Creative Life in a Concentration Camp: Linney Wix on Friedl Dicker-Brandeis ****************************************************************************************** * Creative Life in a Concentration Camp: Art Therapist & Professor Linney Wix on Friedl Di ****************************************************************************************** Theresienstadt, one of many captivating sites of Czech history, caught my research interes visit there arranged by the Protestant Theological Faculty of Charles University. From my a student from England, history classes are bias towards American and western European stu rich story of Theresienstadt is dramatically underrepresented generally in Holocaust studi fruitful history of the Czech Republic. As a propaganda camp of model Jewish settlement, it was by nature a secretive and deceivin possessed a distinct purpose to the Nazis that set it apart from other concentration camps regarding the artists, composers and writers who were imprisoned there to be enrolled as c towards the fake publication of a cultural and recreational life in the camp. Numerous pro and intellects served as inmates for this intention, and much of their written, theatrical work is commemorated in the Terezín Ghetto Museum. Although, it must be noted that ongoing educational life was self-developed too by the Jewish inmates, but was later taken over SS utilised for propaganda plans – the community is now known to have been extremely self-rel on ensuring that the Jewish youths continued with their education with the help of their p scientists and scholars amid artists. Amongst them was famous art teacher Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, who I attended a fantastic lec Asthetic Empathy in the Teaching of Art to Children (The Work of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis in arranged by the Faculty of Education, Charles University and conducted by Linney Wix, Prof Education (University of New Mexico, Albuquerque) and author of Through a Narrow Window: F Brandeis and Her Terezín Students, which “offers a closer look at the methods and philosop Brandeis's teaching, the history behind her approach, and its possible psychological effec children she taught, biographical and art historical information on Dicker-Brandeis, and s her roles as an artist, teacher, and heroine behind Nazi lines in the Second World War“. P current research is funded by the Czech Fulbright Commission [ URL "http://www.fulbright.c Fulbright Scholar. Professor Wix‘s primary field is art therapy, which was evident in her intimate and person Dicker-Brandeis and in her discussion on the enflourishment of creative life in a place of horror, in which Friedl Dicker-Brandeis is close to her heart concerning her heroic contri life. Dicker-Brandeis has been the epicentre of Wix’s extensive research and interest since the motivated by what she considered to be a gap in academic awareness concerning her founding artistic talents and heart wrenching story. To access her journey and grow closer to her i outlook, Wix literally followed in her footsteps across Europe, presented to the class thr impressive map of accomplishments from Weimar to Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Theresienstadt an Poland, where Dicker-Brandeis (born 1898, Vienna) tragically perished in 1944. Wix spent v too in Switzerland visiting a woman whose mother was a close companion of the artist. The all these cherished experiences took Wix to her first inspiring encounter with Friedl Dick paintings in Český Krumlov, 2000, and through to her exhibition of this work in New Mexico accompanied by a research-based companion book Through a Narrow Window, 2010. Wix delivered a detailed presentation of Dicker-Brandeis’s brilliant life, starting off wi experience under the wing of Swiss painter Johannes Itten (1888-1967) before she studied a a teacher at the prestigious Weimar Bauhaus, a university that boasts a highly-acclaimed h art, architectural teaching and successful graduates. She walked their stairs during its f (1919-1925) along with Franz Cizek (1865-1946), the father of children’s free expression/C and German-Swiss expressionist and surrealist Paul Klee (1879-1940). Dicker-Brandeis advanced to develop Itten’s methods when taking up the teaching of art to endowing her signature teaching approaches, as Wix coined it, “Aesthetic Empathy” a unique and subjective movement of teaching methodology entailing rhythmic and breathing exercises focus, and exploring individualistic and varied forms of artistic forms including plant, p texture, figure studies, light/dark, form and movement study and eventually, free art. Her towards the young pupils, Wix claimed, were to discover and uphold individualistic art exp ease the path children walk on to personhood, to overthrow their prospective limitations i educational system and later, to equip children to escape and live fully under the morbidi in the ghetto-prison. The tasks students carried out explored notioning, elaboration of th recalling memories, enlivening their imaginations, establishing and strengthening relation awareness with themselves, others