Leo Haas (15 April 1901 – 13 August 1983)Editorial obituary. In ''Eulenspiegel'', 30/38th Jg, No. 34/83, , . was a German painter,
graphic artist
A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published me ...
caricaturist
A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures.
List of caricaturists
* Abed Abdi (born 1942)
* Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003)
* Alex Gard (1900–1948)
* Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977)
* Alfred Grévin (1827–1892)
* ...
.
Life
Born in
Opava
Opava (; german: Troppau, pl, Opawa) is a city in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 55,000 inhabitants. It lies on the river Opava. Opava is one of the historical centres of Silesia. It was a historical capital of ...
,
Silesia
Silesia (, also , ) is a historical region of Central Europe that lies mostly within Poland, with small parts in the Czech Republic and Germany. Its area is approximately , and the population is estimated at around 8,000,000. Silesia is spli ...
,
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...
, Haas studied at the
Staatliche Akademie der Bildenden Künste Karlsruhe
The State Academy of Fine Arts Karlsruhe () is an art school located in Karlsruhe, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.
History
The Academy was founded in 1854 by Frederick I, Grand Duke of Baden, with the landscape painter Johann Wilhelm Schirm ...
from 1919 to 1922 and then in Berlin with
Emil Orlik
Emil or Emile may refer to:
Literature
*''Emile, or On Education'' (1762), a treatise on education by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
* ''Émile'' (novel) (1827), an autobiographical novel based on Émile de Girardin's early life
*''Emil and the Detective ...
and
Willy Jaeckel
Willy Gustav Erich Jaeckel (10 February 1888, Breslau – 30 January 1944, Berlin) was a German Expressionist painter and lithographer.
Biography
Jaeckel's father was a public lands manager and he originally intended to become a forest ranger, ...
. He worked from 1926 as a painter, graphic artist, press artist and caricaturist in Vienna and later in his hometown
Opava
Opava (; german: Troppau, pl, Opawa) is a city in the Moravian-Silesian Region of the Czech Republic. It has about 55,000 inhabitants. It lies on the river Opava. Opava is one of the historical centres of Silesia. It was a historical capital of ...
in Czechoslovakia.
After the
Nazi Occupation of Czechoslovakia
Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...
in 1939, Haas, who came from a middle-class Jewish family, was deported to the "Juden-KZ" Nisko, a forced labor camp personally supervised by
Theresienstadt concentration camp
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination camp ...
, where he joined the group of artists of Theresienstadt around
Bedřich Fritta
Bedřich Fritta (19 September 1906, Višňová – 8 November 1944, Auschwitz) was a Czech-Jewish artist and cartoonist. Before the war, Fritta worked as an illustrator and graphic designer in Prague under the pseudonym Fritz Taussig. In the ...
from Prague. Among other things, they managed to smuggle drawings about the conditions of life in Theresienstadt into neutral foreign countries. In 1944, the Gestapo officers of the concentration camp command and Adolf Eichmann accused them of this in personally conducted interrogations. The artists and their family members were taken to the cells of the Small Fortress prison and later to other concentration camps. Haas was the only painter of Theresienstadt who survived imprisonment. Immediately before being taken for interrogation, the artists managed to produce many hundreds of drawings and also to hide the picture book ''For Tommy on his third birthday in Theresienstadt 22.1.1944'' by Bedřich Fritta for his son Tomáš. After the liberation Haas was able to recover the drawings. The book was published in 1985.
On 28 October 1944, Haas became prisoner no. 199 885 in Auschwitz concentration camp. There, too, he managed to draw. On 27 November 1944, Haas was transferred to the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp
Sachsenhausen () or Sachsenhausen-Oranienburg was a German Nazi concentration camp in Oranienburg, Germany, used from 1936 until April 1945, shortly before the defeat of Nazi Germany in May later that year. It mainly held political prisoner ...
to the Sonderkommando for
Counterfeiting
To counterfeit means to imitate something authentic, with the intent to steal, destroy, or replace the original, for use in illegal transactions, or otherwise to deceive individuals into believing that the fake is of equal or greater value tha ...
, together with other "specialists" and the note " return undesired". There he was charged with, among other things, forgery of British Stamps. Towards the end of the war, the prisoners of the counterfeiting squad were taken to
KZ Mauthausen
Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen, Upper Austria, Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with List of subcamps of Mauthausen, nearly 100 further ...
and later to
Ebensee concentration camp
Ebensee was a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp established by the SS to build tunnels for armaments storage near the town of Ebensee, Austria, in 1943. The camp held a total of 27,278 male inmates from 1943 until 1945. Between 8,500 and ...
together with the printing presses. There they were liberated by American troops shortly after their arrival on 6 May 1945.
After 1945, Haas lived in Prague with his wife Erna, who had also survived the Theresienstadt concentration camp, the Small Fortress Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and other concentration camps, as a press artist. In his biography, he emphasised that he had consciously chosen this path and against a "pure" artistic career as a painter because of his concentration camp experiences. His wife died in 1955 as a result of medical experiments in Auschwitz.
In the Gestapo prison Small Fortress Theresienstadt, Erna Haas took intensive care of
Bedřich Fritta
Bedřich Fritta (19 September 1906, Višňová – 8 November 1944, Auschwitz) was a Czech-Jewish artist and cartoonist. Before the war, Fritta worked as an illustrator and graphic designer in Prague under the pseudonym Fritz Taussig. In the ...
's three-year-old son, Tomáš. After their liberation in 1945, they adopted Tomáš Fritta. Bedřich Fritta was murdered in Auschwitz in November 1944, his wife died in the Small Fortress in
Theresienstadt
Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia ( German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstadt served as a waystation to the extermination camp ...
.
From 1955, Haas lived in East Berlin, where he worked as a cartoonist for the ''
Neues Deutschland
''Neues Deutschland'' (''nd''; en, New Germany, sometimes stylized in lowercase letters) is a left-wing German daily newspaper, headquarters, headquartered in Berlin.
For 43 years it was the official party newspaper of the Socialist Unity Par ...
'', the '' Eulenspiegel'' and other newspapers. To the latter magazine he contributed from the first issue (1954) contributed a total of 1185 drawings until 1982.''Eulenspiegel-Sonderausgabe. The years 1980–1989'' Berlin 2004, . For his 70th birthday,
DEFA
DEFA (''Deutsche Film-Aktiengesellschaft'') was the state-owned film studio of the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) throughout the country's existence.
Since 2019, DEFA's film heritage has been made accessible and licensable on the PRO ...
created the documentary .
Haas died in
East Berlin
East Berlin was the ''de facto'' capital city of East Germany from 1949 to 1990. Formally, it was the Soviet sector of Berlin, established in 1945. The American, British, and French sectors were known as West Berlin. From 13 August 1961 u ...
at the age of 82 and was buried in the artists' section of the
Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde
The Friedrichsfelde Central Cemetery (german: Zentralfriedhof Friedrichsfelde) is a cemetery in the borough of Lichtenberg in Berlin. It was the cemetery used for many of Berlin's Socialists, Communists, and anti-fascist fighters.
History
W ...
Yad Vashem
Yad Vashem ( he, יָד וַשֵׁם; literally, "a memorial and a name") is Israel's official memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It is dedicated to preserving the memory of the Jews who were murdered; honoring Jews who fought against th ...