24 January 2025
Beyond Traditional Monuments: Commemorating the Lost Jewish Community of Kaunas
For centuries Lithuania was an important spiritual and cultural centre of Jewish life. The biggest Jewish communities were in Vilnius (‘Jerusalem of the North’) and Kaunas, the second biggest city in Lithuania. Before the Nazi invasion in June 1941, around 240,000 Jews lived in Lithuania; only several thousand – around 5% – survived the Holocaust.
In the interwar period Kaunas, a temporary capital of Lithuania, had a flourishing, vibrant and dynamic Jewish community. At one point a third of the inhabitants of Kaunas – 33,000 people – were Jewish. The city had around 40 synagogues and prayer houses, including the Slobodka yeshiva, one of the largest and best known yeshivas in Europe.
Gerardas Bagdonavičius, The Old Synagogue in the Old Town, 1930. Reproduced in Aliza Cohen-Mushlin, Synagogues in Lithuania: a catalogue (Vilnius, 2010). YD.2011.b.2062
The Jewish educational network consisted of numerous Yiddish and Hebrew schools. There was a flourishing artistic and music scene. The city had a Yiddish and a Hebrew theatre, several daily Jewish newspapers, sports clubs and youth organisations. Jewish political organisations were thriving. Social welfare organisations and charitable societies took care of those less fortunate; the Kaunas Jewish Hospital cared for both Jewish and non-Jewish patients. In 1920 the Central Jewish bank was established in Kaunas, leading a network of 85 Jewish banks.
Posters advertising cultural events in Lithuanian and Yiddish, image from Hidden history of the Kovno Ghetto, general editor Dennis B. Klein (Boston, 1997). LB.31.c.9499
Football match in the Kaunas Maccabi Stadium between the Kovas Club of Šančiai and the Maccabi Sports Club, April 25, 1926, image from Žydųgyvenimas Kaune iki holokausto (Vilnius, 2021). YF.2023.a.2399
Central Jewish Bank. Image from Wikimedia Commons
During the Nazi occupation the Kaunas Jewish community was almost completely destroyed. How to commemorate those who perished in such tragic circumstances?
The 11th Kaunas Biennial, which took place in 2017, explored the theme of monuments. What is a monument? Is our understanding of monuments changing? Is there a need for different kinds of commemoration? During the biennial the participating artists created, among others, a number of site-specific performances and installations referencing Kaunas’ Jewish past.
The artist Jenny Kagan, whose parents survived the Kaunas Ghetto, in her installation Murmuration, using a video projection and LED lighting, evoked the memory of the lost Jewish community. A brightly lit up building of a former Hasidic synagogue (the lights followed the rhythm of street lighting) on closer inspection turned out to be empty and derelict. The emptiness of the building is reminiscent of an empty sky from which starlings, known for their murmurations, quickly disappear, their numbers drastically declining.
Murmuration, from Yra ir nėra = There and not there: (im)possibility of a monument (Kaunas, 2018) [awaiting shelfmark]
Paulina Pukytė curated several performances and installations for the 11th Kaunas Biennial. One of them was At Noon in Democrats’ Square. Every day at noon, from 15 October to 30 November 2017, in the Vilijampolė district of Kaunas, a singer stood facing the empty space which once was Demokratų Square. The singer sang two songs in Yiddish: Yankele and My Yiddishe Mame. The performance lasted 7 minutes.
At Noon in Democrats’ Square, from Yra ir nėra
Vilijampolė, also known as Slobodka, on the right bank of the Neris River, was the site of the Kaunas Ghetto where thousands of Jews perished during the Holocaust. On 29 October, 1941, the day of the so called ‘Great Action’, around 27,000 Jews were forced to assemble on Demokratų Square. Men, women and children stood there for hours while a selection took place. Those deemed strong enough to work were temporarily saved; the rest, 9,200 of them, were executed the next day in Fort IX, part of the city‘s fortifications turned into a temporary prison.
At Noon at Democrats Square was a commemoration of those who perished as a result of the ‘Great Action’.
Paulina Pukytė, the chief curator of the 11th Kaunas Biennial, is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, curator and critic, and lecturer at the Vilnius Academy of Arts. She will talk about the (im)possibility of monuments at the Holocaust Memorial Day event, held at the British Library on 27th of January.
Ela Kucharska-Beard, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections
References and further reading:
Paulina Pukytė, Kas yra = Something is (Vilnius, 2021) [awaiting shelfmark]
Arūnas Bubnys, Kaunas ghetto 1941-1944 (Vilnius, 2014). YD.2016.a.992
Martin Winstone, The Holocaust Sites of Europe : an Historical Guide (London, 2015). YC.2016.a.6368
Nick Sayers, The Jews of Lithuania: a Journey Through the Long Twentieth Century (London, 2024)
22 January 2025
Silenced memories: the Holocaust Narrative in the Soviet Union
Monument to children murdered in Babi Yar, Ukraine (image from Wikipedia)
‘Field of Burial’ where the ashes of murdered and cremated prisoners were scattered, Maly Trostenets, Belarus (image from Wikipedia)
In 1961, a young Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko visited the Babi Yar ravine in Kyiv. He was taken there by a fellow writer Anatolii Kuznetsov. A native of Kyiv, Kuznetsov experienced Nazi occupation as a child and knew about the tragedy in Babi Yar firsthand. Both authors were shocked to see that there was no sign in memory of 33,771 Jews who had been murdered by the Nazis just in two days in September 1941. Possibly over 100,000 more people, among them prisoners of war, Soviet partisans, Ukrainian nationalists and Roma people, were killed there in the following months. However, the Soviet authorities were reluctant to collect and disclose records of those crimes. On the same day, Yevtushenko wrote a poem:
No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A drop sheer as a crude gravestone.
I am afraid.
Today I am as old in years
as all the Jewish people.
Cover of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, The collected poems 1952-1990 (Edinburgh, 1991) YC.1991.b.6558
The poem was published in the influential Moscow newspaper Literaturnaia gazeta (‘The Literary Newspaper’) but was severely criticised by the authorities and Communist Party officials for presenting Jews as the main victims of the fascist Germany.
Immediately after the end of the Second World War, Stalin designed his own antisemitic campaigns such as the prosecution of members of the Jewish Anti-fascist Committee and the Night of the Murdered Poets, the campaign against ‘rootless cosmopolitans’and the so-called ‘doctors’ plot’. Although the campaigns stopped with the death of Stalin, antisemitism in the Soviet Union was strong, and the official party line was not to accept the Holocaust as a concept. Instead, all victims of genocide and atrocities were put together under the ideologically loaded term ‘peaceful Soviet civilians’.
However, in the time of the Khrushchev Thaw artists were hopeful that their voices would be heard in the new political climate. In 1962, Dmitri Shostakovich wrote his Symphony No 13 for bass soloist, bass chorus, and large orchestra with lyrics by Yevtushenko. Although the symphony does not have an official title, it is known as ‘Babi Yar’. Anatolii Kuznetsov tried to publish his autobiographical book also under the title of Babi Yar. The book was seriously cut by censors but was eventually published in 1967. After defecting to the West, Kuznetsov managed to publish the book in full in 1970.
