Arts Review, 1 March 1985

Arts Review
1 March 1985 Volume XXXVII No 4
Guy Burn writes about Hermann Fechenbach at the Blond Fine Art Gallery

Blond Fine Art has at last found a suitably spacious new gallery in Princes Street, the lease at Sackville Street having ended. His first print show is a one man exhibition, a discovery of long hidden talent. Herman Fechenbach is now eighty eight years old, and has had a long frustrating career as a wood engraver and linocutter. The abundant work forms in a way a diary of his sadly disrupted life, where success and fulfillment have evaded his grasp by force of circumstances. His early work in his home town of Bad Mergentheim shows great promise; fairy stories and Jewish life are portrayed. But the loss of a leg in the 1914-18 war was a cruel setback, with years of convalescence. His illustrations for the Hagadah and the plague won him recognition in Germany, only to be snatched away by the advent of the Nazis. Caricatures of Himmler, Goebbels etc., are redolent of hatred. The Children's Train is an emotional record of the long line of trucks on its way to Belsen, crammed with French children who spill out on to the tracks.

He was forced to flee to Israel, and some constructive work was done, notably Call to Lunch showing a Kibbutz girl beating a large iron ring. But Israel did not suit him and he emigrated to England in 1939. Hardly settled here, he was summarily interned in 1940, eventually arriving in the Isle of Man. His delicate wood engravings were no longer feasible and from then on lino was the only medium obtainable. Arrested, Police Station, and Interned are disturbing records of unhappiness in hostile surroundings. The Isle of Man series involving intricate interweaving patterns of barbed wire with the sun shining hopefully through, record a happier time. He starts to use colour blocks: there are blue birds flying in a blue sky, Release found him looking for subjects rather than being dominated by them. His lyrical nudes and peaceful subjects like children in the playground, are brave attempts to grasp normality.


Police Station By Hermann Fechenbach

Felix Fechenbach Jailed 11th March 1933

On 11 March 1933 Felix Fechenbach, Hermann's cousin, was jailed by the new Nazi government for his anti-fascist activities, and was shot on 7 August by members of the SS and SA in a forest between Detmold and Warburg while being transported to the Dachau concentration camp.

Letter form Getta Kellermann born Fröhlich, Israel, on 16 March 1965

Dear Mr. Fechenbach,,

First, I must introduce myself. I am the youngest of the twelve Fröhlich children from Bad Mergentheim. You will not be able to remember me as I was born when we have to "thank the German fatherland for the certainty of war,"-

During a visit with my brother Jacob the request came as a war party to the First World War on your work, a to write book about the last Mergentheimer Jews, and your request, if possible, to contribute material to this topic After reading about Italy until 1940 (the last legal time before declaring war between Italy and England). Many student with certificate emigrated from Mergentheim, there are few things I still remember from that time on.

We sold all our belongings in 1939 and after living in Germany could no longer live as Jew (the Nuremberg Laws), my dear mother and I, we are looking for accommodation we found a room at Miss Westheimer (Ochsengasse or Wettgrass next to City Hall). I admire today, as then, my almost 70 year old mother in a barely heated room (no one dared for us to repair the old stove, and it was a bitterly cold winter) and to get used to the primitive sanitary facilities. (She had probably used later on far worse.) Our "march" on the Holzapfelgrasse we taken with Jacob Fisch, who had tried shortly before to commit suicide by taking a large dose of sleeping pills but was rescued by hospital treatment. Cynical, mocking laughter accompanied our kids wagon march with all the things-most. Miss Miltenberg woman who had sold the Fechenbach Inn to a greengrocer, had shortly before accounted that she had just found Miss Sara Rothschild shot on Holzapfelgrasse.

We held our last small simple service of worship of Jom Kippur and Rosch Haschonoh – in a very depressed mood after the evil which had either destroyed or closed the synagogues in Germany.

When the food cards where tossed around I was never been accosted and even got an extra ration of eggs instead of meat ration even for my suffering mother. A farmer's daughter Rüdenauer (former neighbors) at night had secretly brought my mother some necessary food, even then a dangerous proposition.

When I emigrated in 1940 (with only hand luggage), I had brought my mother to Nüremberg with the best hope that soon my good mother would get, as her parents had applied for, a certificate to English for my mother and my siblings. The possibility of inhumane deportations would then, in 1940, no one would have believed. Maybe you can from Mrs. Carlé (drugstore at the Town Hall), which until recently had a friendly relationship with his wife Annette Rothschild, learn about the last Mergentheim Jews. Perhaps the butcher Adam Lochner (Hozapfelgrasse) may have seen a large part the last events of the Jewish community in Mergentheimer.

Perhaps some of this above material is suitable for your work.
Sincerely yours

Getta Kellermann
born Fröhlich

March 1933 Hitler Comes to Power

Hermann Fechenbach wrote.
"On 5th March 1933, as the result of demoralization of the majority of the population, Hitler came to power in Germany. I had to ask myself where was the remnant of the influence of our greatest Germans - Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven?

Within myself I heard the melody always sounding:

Joy, beautiful divine spark,
Daughter of Elysium,
Dazzled with fire we greet
Your holiness
Your magic ties together,
Once again what fashion has unbound.
All men will be brothers,
Where your gentle wings remain.
You embrace millions.
This kiss for the world entire.
Brothers! Over the starry tent
The great Father must dwell.

I had to work on a woodcut of Beethoven's head the whole night through, so that I would not forget that there was still a true German spark alive somewhere.



Image from Penelope Smith, thank you.