifist manifesto from 1916, Der Rauch des Opfers. Ein Frauenbuch zum Kriege [The Smoke of Sacrifice. Women’s Book about the War] decided to move to Berlin to pursue her literary career. The fact that in 1930 she was nominated for a Kleistpreis or that in 1933 in Die Dame20 Hans Kafka mentioned Kalkowska (next to Lasker-Schüller) among the most important women dramatist of the Weimar Republic may prove that it was a good decision.21 Charlottenburg/Wilmersdorf Kalkowska’s Berlin topography begins in the areas of Charlottenburg and Wilmersdorf. The writer herself lived at Sybelstrasse 24. A painter, Käthe Münzer-Neumann, lived nearby at Augsburger Straße 44. Born in 1878 in Breslau, she studied painting in Paris, and as part of her study trips she visited 18 Miller, Cultures of modernism, p. 34. 19 Miller, Cultures of modernism, p. 35. 20 It is worth noting, that published since 1912 by Ullstein Die Dame was an “ultramodern social magazine of women’s fashions,” which in the 1920s instead of models presented pictures of “prominent women … wives of renowned politicians, writers, and artists, as well as theater celebrities, singers, dancers, and movie stars” – Mila Geneva, Women in Weimar Fashion. Discourses and Displays in German Culture, 1918–1933 (Rochester-New York: Camden House, 2009), pp. 54, 62. 21 Hans Kafka, “Dramatikerinnen. Frauen erobern die Bühne” [Women-Playwrights. Women Conquer the Stage], Die Dame, No 8, 1933, pp. 16–17. Kafka also mentioned Anna Gmeyner, Marieluise Fleisser, Esther Grenen, Ilse Langer, Elisabeth Hauptmann, Friedel Joachim, Rosie Meller, Elizabeth von Castonier, and Christa Winsloe. Berlin’s Left Bank 157 Warsaw and St. Petersburg.22 Her sister, also an emigrant to Berlin, Elise Münzer, was a writer and journalist: in fact the first female-correspondent hired by Berliner Morgenpost.23 Rachel Szalit-Marcus also chose the neighborhood of Wilmersdorf and Charlottenburg and lived at Stübbenstrasse 3.24 The painter was born in 1894 in the Kovno district, and raised in Łódź. In the years 1911–1916 she studied in Munich, where together with Henryk Epstein and Marceli Słodki she co-created a small colony of Łódź artists.25 She moved to Berlin in 1919 and took an active part in the November Revolution, later becoming a member of the Novembergruppe and the Berliner Secession.26 With the Berlin Secession, which had its residence at Kurfürstendamm 232, also Kalkowska was connected,27 as well as her life partner of that time,28 sculptor Milly Steger (Ill. 2.). Before Steger settled in Berlin in 1918 (at Nollendorfstrasse 31/32), she had already earned a loud and scandalous artistic career. Two years Kalkowska’s senior, she studied at Karl Janssen’s atelier in Düsseldorf, while in Berlin her mentor and collaborator was Georg Kolbe. For a while she also studied at the atelier of August Rodin in Paris.29 Just before the outbreak of the Great War, she was recruited by Karl Osthaus to his artistic colony in Hagen – note: she was the only female artist in this milieu – where in 1911 she was commissioned to make sculptures for the façade of the newly constructed 22 Carola Muysers, “Käthe Münzer-Neumann,” in: Forstsetzung folgt!, p. 117. 23 Ruth Federspiel, Hannelore Emmerich, “Elise Münzer,” Stolpersteine in Berlin, https://www.stolpersteine-berlin.de/de/biografie/1063, (29 August 2018). 24 Adresses from Mitglieder-Verzeichnis 1930, stored in the archive collection VdBK 4196 in Akademe der Künste in Berlin. 25 Jerzy Malinowski, Barbara Brus-Malinowska, W kręgu Ecole de Paris. Malarze żydowscy z Polski [In the Circle of Ecole de Paris. Jewish Painters from Poland], (Warszawa: DiG, 2007), p. 118. 26 Muysers, “Rahel Szalit-Marcus,” p. 145. 27 In April 1917, the group organized the author’s evening, during which Kalkowska read her first drama – Lelya – and parts of Der Rauch des Opfers – see programme in “Teilnachlaß Eleonore Kalkowska” (sign. BF000131281) in Deutsches Literatur Archiv in Marbach. Subsequent references to the collection will be marked with a shortcut DLA. 28 Trapp, Die Zeitstücke von Eleonore Kalkowska, p. 22. 