Anatolii Kuznetsov, Babii Iar: roman-dokument (Frankfurt am Main, 1970) X.900/6037
However, neither Yevtushenko, nor Kuznetsov were the first to write about Babi Yar. Probably the first poem (lost and rediscovered only in 1991) about the murder in Babi Yar was written by a Jewish-Ukrainian poet Liudmila Titova in 1941:
The order was supported by the threat of execution,
They obeyed but were shot.
Not a single candle was lit that night,
Those who could, left and hid in the basement.
The stars and the Sun hid in the clouds
From our world that is too cruel.
Liudmila Titova (image from Wikipedia)
In 1943, another Ukrainian poet and at that time a Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers (Commissars) of the Ukrainian SSR, Mykola Bazhan,wrote his response:
The grave wind blew from those ravines —
The smoke of mortal fires, the smoking of burning bodies.
Kyiv watched, angry Kyiv,
As Babi Yar was thrown into flames.
There can be no atonement for this flame.
There is no measure of revenge for this burning.
Cursed be the one who dares to forget.
Cursed be the one who tells us: “forgive me...”
Only in 1991 was a Ukrainian Jewish poet, Yurii Kaplan, able to compile a small anthology – Ekho Bab’ego IAra (‘The Echo of Babi Yar’) where he managed to include other pieces of contemporary poetry.
Page from Literatura ta Zhittia, N 2, zhovten’, 2007.
Cover of Ekho Bab'ego Iara : poeticheskaia antologiia (Kyiv, 1991) YA.1996.a.9243
In 1946, Ilya Ehrenburg, a prominent Soviet writer, published a poem under the title of ‘Babi Yar’ about the genocide of his people:
My child! My blush!
My countless relatives!
I hear how you call me
from every hole.
Together with another Jewish Soviet writer Leonid Grossman, Ehrenburg compiled and tried to publish a volume of eyewitness accounts documenting the atrocities during the Holocaust on the Soviet territories occupied by the Nazis.
During the war, frontline soldiers sent Ilya Ehrenburg a huge number of documents found in the territories liberated from the occupiers and told in their letters what they had seen or heard. Ehrenburg decided to collect the diaries, suicide letters, and testimonies related to the Nazis’ extermination of Jews and to publish the ‘Black Book’. A couple of extracts from the book were published in a magazine in 1944. However, after the end of the war, the publication was delayed several times. In November 1948, when the Soviet Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was closed, the set of the ‘Black Book’ was scattered, the galleys (printer’s proof) and the manuscript were taken away. Ehrenburg’s daughter later gave the manuscript and other documents to the Yad Vashem archives and the book was published in Russian in 1980. However, that was not the full text. The first full Russian edition appeared only in 1991.
The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry : [prepared by] Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman, translated and edited by David Patterson ; with a foreword by Irving Louis Horowitz and an introduction by Helen Segall. (London, 2002) YC.2002.b.953
The book documents atrocities that were committed on all occupied Soviets territories, such sites as Fort IX in Kovno (Kaunas), the Rumbula and Bikernieki Forests in Riga and Maly Trostenets near Minsk and Zmiyovskaya Balka near Rostov-on-Don.
Analysing the policy of ‘forgetting the specificity of Jewish suffering’, Izabella Tabarovsky of the Kennan Institute, points out that “by 2006, Yad Vashem, the world’s leading Holocaust Museum and research institution, found it had barely 10-15% of the names of the 1.5 million Jews who had died in Ukraine (in contrast to 90% of European Jews whose names were known)”.
At the Holocaust Memorial Day Fragments of the Past: Holocaust Legacies and Commemoration, Professor Jeremy Hicks will give a talk on ‘ Representations of the Holocaust in Soviet Cinema’, which will examine further the creation of silences and gaps in memories of Holocaust.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator, East European Collections
References/Further reading:
Maxim D. Shrayer (2010). ‘Poets Bearing Witness to the Shoah’ in Studies in Slavic Languages and Literature (ICCEES Congress Stockholm 2010 Papers and Contributions), edited by Stefano Garzonio. PECOB: Portal on Central Eastern and Balkan Europe. University of Bologna. Pp. 59-119.
Ekho Bab’ego IAra: poeticheskaia antologiia, [sostavlenie i vstupitelʹnaia statʹiia IU.G. Kaplana]. (Kyiv, 1991). YA.1996.a.9243
A. Anatoli (Kuznetsov), Babi Yar: a Document in the Form of a Novel, translated by David Floyd. (London, 1970) W67/8178
Izabella Tabarovsky. Don’t Learn from Russians about the Holocaust. Published: February 2, 2017
20 January 2025
Through the Eyes of Terezín’s Ghetto Children
The Holocaust stands as one of the most tragic chapters in human history. Yet, through the voices of children who lived through its horrors, we are offered a glimpse into the quiet courage that endured even in the darkest of times.
The diaries of youth, written in ghettos and concentration camps, are personal testaments to the strength of the human spirit. The young writers found ways to express their creativity, and hope, leaving behind a legacy that preserves their voices.
The stories entrusted to paper carried immense emotional weight for the survivors or their families. Many of these diaries remained unpublished for decades, with some only reaching readers in the 21st century. The British Library holds examples of these works, including memoirs and writings of young people from the Terezín ghetto in German-occupied Czechoslovakia.
In the Living Quarters - a drawing by Bedrich Fritta of the Terezin (Theresienstadt) ghetto, source: Wikipedia, public domain
Terezín, the ‘Model’ Ghetto
Terezín, called by the Germans Theresienstadt, a Nazi ‘camp-ghetto’ in operation from 1941 to 1945, was portrayed by the occupier’s propaganda as a ‘spa town’ for elderly Jews. In reality, it served as a transit hub for deportations to extermination camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka.
It was a chilling symbol of Nazi deception, serving as a stage for efforts to obscure the true nature of their genocidal actions, including a 1944 Red Cross visit carefully orchestrated to portray the ghetto as humane.
The truth, however, lay in its devastating death toll and its role as a waypoint on the road to extermination.
Despite these dire circumstances, Terezín became a centre of remarkable cultural activity. In the face of oppression, artists, musicians and writers produced works of art, music and literature, while children found ways to express hope and imagination through secret schooling, painting and poetry.
The boy who loved Jules Verne
Petr Ginz, born in Prague in 1928, was a talented young writer, artist and editor. By the time he was a teenager, he had written multiple short stories and novels inspired by his favourite author, Jules Verne. His adventure novel Návštěva z Pravěku (‘A Visit from Prehistory’) where engineer Gérard Guiness and his son Petr confront the mysterious creature Ka-du, reflects his belief in courage and ingenuity. Illustrated by Ginz himself, it is the only surviving novel out of several that he wrote.
Illustration from Petr Ginz, Návštěva z Pravěku: roman, (Prague, 2007) YF.2008.a.22831
In Terezín, Ginz became the editor of Vedem, a clandestine magazine created by boys in the ghetto. Writing under the pen name ‘Akademie’, he contributed essays, stories and illustrations. The Diary of Petr Ginz 1928-1944, written between 1941 and 1942, provides an account of life under Nazi oppression. It was later published by his sister Chava Pressburger ensuring his voice would not be forgotten.