and their potentials. Through this experience, she becom child psycho-social development, more specifically with empathy, relationships and the eff education, and took the results of her classes to child psychologists. These efforts and p thought to have been amplified by her deep longing for a child of her own that she never h After her years in the Weimar Bauhaus (1919-1923) engrossed in printmaking, textiles, typo painting, she left the institution as it entered a philosophical shift from empathetic to methods (1923-34), juxtaposed with a fresh company of artists that moved in. Dicker-Brande to pursue an 11 year career as an artist and teacher in Dresden, Berlin and Vienna. Her tr endless as Wix spoke of her travels, designing scaling buildings to tiny children’s trinke nursery art school teachers, (primarily in 1931) but in 1934, she left the atelier life. S she was arrested for “communist activities” by Austrian secret police, but courageously pe work, reencountering her experience of political interrogation in several paintings. In he Brandeis rarely signed her work, but I was deeply moved by the pieces that she did, the mo for me being Interrogation II (1934). As anti-Semitic socio-political alienation and discrimination was rearing its head through and early 1940s, Dicker-Brandeis taught political refugees here in Prague, along with Jewi had been expelled from public schools in Hronov, Eastern Bohemia (1938-1942), prior to tea Theresienstadt 1942-1944. Wix presented her as a defender of the needy, never failing to n creative potential. In her unique attention to fine details, she found the budding artist especially young people, who she frequently allowed to work with her in an apprenticeship seemed to me that even in the darkest periods of warfare Dicker-Brandeis stayed alive for art; flourishing from a student to a teacher and marrying her lover Pavel Brandeis, who su In her simple and ingenious way, Dicker-Brandeis found inspiration and beauty from the ent around her. She would regularly paint still life portraits of everyday objects, appreciati from onions to flowers. She was also known to have utilised natural resources to work with of trees, and did not waste any materials she came across – postcards, cardboard, envelope canvas in the scarce environment of Theresienstadt. Little of this organic work survived; made a heroic effort to preserve hundreds of pieces before and during her detainment by pa suitcases and hiding them in the floorboards and rafters of the ghetto buildings. I was en dangerous endeavor and perplexed by what her exact intention was – did she envision escape safety for the art in the certainty that she would outlive the camp? Was she creating a ti future generations in the certainty that she was going to die? In Theresienstadt, Dicker-Brandeis endured with art teaching and enrolled as a child suppo one of many adult peers who selflessly contributed to the backbone of faith and community ensuring that the Jewish children received not only an education, but creative and emotion this light, she taught with compassion, patience and a certain degree of distance, refusin her pupils a “correct way” or affirming her preferences in their style. She magnetised sel her pupils, encouraging them to take ownership and pride in their achievements by signing to me indicated her love and hope for those children because this was something she rarely We owe a great deal to Friedl Dicker-Brandeis for this conscientiousness, as it ensured th memories, creations and observations of the perished children of Theresienstadt (most were died in Auschwitz) live on today in their facsimiles (Pinkas Synagogue), instead of remain and unknown behind numerical mortality statistics. In the summer of 1944, Dicker-Brandeis picked up her paints for the last time. Until that never ceased creating during her time in Theresienstadt, accomplishing 80 pieces that are Terezín Ghetto Museum and The Jewish Museum in Prague, including a pastel view of the camp the landscape outside the camp. In Wix’s words, she taught the children how to feel, and healed in a time of unspeakable h teaching and artistic mannerisms were described as therapeutic, sensitive and worldly and of her pioneering ways to access the core of people’s desires, thoughts and potential. She contributed immensely to the fields of both history and art by daring to create a wind society to see Theresienstadt first hand. By working within a philosophical/aesthetic fram established herself as a self-made art therapist, who without her efforts, “there would be work”, and thanks to Professor Linney Wix’s thorough study, dedication and unwavering love Dicker-Brandeis, we are now able to truly access and appreciate her astonishing legacy. 18. 11. 2013 Lecture Prof. Linney Wix: Through a Narrow Window. Friedl Dicker-Brandeis and Poppy Gerrard-Abbott is an Erasmus student studying BA write for the iForum to build on her journalism skills Czech culture and life in Prague through attending loc Poppy saw the iForum as an exciting opportunity to pur experience that has brought some exciting opportunitie such placements to future students.