29 Ulrika Evers, Deutsche Künstlerinnen des 20. Jahrhundert. Malerei – Bildhauerei – Tapisserie [German Women-Artists of the 20th Century. Painters-SculptorsTapestry Weavers] (Hamburg: Ludwig Schultheis, 1983), p. 334. For more about Steger, see also, e.g., Die Grenzen des Frauseins aufheben. Die Bildhauerin Milly Steger 1881–1948 [To Lift the Boundaries of Womanhood. The Sculptor Milly Steger], eds. Birgit Schulte, Erich Ranfft (Hagen: Neuer Folkwang-Verl. im Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum, 1998). 158 Anna Dżabagina Ill. 2: Author Uknown. Milly Steger in atelier sculpting “Eleonore Kalkowska’s Buse,” ca. 1925, photo, Berlin. Source: Private collection of Tomasz Szarota. municipal theater,30 which became the germ of the scandal, in the center of which the sculptor’s name was soon located. As Carmen Stonge wrote: when the over-life-size [women] nudes were unveiled, the city fathers were outraged and the spectators scandalized. Public sculpture of the time was expected to tell a story or point to a moral, and Steger’s work did neither. Petitions were 30 Steger was “one of the first women to receive commissions for architectural sculptures” – Ute Seiderer, “Between Minor Sculpture and Promethean Creativity. Käthe Kollwitz and Berlin’s Women Sculptors in the Discourse on Intellectual Motherhood and the Myth of Masculinity,” in: Practicing Modernity: Female Creativity in the Weimar Republic, ed. Chrisiane Schönefeld, (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2006), p. 95. Berlin’s Left Bank 159 circulated demanding that the works be removed. Teachers forbade students to view the “obscene” sculpture.31 The publicity around the theater in Hagen and the struggle for the preservation of sculptures added impetus to Steger’s career and brought her fame.32 As Birgit Schulte noted, at the beginning of the 1920s, no review of sculpture could have omitted the Steger’s name, and some critics regarded her as the most important woman sculptor of the Weimar Republic.33 At the same time, while the Steger sculptures presented in Hagen provoked a scandal, other factors – such as gender-crossing identity and openly nonheteronormative life choices – was not scandalous at all—at least in Berlin. Shari Benstock stated, that Paris at the belle epoque gained “international fame as the capital of lesbian love.”34 As an example, she gives biographies of, e.g. Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Natalie Barney or Sarah Bernhardt, who led openly nonheteronormative life. However, this type of openness and tolerance of Paris had serious limitations: on the one hand, it did not concern women who were not protected by belonging to higher social classes,35 on the other hand, it did not allow for real visibility in a public space. Instead, lesbians and bisexuals “avoided … public spaces, preferred to create their own private spaces within the city, processing a nineteenth-century salon and adjusting it to their needs,”36 and created a kind of “underground Lesbos” in which they could try to live in accordance to their own sexuality and seek support in a community of sisters. Meanwhile, the nonheteronormative community of Berlin – both female and male – went a few steps further. From the end of the 19th century – e.g. due to the activities of Magnus Hirshfeld and the movement for the abolition of paragraph 175, which penalized male homosexuality – Germany was in the world avant-garde of the homosexual emancipation movement.37 31 Carmen Stonge, “Women and the Folkwang: Ida Gerhardi, Milly Steger, and Maria Slavona,” Woman’s Art Journal, Vol. 15, No. 1 (1994), p. 5. 32 In 1916, after seeing the caryatids and getting to know the sculptress Else LaskerSchüler wrote the poem dedicated to the artist Milly Steger: Birgit Schulte, “Die Grenzen des Frauseins aufheben – die Bildhauerin Milly Steger 1881–1948,” Frauevorträge an der Fern Universität, No. 29, https://www.fernuni-hagen.de/ imperia/md/content/gleichstellung/heft29schulte.pdf (2 August 2018); also see Miller, Cultures of Modernism, p. 83. 33 Schulte, “Die Grenzen des Fraueseins aufheben,” p. 16. 34 Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, p. 47. 35 Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, p. 44. 36 Benstock, Women of the Left Bank, p. 451. 37 See, e.g., Robert Beachy, Gay Berlin. Birthplace of a Modern Identity (New York: Vintage Books, 2015). 