Cover of The Diary of Petr Ginz 1928-1944
Ginz was a prolific illustrator. His linocut, Moon Landscape, created around 1942, depicts an imagined view of Earth from the Moon, reflecting his fascination with exploration and the cosmos. In a tribute, Israeli astronaut Ilan Ramon carried a copy of this drawing aboard the Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, symbolically fulfilling Ginz’s dream of reaching the stars. Tragically, both Ginz and Ramon lost their lives prematurely – Ginz perished in Auschwitz at 16, and Ramon died when Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry – but their stories highlight the importance of preserving history and art.
Petr Ginz, Moon Landscape, source: Wikipedia, public domain
The writings and art of Terezín’s children
In 1995, the Jewish Museum in Prague published the anthology Je mojí vlastí hradba ghett? (‘Is the Wall of Ghettos My Homeland?) which features writings and artwork created by children in Terezín. The collection includes texts from Vedem and other works, offering insight into the emotional and psychological worlds of young people living in extreme conditions.
Cover of Je mojí vlastí hradba ghett? Básně, próza a kresby terezínských dětí, edited by Marie Rút Křížková, Kurt Jiří Kotouč and Zdeněk Ornest (Prague, 1995) YA.2000.b.2154
The testimony of Hana Bořkovcová
Hana Bořkovcová, a renowned Czech author, also left behind a powerful diary, Píšu a sešit mi leží na kolenou: deníky 1940 - 1946 (‘I Write, and the Notebook Lies on My Lap: Diaries 1940–1946’ (Prague, 2011) YF.2012.a.13806.
Published posthumously in 2011, her writings chronicle her family’s experiences, from their life in Prague’s Jewish community to their deportation to Terezín when she was 16 years old, Auschwitz, and a labour camp in Kurzbach. Her diary concludes with her post-war life, including the birth of her son.
Bořkovcová’s account is striking for its sensitivity and strength. Her observations about life in the Jewish school and among young Zionists offer a rich cultural and social context, making her diary a valuable resource for readers and historians alike.
Documenting the unimaginable
In 2012, Michal Kraus published his diary, originally written in Czech, which was later translated into English and published in 2016 under the title Drawing the Holocaust. His entries are marked by stark realism and are accompanied by detailed drawings. Kraus’s meticulous documentation provides an unflinching account of the brutality of the Holocaust and its impact on those who survived. The diary also reflects Kraus’s struggle to return to a ‘normal’ life after the war.
Michal Kraus, Drawing the Holocaust: A Teenager’s Memory of Terezin, Birkenau, and Mauthausen (Cincinnati, 2016) YKL.2016.a.8040
A story saved in the walls
Helga Weissová’s diary is another remarkable testament. Starting at age nine, she documented her life during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Like Petr Ginz, Helga was sent to Terezín before being deported to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Her diary is accompanied by her drawings, which vividly depict her experiences. Before her deportation, Weissová entrusted her diary to her uncle, who hid it within the walls of Terezín. After the war, she recovered and expanded it to include her harrowing memories from the camps. Published decades later, her work offers a powerful narrative.
Cover of Helga’s Diary: a Young Girl’s Account of Life in a Concentration Camp (London, 2013) YC.2013.a.16374
The importance of remembrance
As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on January 27, 2025, it is imperative to reflect on the significance of these personal narratives. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest Nazi concentration and extermination camp, where over a million people perished. Just like Petr Ginz, many of those who lost their lives in Auschwitz were first imprisoned in Terezín before being transported to their deaths. The diaries of these individuals are not merely archival records; they are powerful reminders of the human capacity for resilience and creativity in the face of adversity. Their writings challenge us to remember the past and to educate future generations about the dangers of hatred and intolerance. By reading and sharing these stories, we preserve their voices and the lessons they left behind for a better, more compassionate world.
Olga Topol, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections
06 January 2025
Fragments of the Past: Holocaust Legacies and Commemoration. Holocaust Memorial Day 2025
Join us on Monday 27 January 2025 for the event ‘Fragments of the Past: Holocaust Legacies and Commemoration’ and explore how the Holocaust has shaped memory, identity, and culture. Bringing together scholars, historians, and artists, this conference examines the Holocaust’s profound and enduring impact, as well as the varied methods used to preserve its legacy.
From antisemitism in post-First World War Hungary, the Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust, and the commemoration of hidden killing sites in postwar Poland, to Soviet depictions of the Shoah in film and contemporary counter-monument approaches, the programme offers insights into Holocaust memory and its ongoing significance.
‘Fragments of the Past: Holocaust Legacies and Commemoration’ event poster
The conference is organised by the European Collections section of the British Library in partnership with the Polish Cultural Institute. The event is open to all, and attendance is free, but registration is required. Booking details can be found here.
Programme:
Date: 27 January 2025
Location: Eliot Room, Knowledge Centre
Time: 2 pm – 5 pm
- Antisemitic versus Jewish Humour in Budapest Post-WWI
Prof. Dr Béla Bodó, Department of East-European History, University of Bonn - The Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust
Dr Halik Kochanski, Writer and Historian, Fellow of the Royal Historical Society - ‘The grave […] has been planted over with potatoes’: Transnational Jewish Fight to Commemorate Holocaust Killing Sites in Poland in the First Postwar Decades
Dr Janek Gryta, Lecturer in Holocaust History, University of Southampton - Representations of the Holocaust in Soviet Cinema
Prof. Jeremy Hicks, Professor of Russian Culture and Film, Queen Mary University of London - There and Not There: (Im)Possibility of a Monument
Paulina Pukyte, Interdisciplinary Artist, Writer, Curator, and Critic, Vilnius Academy of Arts - Poetics of the Archive in Marianne Rubinstein’s ‘C’est maintenant du passé’ and Ivan Jablonka’s ‘Histoire des grands-parents que je n'ai pas eus’
Dr Diane Otosaka, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Holocaust Literature, University of Leeds
02 January 2025
New Year, Old Years: a Look Back
Usually around the start of a new year we look back over our previous year’s blogging before turning our faces to the future. This time we’re actually looking back over 2023 as well as 2024 because BL blogging activity was suspended for a while following the cyber-attack on the Library in October 2023, so we couldn’t do a review of that year at the time. And to break up the prose, we include some wintery scenes from the BL’ s Flickr stream.
Reindeer from Sophus Tromholt, Under Nordlysets Straaler. Skildringer fra Lappernes Land (Copenhagen, 1885) 10280.eee.13.
Both years saw our usual excitement over the annual European Writers’ Festival held in May. In 2023 we featured an interview with Greek Cypriot writer Anthony Anaxagorou, winner of the 2024 RSL Ondaatje Prize, while in 2024 we published a series of posts, beginning with this one, profiling some of the authors featured in the festival. As usual, literature featured in many other posts. We celebrated the award of the 2023 Nobel Prize in Literature to Norway’s Jon Fosse and mourned the death in 2024 of Albanian author Ismail Kadare. We were proud to learn that our Curator of Italian, Valentina Mirabella, was one of the judges of the 2024 Premio Strega, a major Italian literary prize, and she wrote about her experience for us.
A theme that ran through both years was the work of the Endangered Archives Project to preserve cultural heritage from Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Our coverage included posts on the indigenous peoples of Siberia, minority communities in Bulgaria, an important Serbian family archive, and material relating to the Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko, who was also the subject of a small display in our Treasures Gallery.
Polar scene from Die zweite Deutsche Nordpolarfahrt in den Jahren 1869 und 1870, unter Führung des Kapitän Karl Koldewey, edited by Alexander Georg Mosle und Georg Albrecht (Leipzig, 1873-4) 10460.ff.11.
Events in the library are a regular source of inspiration for our blog posts. In 2023 we highlighted events commemorating two colleagues who died in recent years: a symposium on Italian Futurism was dedicated to the memory of Chris Michaelides, former curator of Italian and Modern Greek, who did much to build our collection of Futurist books. The Graham Nattrass Lecture, in memory of the former Head of Germanic Collections is an annual event, and in 2023 marked the 80th anniversary of the arrest and execution of members of the German resistance group ‘Die Weisse Rose’. A conference on European political refugees in Britain generated posts on the same topic, including one on how the then British Museum Library became ‘a lifeline of books’ for Polish refugees from Soviet and Nazi occupation. On a lighter note, we celebrated the BL’s annual Food Season in May 2024 with a post introducing a selection of cookbooks from around the continent.
In summer 2024 we went a bit sports mad with both the European Football Championships and the Summer Olympics taking place. We highlighted the world-beating football tactics of the Hungarian ‘Golden Team’ in the early 1950s and the ‘Miracle of Bern’ that saw them unexpectedly beaten by West Germany in 1954’s World Cup, as well as exploring why the Dutch fans show symptoms of ‘orange fever’ at international matches. Our Olympic posts included explorations of the political side of the supposedly apolitical games in Czechoslovakia and the two German states during the Cold War, and a look at the Baltic States’ love for (and proud record in) basketball.
The northern lights, from Emmanuel Liais, L’Espace céleste et la nature tropicale, description physique de l’univers (Paris, 1866) 10003.d.10.
But not all our blog posts are driven by events and unifying themes. As ever, we continued to write about items from our vast and varied collections, from Georgian manuscripts to contemporary Queer writing in Poland, via a Russian Braille edition of The Hobbit, French caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War, and pamphlets from the Cypriot independence campaign. We also explored stories of the Slovenian Enlightenment and the first Professor of Spanish in Britain, and discovered the hidden but crucial role played by women in underground publishing under the Polish Communist regime.
As we head into 2025 we would like to wish all our readers and contributors a very happy new year. We look forward to bringing you another year of stories and discoveries from the Library’s European Collections.
Susan Reed and Hanna Dettlaff-Kuznicka, European Studies Blog Editors
Ice-skating, from A.J. van der Aa, Ons Vaderland en zijne Bewoners (Amsterdam,1855-57) 10270.f.5
18 November 2024
The wolf children of East Prussia
When Alvydas Šlepikas’ book Mano vardas – Marytė (‘My name is Marytė’) was published in Lithuania in 2011, it caused a nationwide discussion. Beautifully written and based on historical facts, it was the most read novel in Lithuania in 2012. Since then this multi-award winning book has had numerous editions in Lithuania and has been translated into many languages. Its excellent English translation by Romas Kinka was published under the title In the Shadows of Wolves.
Cover of Mano vardas – Marytė (Vilnius, 2018) YF.2019.a.12103
Cover of In the Shadows of Wolves (London, 2019) Nov.2022/1050
Mano vardas – Marytė tells a story of a group of ‘wolf children’ from East Prussia (vilko vaikai in Lithuanian, Wolfskinder in German) who found their way to Lithuania. Who were the wolf children and why, for decades, was their existence surrounded by silence?
During the Second World War, in August 1944, the Royal Air Force heavily bombed Königsberg, the capital of the enclave of East Prussia, then part of the territory of the German Reich. The mediaeval city, home of the philosopher Immanuel Kant, was almost completely destroyed. A month later the Red Army reached this part of Germany. The battles continued until April 1945. With adult men fighting on the front, the civilian population consisted of women, children and elderly men. Once in East Prussia, the Soviet soldiers took revenge on the civilians for the atrocities committed by the Nazis during the war. Towns and villages were plundered and turned into wasteland; brutal killings and mass rapes were widespread. Famine soon followed, so severe that cases of cannibalism were recorded.
Map of East Prussia in 1939. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Postcard of Königsberg before the Second World War from Königsberg in alten Ansichtskarten (Würzburg, 2001) YA.2003.a.25095
Königsberg in August 1944. Image from Wikimedia Commons
Thousands of children became orphaned. They witnessed unimaginable horrors: killings, rapes, death of their siblings – one by one – from starvation, hypothermia and typhoid. Sometimes mothers approached farmers from neighbouring Lithuania, who were allowed to come to East Prussia and sell their produce, and offered their older children as farm workers in exchange for food; it gave those children – and their starving siblings – a chance of survival. Some children were sent out in search of food by their families, or volunteered themselves, crossing the border with Lithuania by stowing away on trains or crossing the frozen Nemunas river. Traumatised, they hid in the forests and moved, on their own or with younger siblings in tow, from village to village, begging, stealing, foraging for food and looking for shelter.
Some Lithuanian farmers took pity on these vokietukai (little Germans), and took them in as farm workers. Those children who still had families in East Prussia took hard-earned food across the border to share with their starving mothers and siblings. The lucky ones were adopted by Lithuanian families and treated as their own. The not so fortunate ones were exploited as cheap labour. The children were split from their siblings and had to move from place to place, from family to family, uprooted again and again. Whatever their situation, the wolf children were still grateful they had something to eat and a place to stay. The price they had to pay for survival, however, was their identity. The title of Šlepikas’ book is a Lithuanian phrase the main protagonist, a girl called Renate, is taught by her mother: my name is Marytė. She repeats it again and again when she gets to Lithuania. Being German is dangerous so German Renate becomes Lithuanian Marytė.
Two brothers from East Prussia, begging for food in Vilnius in May 1947. ‘Wolf children on Lithuanian farms’, from Imagining Lithuania: 100 years, 100 visions: 1918-2018 (Vilnius, 2018) [awaiting shelfmark]
German children adopted by Lithuanians were often given new Lithuanian names and new identities. Sometimes helpful priests falsified parish records. The adoptive parents and their families risked severe punishment by the Soviet authorities and lived in constant fear of the truth coming out. As a result most of the wolf children received very little schooling; many were illiterate and ended up living in poverty. It was only after the fall of communism that their identities could be safely revealed. Some of the wolf children only found out that they were German when they were elderly. With no original documents or with documents containing wrong or incomplete information, they faced an uphill struggle to find their German roots. Some managed to find relatives in Germany; for some it was too late. Having forgotten their native language, some re-learnt German to be able to communicate with their families. There were stories of happy reunions but sometimes wolf children were met with suspicion from their German relatives, or outright rejection. They were often uneducated, didn‘t know the language; they were seen as a possible burden.