160 Anna Dżabagina Numerous associations, meeting spaces, as well as diverse media addressed to a nonheteronormative community operated in Weimar Berlin. At the same time, these circumstances took part in creating such community, and the process itself was enhanced by the development of mass culture. Queer women created their own visible subculture. Special magazines were published, such as widely circulated Die Freundin [The Girlfriend], which “made a direct address to women, articulating their desires and offering them ‘modern’ new conceptions – and choices – for gender roles, sexuality, relationships and, hence, possibilities for identification.”38 Incidentally Die Freundin – which was published since 1924 to 1933, first as a monthly, then as a weekly – was connected to Human Rights League,39 which means that it offered not only a medium of communication, but also showed ways of social activation. The number of meeting places for queer women was also surprisingly high – Ilse Kokula states that in Berlin itself there were approximately 50 clubs and bars for nonheteronormative women, diversivified also by the economic and social status of visitors.40 There was even a guidebook that described the most popular of them – Berlins lesbische Frauen [Berlin’s Lesbian Women] by the homosexual journalist and writer Ruth Roellig, who published it in 1928 with a forward by Magnus Hirschfeld.41 The role of such places – as well as their popularization – was of considerable importance: “In creating a sense of community through common experience, clubs informally politicized lesbians, linking the social scene to the homosexual right movement.”42 In this context, Berlin created a unique space of freedom, openness and emancipation – impossible on such a scale anywhere else at that time. Given this freedom, it is not surprising that when the biographer of Gabriel Münter – a prominent expressionist, co-founder of Der Blaue Reiter, who returned to Berlin in 1925 – describes the painter’s friendly gatherings with Kalkowska at the Romanisches Cafe, he characterizes the 38 Angeles Espinaco-Virseda, “ ‘I feel that I belong to you’: Subculture, Die Freundin and Lesbian Indentities in Weimar Germany,” Spaces of Identity, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2004, p. 84. 39 Espinaco-Virseda, “ ‘I feel that I belong to you’,” p. 87. 40 Ilse Kokula, “Freundinnen. Lesbische Frauen in der Weimarer Zeit” [Girlfriends. Lesbian Women in the Weimar Period], in: Neuen Frauen. Die zwanziger Jahre [New Women. The Twenties], eds. Kristine von Soden, Maruta Schimdt, ([West] Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1988), p. 160. 41 Ruth Margarete Roelig, Berlins lesbische Frauen (Leipzig: Gebauer, 1928). 42 Espinaco-Virseda, “ ‘I feel that I belong to you’,” p. 86. More on the subject, see, e.g., Jens Dobler, Von anderen Ufern. Geschichte der Berliner Lesben und Schwulen in Kreuzberg und Friedrichshain [From Other Shores. History of the Berlin Lesbians and Gays in Kreuzberg and Friedrichshain] (Berlin: Gmünder, 2003), p. 104–116. Berlin’s Left Bank 161 writer as “Die politisch engagierte, pazifistische, sozialkritische, freiheitlich denkende Dichterin, die zudem ihre Bisexualität lebte.”43 [The politically committed, pacifist, socially critical, liberal-minded poet who also lived her bisexuality] (Ill. 3). Seen from this perspective, Berlin appears to be a place where women built their own communities and their own spaces of freedom, without limiting themselves to the private sphere. A good example is the institutional common denominator that connects women of Kalkowska’s network: Käthe Münzer-Neumann, Rachel Szalit-Marcus, Milly Steger, and Alice Michaelis. It was the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen,44 a unique association that began its essential work introducing female artists into artistic circulation in the middle of the 19th century. “Der Kunstverein der Schwestern” [The Art Society of Sisters]45 This association was founded in 1867 by twenty-nine women-artists and sixty-two “Kunstfreundinen,” [Women friendsof Arts] supported by the politician Wilhelm Adolf Lette, the painter Oscar Begas and the inventor Werner von Siemenp. The Verein’s main role was to strive for the possibility of public appearance for its members – participation in exhibitions, contests, scholarships