For decades after the war, the wolf children of East Prussia didn’t get much attention in Germany, either. The country had to reckon with its Nazi past and the accompanying guilt; there was reluctance about presenting Germans – even innocent children – as victims of war. In addition, the wolf children who managed to get to Germany were unwilling to talk about their experiences, too traumatic to revisit.
In any military conflict children can become collateral damage and erased from history. Mano vardas – Marytė gives voice to those who, for decades, have been forgotten. The book is not just a story of loss and unimaginable suffering but also of love, resilience, and hope against all odds.
Ela Kucharska-Beard, Curator Slavonic and East European Collections
References and further reading:
Norbertas Černiauskas, ‘Wolf children on Lithuanian farms’, in Imagining Lithuania: 100 years, 100 visions: 1918-2018 (Vilnius, 2018) [awaiting shelfmark]
Sonya Winterberg with Kerstin Lieff, The wolf children of Eastern Front: alone and forgotten (Barnsley, 2022)
Population displacement in Lithuania in the twentieth century, edited by Tomas Balkelis and Violeta Davoliūtė (Leiden, 2016). YD.2016.a.1761
Displaced children in Russia and Eastern Europe, 1915-1953, edited by Nick Baron (Leiden, 2016). YD.2017.a.1602
Sigita Kraniauskienė, Silva Pocytė, Ruth Leiserowitz, Irena Šutinienė, Klaipėdos kraštas 1945-1960 m.: naujos visuomenės kūrimasis ir jo atspindžiai šeimų istorijose (Klaipėda, 2019). YF.2021.a.9595
Christopher Spatz, Ostpreußische Wolfskinder: Erfahrungsräume und Identitäten in der deutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft (Osnabrück, 2016). YF.2016.a.15325
Ruth Maria Wagner, Königsberg in alten Ansichtskarten (Würzburg, 2001). YA.2003.a.25095
14 November 2024
Marx versus Kinkel – a tale of two newspapers
On 15 November we are hosting a conference on European Political exiles and émigrés in Britain. This is one of a series of blog posts on the same topic. Conference details can be found here. Attendance is free, but registration is required.
If you were asked to name the most famous German political refugee in 19th-century Britain, you’d probably choose Karl Marx or Friedrich Engels. But at the time, Marx and Engels were comparatively little known outside a relatively small faction of communists. In wider émigré circles and among the British public, a far more familiar name was that of Gottfried Kinkel, an academic, writer and revolutionary who had arrived in London in November 1850 after making a dramatic escape from Spandau prison.
Gottfried Kinkel in the early 1860s (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
Marx would no doubt be delighted to know that his fame today far eclipses Kinkel’s because he thoroughly despised Kinkel, considering him to be a self-aggrandising third-rate writer and thinker. And since Marx was never one to nurse his dislikes quietly, his letters and other writings, especially the posthumously-published Die großen Männer des Exils (Heroes of the Exile) are full of vitriol against Kinkel and his allies.
While Marx’s dismissal of Kinkel’s work was doubtless based on genuine conviction, it’s not hard to see an element of envy there too. In the decade following his arrival in London, Kinkel began to make quite a name for himself as a teacher and lecturer, and was respected by other revolutionary exiles, especially those of the middle class, in a way that Marx could only dream of. At the end of the 1850s, Marx’s loathing would be further exacerbated when both men became involved with newspapers.
First Issue of Kinkel’s newspaper Hermann, 8 January 1859. NEWS14565
In 1859 Kinkel founded a newspaper for Germans in London, naming it Hermann, after the ancient Germanic leader who defeated the Roman army. Hermann did not appear in a vacuum. Various German papers had been published in London since 1812 in an attempt to serve a growing German community and the arrival of political exiles after 1848 had led to a number of new Anglo-German newspapers with a more radical slant, most of them short lived as was the case with many such ventures. A few issues of Marx’s own Neue Rheinische Zeitung (‘New Rhenish Journal’) had been edited from London in 1850, but Marx had been involved with later London titles as a contributor rather than an editor. Now, with Kinkel promoting his own newspaper (which Marx and Engels cynically referred to as ‘Gottfried’), Marx felt more strongly the need for a similar platform of his own.
First issue of Das Volk, 7 May 1859. NEWS14239
A solution appeared in the form of Das Volk (‘The People’). This was founded in May 1859 by the Communist Workers’ Educational Association to replace a previous title, Die neue Zeit (‘The New Age’) which had recently folded. Again, Marx was initially only a contributor, but he very much approved of the paper (and of its strong opposition to Kinkel) and gradually sought to increase his influence on it. Although never officially its editor, he was effectively carrying out the role by mid-July, with Engels helping the venture financially. As Das Volk became increasingly a mouthpiece for Marx’s ideas it began to lose readers, and it closed in August. Marx, with typical self-confidence, blamed the paper’s demise on its readers’ failure to appreciate the quality of his work. He was also convinced that Kinkel was deliberately working to sabotage potential rivals to Hermann.
Whether by fair means or foul, Hermann certainly thrived. Kinkel’s name was seen as a guarantee of quality to many fellow exiles as well as to other Germans immigrants and even to some British readers. Although the paper promoted broadly liberal politics, it also reported on arts and culture and, crucially, on the activities of German clubs, organisations and institutions in Britain. Das Volk had initially also covered the latter, but this declined under Marx’s control, alienating readers who wanted a more general newspaper for their community. Kinkel and Herrmann also made much of the celebrations in November 1859 of Friedrich Schiller’s centenary, an event that transcended political allegiances and helped unite Germans in Britain in a show of cultural pride.
Illustrated page from Hermann issue 44, 12 November 1859, with portraits of Schiller’s parents and wife as part of an article about the 1859 London Schiller Festival
Hermann would survive, under different editors and with changes in its political direction, into the 20th century, the longest run of any Anglo-German newspaper. Only the ban on German publishing in Britain on the outbreak of war in 1914 put an end to its appearance.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Collections
References/further reading:
Christine Lattek, Revolutionary Refugees: German Socialism in Britain, 1840-1860 (London, 2006) YC.2007.a.3912
Susan Reed, ‘A modest sentinel for German interests in England: The Anglo-German Press in the Long Nineteenth Century’ in Stéphanie Prévost and Bénédicte Deschamps (eds.), Immigration and Exile Foreign-Language Press in the UK and the US: Connected Histories of the 19th and 20th Centuries (London, 2024) [Not yet catalogued]
01 October 2024
How Bitter the Savour is of Other’s Bread? International Conference on European Political Refugees in the UK from 1800
Join us on Friday 15 November 2024 for the ‘European Political Refugees in the UK from 1800’ conference taking place in Pigott Theatre, Knowledge Centre at the British Library. This one-day in-person event will explore the rich history of political refugees from Europe who sought asylum in the UK from the 19th century onwards. International academics, scholars, and curators will investigate how European diaspora communities have woven themselves into the fabric of British society, fostering intercultural exchange and contributing to the shaping of modern Britain.
‘European Political Refugees in the UK from 1800’ conference poster
The conference is organised by the European Collections section of the British Library in partnership with the European Union National Institutes of Culture (EUNIC) London. It will be accompanied by the exhibition ‘Music, Migration, and Mobility: The Story of Émigré Musicians from Nazi Europe in Britain’ and by events run by the conference partners.