as well as the presence on the art market. The Verein also established a drawing and painting school for women. Although the tuition fee was higher than in the men’s academies, the courses were, however, at the highest level and provided students with a full and comprehensive artistic education. Interestingly, while there were also men among the lecturers, the school itself was always managed exclusively by female-artists.46 Statistics regarding the number of students show the need for such an organization. Teresa Laudert pointed out, that when in 1896 Paula Modersohn-Becker – one of the most famous students of the turn of the century – started her 43 Gudrun Schury, Ich Weltkind: Gabriele Münter. Die Biographie [I, the World’s Child. Gabriele Münter. The Biography] (Berlin: Aufbau Verlag, 2012), p. 198. 44 Initially Verein der Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreundinnen zu Berlin. 45 Quote from the letter of Clara Heinke to Ottilie von Goethe (1866) – see: Carola Muysers, Bärbel Kovalevski, “Der Kunstverein der Schwestern… das klingt sehr großartig, nicht wahr?” [The Sister’s Art Society… That sounds great, doesn’t it?], in: Fortsetzung folgt!, p. 41. 46 Teresa Laudert, “Auf eigenem Wegen. Schülerinnen und Lehrerinnen der Zeichen und Malschule des Vereins der Künstlerinen und Kunstfreundinnen zu Berlin” [On Their Own Way. Pupils and Teachers of the Drawing and Painting School of the Association of Women-Artists and Art Friends of Berlin], in: Forsetzung folgt!, p. 24. 162 Anna Dżabagina Ill. 3: Milly Steiger. Buste of Eleonore Kalkowska, ca. 1925, reproduction in: Die Kunst für alle: Malerei, Plastik, Graphik, Architektur, Vol. 41 (1925– 1926), p. 321. Source: http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/diglit/kfa1925_1926/0361 (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 DE). Berlin’s Left Bank 163 education at the Verein’s school there were almost four hundred students at the time.47 In 1911 when it could not fit into its previous atelier, the Verein had to move to new location at Schöneberger Ufer 38.48 This organized women’s “self-help”49 already in the second half of the nineteenth century gave femaleartists the opportunity to participate in Berlin’s artistic life. During the Weimar Republic, the Verein was already an established institution with over half a century of history, still attracting new adepts. On Berlin’s cultural scene, the Verein organized regular exhibitions, competitions as well as balls and social gatherings in cooperation with Lyzeum-Club. Besides the already mentioned Modersohn-Becker, with which the Verein was also associated, e.g. Käthe Kollwitz, Jeanne Mammen or August von Zitzewitz, illustrator from Die Aktion, whose atelier since the 1920s was a meeting place for artists, writers and intellectuals.50 For many years, Szalit-Marcus and Münzer-Neumann were also among the Verein’s members. In turn Milly Steger in the 1920s opened her own sculpture class in drawing and painting school (Zeichenund Malschule) and in 1927 she became a head of the association.51 Gabiel Münter also showed her works at the Verein’s exhibitions (Ill. 4). The role of the association cannot be overestimated. Not only because of the actual institutional support that it offered to women with artistic ambitions, but also because of its part in the creation of new role models and identities for women, which could be undertaken by other settlers of Berlin. In 1912, the association took part in the already mentioned ground-breaking exhibition Die Frau in Haus und Beruf A woman at home and occupation].52 However, this representational role became most evident in the late 1920s. In November and December 1929, the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen was showing the exhibition Die Frau von heute53 [The Woman of Today]. This event was in a way the answer to the exhibition Das schönste deutsche 47 Laudert, “Auf eigenem Wegen,” p. 21. 48 Paula Anke, “Ein Glücksfall oder wie die Kunst zurück ins Atelier fand” [A Stroke of Luck or How Art Found Its Way Back to the Studio], in: Forsetzung folgt!, p. 15. 49 Laudert, “Auf eigenem Wegen,” p. 23. 50 Laudert, “Auf eigenem Wegen,” p. 37. 51 Carola Muysers, “Milly Steger,” in: Forsetzung folgt!, p. 141. 