The event is open to all and attendance is free, but registration is required. Booking details can be found here.
Programme
10:00 Welcome
10:05 Session 1: Artists
Moderator: Olga Topol, British Library
‘Leaving Home’ – Franciszka Themerson and Her Artistic Community in the UK, Jasia Reichardt, Art Critic and Curator
Austrian Musicians and Writers in Exile in the 1930s and 1940s, Oliver Rathkolb, University of Vienna and Vienna Institute of Contemporary and Cultural History and Art (VICCA)
On the Rock of Exiles: Victor Hugo in the Channel Islands, Bradley Stephens, University of Bristol
Music, Migration & Mobility, The Story of Émigré Musicians from Nazi Europe in Britain, Norbert Meyn, Royal College of Music, London
12:00 The stone that spoke screening
Introduction by Gail Borrow, ExploreTheArch arts facilitated by EUNIC London
12:15 Lunch
13:00 Session 2: Governments in Exile
Moderator: Valentina Mirabella, British Library
London Exile of the Yugoslav Government during the Second World War and its Internal Problems, Milan Sovilj, Institute of History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Prague
The Spanish Republican Exile in Great Britain: General Characteristics and the case of Roberto Gerhard, Mari Paz Balibrea, Birkbeck, University of London
Fascism and anti-fascism in London's 'Little Italy' and Giacomo Matteotti's secret visit to London in 1924, Alfio Bernabei, Historian and Author
14:30 Break
14:45 Session 3: Building Communities
Moderator: Katya Rogatchevskaia, British Library
Tefcros Anthias: poet, writer, activist, and public intellectual in Cyprus and the Cypriot Community in London, Floya Anthias, University of Roehampton, London
The Journeys in Stories: Jewish emigration from Lithuania via United Kingdom, Dovilė Čypaitė-Gilė, Vilna Gaon, Museum of Jewish History, Vilnius University
Political migration from Hungary, 1918-1956, Thomas Lorman, UCL's School of Slavonic and East European Studies, London
16:15 Break
16:30 – 17:00 Session 4: Writing Diaspora
Moderator: Anthony Chapman-Joy, Royal Holloway, University of London, British Library
Newspapers published by 19th-century German political exiles in England, Susan Reed, British Library
Clandestine WWII pamphlets, Marja Kingma, British Library
We look forward to welcoming you to the conference in November. In the meantime, we invite you to discover a new display of works by Franciszka Themerson ‘Walking Backwards’, currently on show at Tate Britain, and to explore the history of Lithuanian Jewish immigration to the UK at the annual Litvak Days in London.
17 September 2024
Werther at 250 - an 18th-Century Bestseller
On Thursday 26 September the novelist, biographer and columnist A.N. Wilson will be discussing his new book The Life of Goethe with Emeritus Professor Paul Hamilton at an event in the British Library’s Pigott Theatre. Full event and booking details can be found here. Meanwhile, to get you in a Goethe mood, we take a look at the book that first brought him international fame.
September 1774 saw the appearance of the 25-year-old Johann Wolfgang Goethe’s first novel, Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (The Sorrows of Young Werther). Goethe had already become famous in Germany with his play Götz von Berlichingen, published the previous year, but the novel was to make his name throughout Europe.
Title-page of the first edition of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Leipzig, 1774) C.58.bb.12
The novel is mainly narrated in letters from the eponymous Werther to his friend Wilhelm. It tells the story of Werther’s doomed love for Lotte, a woman who seems to reciprocate his feelings but is betrothed to another man, Albert, as was her mother’s dying wish. When he realises that he can neither suppress his love for Lotte nor prevent her marriage, Werther leaves town to take up a post at court, but returns after a few unhappy months. Lotte and Albert are now married but Werther continues to visit Lotte, becoming ever more tormented by his feelings for her. After an emotional encounter where Werther embraces and kisses Lotte, she sends him away. Having already decided that only his, Lotte’s or Albert’s death can resolve the situation between them, Werther decides to kill himself. An afterword by the supposed editor of the letters tells of Werther’s suicide and its aftermath.
Werther at his writing-desk, engraving by J. Buckland Wright from a Halcyon Press edition of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (Maastricht, 1931) C.115.s.26.
The novel was a huge success. It combined the time-honoured genre of the tragic love story with the contemporary cult of ‘sensibility’, featuring a protagonist who is guided entirely by his emotions. There were also titillating hints that the story was based on true events: Goethe had indeed drawn on his own brief infatuation with Charlotte Buff, who was engaged to his friend Johann Christian Kestner, and on the suicide of a colleague, Karl Wilhelm Jerusalem, who was hopelessly in love with a married woman. A pamphlet published in 1775 identified the ‘real’ locations and characters, albeit only by initials in the case of the characters. Nonetheless, the book’s fame brought some unwanted attention to these ‘originals’. Jerusalem’s grave even became a place of pilgrimage for Werther fans.
Pages from H. von Breidenbach, Berichtigung der Geschichte des jungen Werthers (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1775; 12547.a.20.) identifiyng the setting of the novel as a village near Wetzlar and the surname of Lotte’s father as beginning with B rather than S. (Image from a copy in the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg)
A French translation of Werther appeared in 1775 and translations into other European languages, including English (initially via the French version) in 1779, soon followed. As well as German, French and English, the British Library holds editions in Afrikaans, Danish, Esperanto, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.
Title-pages of early French, English and Italian translations of Die Leiden des jungen Werther
The novel also spawned a wave of imitations, critiques, parodies, continuations and dramatizations, and was represented in other media. Illustrations of scenes from the story decorated crockery and playing cards, and a handbill from 1785 in the British Library’s collections (1850.c.10.(151.)) announces that “At Mrs. Salmon’s Royal Historical Wax-work ... Is to be seen the ... Group of the Death of Werter, attended by Charlotte and her Family.” Fashionable young men adopted Werther’s outfit of a blue tailcoat with a yellow waistcoat and breeches, although stories of a wave of copycat suicides while so dressed are almost certainly exaggerated. Werther’s name could even be used to sell unrelated works: a German translation of Isaac D’Israeli’s Mejnoun and Leila, a retelling of an Arabic story, was entitled Der arabische Werther (‘The Arabian Werther’).
Title-page of Confidential Letters of Albert; from his first attachment to Charlotte to her death (London, 1790) RB.23.a.18744. The work has been variously attributed to John Armstrong and Mary Eden
A popular form of ‘Wertheriad’ presented letters from other characters, such as William James’s The Letters of Charlotte during her Connexion with Werter (early English editions generally dropped the h of Werther) or The Confidential Letters of Albert. August Cornelius Stockmann’s Die Leiden der jungen Wertherinn (‘The Sorrows of the young female Werther’), although its title suggests a version with the gender roles reversed, similarly retells the story from Lotte’s perspective although not in epistolary form. However, the French novelist Pierre Perrin’s Werthérie (translated into English as The Female Werter) was the story of a woman tragically obsessed with a married man.
Title-page and frontispiece of Pierre Perrin, Werthérie (Paris, 1791) 1074.h.32. (Image from a copy in the Bayerische Staatsibliothek)
Another common theme in both poetry and art was Lotte mourning at Werther’s grave. The original story leaves her own fate uncertain, saying that her grief and shock at Werther’s death made her family fear for her life, and some continuations do indeed have her dying also, but the idea of her rallying at least enough to visit the grave was clearly irresistible.
Title page of Carl Ernst von Reizenstein, Lotte bey Werthers Grab (‘Wahlheim’, 1775) 11521.aa.14. (Image from a copy in the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg)
Illustrators were also fond of depicting the famous scene where Werther first sees Lotte as she butters and cuts slices of bread for her younger siblings. This was also popular with the parodists, and bookends William Thackeray’s famous satirical verses about the story.
Werther meets Lotte as she cuts slices of buttered bread for her younger siblings. Engraving by Daniel Chodowiecki. (Image from Wikimedia Commons)
Despite (or perhaps because of) its popularity, many commentators criticised the work, and in particular Werther’s extreme emotions and his suicide. A popular riposte to Goethe’s work was Friedrich Nicolai’s Freuden des jungen Werthers (‘Joys of Young Werther’). Here Albert renounces Lotte, who marries Werther. Things do not at first go smoothly, and the remarkably tolerant Albert has to act as marriage counsellor, but Werther gradually becomes practical and responsible. The story ends with him and his family happily cultivating their garden in good Voltairean fashion.
Title page of Friedrich Nicolai, Freuden des jungen Werthers: Leiden und Freuden Werthers des Mannes (Berlin, 1775) 12547.aaa.8. (Image from a copy in the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
The economist Johann August Schlettwein wrote two pamphlets criticising Goethe’s work, one of which is couched as a letter from Werther, now suffering the torments of damnation, appealing to others not to follow his example. Ernst August Anton von Göchhausen, in his Das Werther-Fieber (‘The Werther Fever’) shows a family divided over the story – daughter Sibylle is dangerously obsessed, but the rest of the family consider Werther a fool (which I must admit was my own assessment reading the novel as an undergraduate!).
Title-page of Ernst August Anton von Göchhausen, Das Werther-Fieber, eine unvollendetes Familienstück (Nieder-Teutschland [i.e Leipzig], 1776) 12547.b.5. (Image from a copy in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek)
Goethe would later distance himself from Werther as he left behind the wild enthusiasm of his youthful ‘Sturm und Drang’ works and embraced a more measured classicism. A revised version published in 1787 gave the editor more of a voice and made Albert more sympathetic, somewhat counterbalancing Werther’s emotionalism. But even after it had passed the peak of its popularity, Werther continued to be much read, and it inspired literary responses into the 20th century. Thomas Mann’s Lotte in Weimar (1939) is a fictional retelling of the real-life encounter between Charlotte Kestner (née Buff) and Goethe 42 years after the publication of Werther, while Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (The New Sorrows of Young W.) maps Goethe’s novel onto the story of a disaffected young man in 1960s East Germany. And in the 21st century the story has been reinvented as a graphic novel in a contemporary setting, Werther Reloaded.
Cover of Franziska Walther, Werther reloaded: nach dem Roman ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werther’ von Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Mannheim, 2016) YF.2016.b.2045
250 years after its first appearance, Werther may no longer have the powerful appeal that it had at the time, but the novel still stands as a literary classic and a offers glimpse into a particular mindset that briefly held sway over romantically inclined readers in the late 18th century.
References/Further reading
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Les souffrances du jeune Werther, translated by Karl Siegmund von Seckendorff (Erlangen, 1886) 244.e.10.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, The Sorrows of Werter: a German Story, translated by Richard Graves (London, 1779) 12555.a.34.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Werther, opera di sentimento, translated by Gaetano Grassi (Poschiavo, 1782) 012553.e.35.
Isaac Disraeli, Der Arabische Werther, oder Mejnun und Leila, eine romantische Erzählung für Liebende (Leipzig, 1804) 12618.a.45.
William James, The letters of Charlotte, during her connexion with Werter (Dublin, 1786) 1489.g.7.
August Cornelius Stockmann, Die Leiden der jungen Wertherinn (Eisenach, 1775) 12547.b.6.
“Diesem viehischen Trieb ergeben”: J. A. Schlettweins Kritik an Goethes Werther: Briefe an eine Freundinn über die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1775), Des jungen Werthers Zuruf aus der Ewigkeit an die noch lebende Menschen auf der Erde (1775), herausgegeben von Volker Hoenerbach. (Hamburg 2009) YF.2012.a.7890
Johann August Schlettwein, Werther in die Hölle (Frankfurt am Main, 1775) 8630.b.2.(5.) (A reissue of his Briefe an eine Freundinn über die Leiden des jungen Werthers with new introductory material)
Thomas Mann, Lotte in Weimar (Stockholm, 1939) YA.1989.a.3081
Ulrich Plenzdorf, Die neuen Leiden des jungen W. (Frankfurt am Main, 1973) X.908/27279.
Robyn L. Schiffman, ‘A Concert of Werthers’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol. 43, no. 2 (2010), pp. 207-222 P.901/754
Karol Sauerland, ‘Wertherfieber’, European History Online Website
A selection of other early responses, adaptations and imitations from the BL collections:
Heinrich Leopold Wagner, Prometheus Deukalion und seine Recensenten (Hamburg, 1775) 11746.c.35. (A satire on reviewers of Die Leiden des jungen Werthers)
Heinrich Gottfried von Bretschneider, Eine entsetzliche Mordgeschichte von dem jungen Werther ([s.l.], 1776) 12547.aaa.9. (A free adaptation of the original)
Man denkt verschieden bey Werthers Leiden. Ein Schauspiel in drey Aufzügen (s.l., 1779) 11745.c.1.
Edward Taylor, Werter to Charlotte: a Poem (Lonndon, 1784) 11632.d.49.(1.)
Jean-Marie-Jérôme Fleuriot, Le Nouveau Werther, imité de l’Allemand (Neuchâtel, 1786) 12547.c.8.
Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins, The Victim of Fancy (London, 2009) YC.2010.a.15559 (Originally published 1786; French translation, La Victime de l’imagination, ou l’enthousiaste de Werther (Paris, 1795?) Ch.790/127.)
Eglantine Wallace, A Letter to a Friend, with a poem called the Ghost of Werter (London, 1787) 11632.h.16.
George Wright, The unfortunate lovers, abridged from the Sorrows of Werter ... (London, 1788) RB.23.a.8495
Sarah Farrell, Charlotte, or, A sequel to the sorrows of Werther ... and other poems (Bath, 1792) 11642.h.17.
Amelia Pickering, The Sorrows of Werter: a Poem (London, 1788) 1346.m.11.
Joseph Antoine de Gourbillon, Stellino, ou le Nouveau Werther (Paris, 1791)
Werter and Charlotte. A German story containing many wonderful and pathetic incidents (London, 1800?) 12611.ee.32.(4.) (A loose adaptation of the original)
Carl Phillip Bonafont, Der neue Werther, oder Gefühl und Liebe (Nuremberg, 1804) 12547.cc.11.