52 “Chronik des Vereins der Berliner Künstlerinnen 1867–1992” [Chronicle of The Association of Berlin Women-Artists 1867–1992], in: Profession ohne Tradition. 125 Jahre Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen [Profession Without the Tradition. 125 Years of the Association of Berlin Women-Artists], eds. Dietmar Fuhrmann, Carola Muysers (Berlin: Kupfergraben, 1992), p. 439. 53 Mitteilungen des Vereins der Künstlerinnen zu Berlin, No. 11 (1929), p. 17. About the exhibition: Eva Züchner, “Frauenfreunde und Kunstfreundinnen. Zwei Porträt-Ausstellungen am Ende der zwanziger Jahre” [Women Friends and Art 164 Anna Dżabagina Ill. 4: Gabriele Münter. Eleonore Kalkowska liest [Eleonore Kalkowska is reading], reproduction in: Gabriele Münter, Menschenbilder in Zeichnungen: 20 Lichtdrucktafeln, Hrsg. G.F. Ha rtlaub , Berlin 1952. Source: http://digi.ub.uniheidelberg.de/diglit/hartlaub1952/0031 (licence: CC BY-SA 3.0 DE). Frauen-Porträt [The Most Beautiful German Women Portrait], which took place a year earlier. While the exhibition of the most beautiful portraits of German women was created by a male jury and presented works almost Lovers. Two Portrait Exhibitions at the End of the Twenties], in: Profession ohne Tradition, p. 259–269. Berlin’s Left Bank 165 exclusively painted by men, the Verein’s exhibition presented without exception women’s works selected, in addition, by an all-female jury.54 This time it was not women’s beauty that became the center of attention, but their professional and social activity. The main goal of the exhibition was to show the ‘New Woman’ from the perspective of the new women themselves. Sixty-five artists exhibited ninety portraits and sculptures that presented “prominente Frauen aus der Gesellschaft der Politik, der Wissenschaft, der Mode und des Sports”55 [prominent women from the society of politics, science, fashion and sport]. Among them were artists, writers, actresses and dancers – e.g. Colette, Pamela Wedekind, Carola Neher and also Eleonore Kalkowska, who was depicted by Käthe Münzer-Neumann on a painting called “Die bedeutende Frau”56 [The Remarkable Woman]. Beside the artists, the exhibition also presented a woman lawyer, a pair of doctors, two politicians, secretaries, a flower saleswoman, Rachel Szalit-Marcus exhibited the painting Imigrantin als Bardame57 [Imigrant as a Barmaid]. Katharina von Kardorff – wife of the vice-president of the Weimar Republic, herself one of the most famous personalities of the political world at the time – took patronage over the exhibition and drew attention of the press and the audience. The exhibition was widely noted and was the undoubted success of the Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen. However, the world, which was represented and symbolized by the exhibition, was soon to be destroyed. Broken Paths, Diverging Roads At the beginning of the 1930s, the possibilities described above began to close, and the paths of the heroines of this artistic constellation began to break away. Despina Stratigakos brings up the second edition of Was die Frau von Berlin wissen muss, which was published in 1932, to show the dramatic changes that took place between the prewar period and the end of the Weimar Republic. As far as “in 1913 women faced formidable legal and social hurdles in their quest for meaningful lives, the barriers in 1932 seemed, in some instances, even greater, as women, along with men, struggled simply to exist”.58 The collapse of the world economy, which was extremely painfully felt in the Weimar Republic, the drastic rise of unemployment and nationalistic tendencies and NSDAP rise to power destroyed 54 Züchner, “Frauenfreunde und Kunstfreundinnen,” p. 259. 55 Züchner, “Frauenfreunde und Kunstfreundinnen,” p. 265. 56 Photograph of the painting available in: Züchner, “Frauenfreunde und Kunstfreundinnen,” p. 264. 57 Züchner, “Frauenfreunde und Kunstfreundinnen,” p. 267. 58 Stratigakos, A Women’s Berlin, p. 169. 166 Anna Dżabagina the world of Weimar Berlin. March 1933, when, folling elections, Hitler took over the Reichstag, was a turning point in the life of forementioned women-artists. Kalkowska, who at the end of the 1920s became known as a socially involved, critical playwright, was hailed as an anti-German author. When at the turn of 1932 and 1933, the Schillertheater staged her Zeitungsnotizen [Newspaper Notes], a play about suicides caused by rising unemployment, after several performances it had to be cancelled, because of Nazi hit squads that began to manifest outside the theater. The writer was arrested twice and in March – as a Polish citizen – she was deported from Germany and spent her last years in exile (first in Paris, and later in London).59 The fate of Rachel Szalit-Marcus, who was Jewish, was even more tragic. She fled to Paris in 1933 and found herself deeply disappointed with her situation: “Sitting here makes no sense. Now I hate Paris. So many material and emotional concerns – I did not have anywhere. I am alone in my atelier…. I wish I could escape from this city – I do not like it here,”60 she wrote to Kalkowska in 1934. She stayed in Paris during World War II and in 1942 she was captured and then murdered in Auschwitz.61 After Hitler’s rise to power, Käthe Münzer-Neumann – as a Jewess – also fled to Paris. She managed to survive the war and after 1945 she continued her artistic career in France, while her sister Elise Münzer, who stayed in Berlin, was arrested in August 1942 and then murdered in September in Treblinka.62 After 1933, the “Aryan” origin and willingness to collaborate became conditions of staying in Berlin and preserving even a vestigial form of the previous life, which became the case of Milly Steger. While with each passing month in exile, Kalkowska was increasingly disappointed and terrified by the policy of the Third Reich, Steger remained in Berlin. Despite the fact that her Weimar period works were labeled as “degenerate art,” she did not stop working.63 When in 1934 Kalkowska wrote a vastly ironical and critical text titled Hitler! Sei gegrusst [Greetings, Hitler!],64 Steger turned to 59 She died in Bern in 1937. 60 “Tutaj siedzieć nie ma sensu. Nienawidzę teraz Paryża. Tyle trosk materialnych i serdecznych – nigdzie nie miałam. Jestem sama w moim atelier … Chciałabym uciec z tego miasta – nie podoba mi się tutaj” – Rachela Szalit-Marcus to Eleonore Kalkowska, ca. 1934, letter stored in a private archive of Prof. Tomasz Szarota. 61 Muysers, “Rahel Szalit-Marcus,” p. 145. 62 The painter’s bio incorrectly states that her sister escaped to Paris with her (Muysers, “Käthe Münzer-Neumann,” p. 117). See: Ruth Federspiel, Hannelore Emmerich, “Elise Münzer,” Stolpersteine in Berlin: 29 August 2018: https://www. stolpersteine-berlin.de/de/biografie/1063. 63 Stonge, “Women and the Folkwang,” p. 7. 64 Unpublished manuscript is stored in DLA. Berlin’s Left Bank 167 Staatskommissar Hans Hinkel, asking for the chance to meet the Führer, whose bust Lyzeum-Club ordered from her.65 But also Steger, whose studio had been destroyed during the bombing of Berlin in 1945, at the end of her life remained with almost nothing.66 In 1933 the world of New Women’s Berlin in its unique shape was destroyed. It would be an overstatement to say that the outlined constellation exhausted the topic or that it was representative of an experience of all female artists in Weimar Republic. Although the aforementioned women were by no means an exception, just as their life or identity choices were not the exception. Beginning their ways on the margins – whether as immigrants or as Jewess, or women in general, or nonheteronormative women – in the first decades of the twentieth century, they have all decided to claim Berlin as their own. They have created their own areas of freedom and artistic expression, cooperation and friendship networks, institutions and spaces to exhibit their own identities and representations. They have looked for their affiliation with local communities of women. And Berlin gave to those “citizen of the world” (such as Gabriel Münter, who described herself as a “Weltkind” [World’s child], or Kalkowska – “ein fleischgewordenes Stückchen Pan-Europa”67 [a piece of PanEuropa’s body]) a sense of affiliation, and to its women settlers a space to create. A space – such as “the left bank” of Paris – worth noticing and remembering. Bibliography Beachy, Robert. Gay Berlin. Birthplace of a modern identity. New York: Vintage Books, 2015. Benstock, Shari. Women of the left bank. 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