James Bell, Letters from Wetzlar, written in 1817, developing the authentic particulars on which the “Sorrows of Werter” are founded (London, 1821) 11851.c.7.
Georges Duval, Le Retour de Werther, ou les derniers épanchemens de la sensibilité, comédie en un acte, mêlée de vaudevilles (Paris, 1821) 11738.e.16.(10.)
An anonymous and undated poem beginning ‘Cold in this tomb the dust of Werter lies’ C.116.g.22.(2.)
19 August 2024
Religious Metaphors in French Caricature from 1870-71 (Part 1)
The British Library’s collection of Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune caricatures (shelfmarks 14001.g.41, Cup.648.b.2, Cup.648.b.8) exemplifies how artists from a variety of diverse national, political and cultural backgrounds engaged with l’année terrible.
Broadly speaking, 1870-71 prints can be split into two formats. Single-sheet images produced by small teams of editors and artists were sold on the street, pasted onto buildings and displayed in shop windows. On the other hand, pre-existing publishing houses – including those which produced weekly satirical journals, like Le Charivari (1832-1937), designed sets with print collectors in mind. This latter form was adorned with title pages, and arguably maintained a higher artistic sophistication. Artists did not limit themselves to just one category: for instance, Faustin Betbeder (1848-1914), who claimed that his first single-sheet image sold more than 50,000 copies, also created multiple sets during 1870-71, several of which can be found in the BL’s collections.
Both formats touched on the same topics. For example, references to Christianity shaped both single sheets and co-ordinated sets. Their use most frequently relied on the ironic comparison of biblical figures or parables with their contemporary parallels. The BL’s fifth volume (14001.g.41) holds a set of three images which each parody three scenes from the Bible immortalised in famous works of art. The first, drawn by F. Mathis, is a spoof of Leonardo’s Last Supper mural.
F. Mathis, La Nouvelle Cène (The New Last Supper), (Paris, 1871) Volume 5 14001.g.41.
It is an almost stroke-for-stroke reproduction, but for the substitution of Jesus and John with figures wearing a Phrygian-cap and an allegory of Paris, respectively. Further, Jesus’s apostles are replaced by figures of the twelve members of the ephemeral and unpopular Government of National Defence, which led France following the fall of the Second Empire in September 1870 until a new government was formed by Adolphe Thiers (the bespectacled figure on the far left of Mathis’s print, ominously peeping through the door) in February 1871.
The gesticulating guests at Leonardo’s Last Supper respond to Jesus’s proclamation that one of his disciples will soon betray him. Conversely, La Nouvelle Cène (‘The New Last Supper’) insinuates that all of the members of this flimsy government will betray France – if they had not already. Paris suffered under a winter of Prussian siege, before the government capitulated in late January. To make matters worse, their humiliation was ratified by the signing of a peace treaty which included the secession of the provinces of Alsace and Lorraine, a significant war indemnity, and a Prussian military march through Paris – augmenting an already biblical sense of betrayal. This theme was central to the set’s second print, in which Jules Favre plays the familiar role of Judas Iscariot, again drawn by Mathis.
The final print from the set, this time drawn by Charles Vernier (1813-92), is a little more complex. Though still a send-up of a famous Italian painting of a biblical scene – Paolo Veronese’s The Wedding Feast at Cana , hung in the Louvre – Vernier mixes the story of Jesus’s first miracle, the turning of water into wine, with the narrative of a popular French song Le Baptême du p’tit ébéniste (‘The Baptism of the li’l ebonist’).
Paolo Veronese, Nozze di Cana (The Wedding Feast at Cana), (Venice, 1563), (Picture from Wikimedia Commons)
The scene is transformed from a wedding to a baptism, that of the latest French Republic (the Third, which lasted until 1940), with a couplet from the song in the image’s caption noting how France is like ‘a bouquet of flowers’ – in other words, that is made up of many colourful – and contradictory – parts.
Jesus is replaced by Thiers holding the baby Republic aloft, while monarchs of Europe, including Süleyman the Magnificent and Mary I of England from Verones’s painting are exchanged for representatives of various contemporary French political currents. These include the deposed Emperor Napoleon III, several of the aforementioned National Government of Defence, and even a pétroleuse – that mythical figure in anti-Communard discourse who had apparently delighted in setting Paris alight in the final days of May 1871.
Noces de Cana, (Paris, 1871) Volume 5 14001.g.41.
Single sheet images designed for public consumption and debate were not below making biting allusions to religious iconography to mock political figures during 1870-1. The most popular trope, inevitably, was drawing any of the members of the National Government of Defence as Judas.
Other prints were more erudite. An obvious example from the BL’s second volume at 14001.g.41 is A. Baudet-Bauderval’s Une fuite en Egypte en passant par la Prusse (‘A flight to Egypt via Prussia’), the seventh print of Grognet’s 87-strong Actualités (‘Current Events’). The set was printed unevenly from the outbreak of the war to the final days of the Commune – sometimes publishing as many as ten images in a single day – and comprised several artists, meaning the sets had little ideological or topical coherency.
A. Baudet-Bauderval, Une Fuite en Egypte en passant par la Prusse (A Flight to Egypt via Prussia), (Paris, 1870) Volume 2 14001.g.41.
Following his surrender at the Battle of Sedan in early September 1870, Napoleon III was taken prisoner at Wilhelmshöhe Castle in Kassel. Shortly after news of his capitulation reached Paris, the Empress Eugénie and their son Louis fled the city. In Baudet-Bauderval’s sketch, the imperial family replicate the flight of Christianity’s holy family to Egypt – another popular artistic motif, perhaps most famously rendered by Giotto at the Cappella degli Scrovegni in Padua.
Despite its hasty construction – and its design to invite public consumption over private collection – Une fuite en Egypte includes a subtle yet ingenious attack. The Emperor and his son wear two large yellow hats which resemble sombreros, the wide-brimmed hat typically associated with Mexico. This addition not only lampoons the halos which crown the imperial family in Giotto’s Flight to Egypt, but also imbricates a mockery of the Emperor’s disastrous campaign to install a French-friendly monarchy in Mexico, a failure itself famously memorialised by Édouard Manet’s Execution of Maximilian.
In the aftermath of the War and the Commune, partisans of the Church claimed that the disasters of 1870-71 were the inevitable result of the anti-clericalism which coursed through some strands of French radicalism and the materialistic opulence of the Second Empire. Yet religious metaphors, iconography and scenes, particularly those preserved in art, could just as easily be employed by satirical artists to mock the powerful throughout 1870-71.
Anthony Chapman-Joy, CDP Student at the British Library and Royal Holloway
Further reading:
Hollis Clayson, Paris in Despair: Art and Everyday Life Under Siege (London, 2002), YC.2002.a.15995
Morna Daniels, ‘Caricatures from the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and the Paris Commune’, Electronic British Library Journal, (2005), pp. 1-19
John Milner, Art, War and Revolution in France, 1870-1871 (London, 2000), LB.31.b.19108
Bertrand Tillier, La Commune de Paris: Révolution sans images? (Paris, 2004), YF.2004.a.14526
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- Religious Metaphors in French Caricature from 1870-71 (Part 1)
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