Charlotte listens to the discussions of the destroyed.
Kurt Singer is there too.
He has just lost his job at the Berlin Opera.
His strength and charisma drive him to lead the resistance.
He makes approaches to the Nazis.
He pleads the causes of dismissed artists.
Proposes the creation of a cultural federation of German Jews.
Hearing this, the party leader hesitates.
He ought to refuse, but he can’t help admiring Singer.
For a moment, time stands still between them.
In that moment, anything might happen.
The artists’ definitive death, or their survival.
The bureaucrat has the power to ban everything.
For now, he says nothing.
He looks into Singer’s eyes.
Singer holds back the sweat that ought to bead his forehead.
Each man’s future is in the balance.
After several long minutes, the Nazi official takes out a sheet of paper.
He signs the authorization to create a Jewish association.
Singer thanks him effusively.
Thank you, sir, thank you so much.
All hail the artists’ hero.
A big party is organized to celebrate this victory.
What joy: they are not going to die immediately.
Singers, actors, dancers, professors all breathe.
To be onstage is to be alive.
Paula will not be reduced to silence.
She can still give concerts.
In a Jewish theater, for a Jewish audience.
The cultural version of the ghetto.
This system will last a few years.
The restrictions gradually becoming tighter, more rigorous, more suffocating.
In 1938, Kurt Singer leaves to visit his sister in the United States.
During his absence, Kristallnacht happens.
Jewish goods are pillaged, dozens of people murdered.
Kurt’s sister begs him to stay in America.
It’s an incredible stroke of luck for him.
He can be spared from the coming disaster.
He is even offered a position at the university.
But no.
He is determined to return to his homeland.
To save what can be saved, he says.
On his return to Europe, he travels through Rotterdam.
There too, his friends try to convince him to stay.
The cultural association has been dissolved in any case.
Going back to Germany in 1938 would be suicide.
He yields, and settles down in Holland.
Once again, he attempts to resist through music and art.
He gives concerts.
But even there, the noose is tightening.
So many times, he could have fled.
But he wanted to be close to his loved ones.
An illusory shield for the fragility of others.
He is such a brave man.
The photographs show his power, his crazy hair.
He will be deported in 1942, to the Terezin concentration camp.
Where, among others, the artists and the elite are held.
It’s a so-called model camp.
A showcase for the Red Cross delegations.
Those visitors, blind to what is hidden behind the scenery.
Plays are put on for them, a sign that all is well.
Singer even continues organizing concerts.
He lifts his arm, conducts the orchestra with his baton.
What remains of the orchestra.
Month after month, the musicians sink into silence.
And die without ceremony.
Singer ends up helping two sickly violinists.
He continues till the end, urging the dying to stay alive.
Nobody believes anymore, nobody but him.
Until the day when he collapses with exhaustion, in January 1944.
Killed in action.
3
But let us return to 1933.
Charlotte no longer believes that the hatred might be a passing phase.
It is not coming from a few fanatics, but an entire nation.
The country is led by a pack of bloodthirsty hounds.
In early April, a boycott of Jewish goods is organized.
She watches protesters parade through the streets, sees shops being pillaged.
Anyone who buys from a Jew is a swine, she reads.
Angry crowds chant slogans.
Can we imagine Charlotte’s terror?
Humiliating new laws are constantly announced.
At school, students must provide their grandparents’ birth certificates.
Some girls have Jewish ancestors, it turns out.
One second they are German, the next they are banished.
The fear of bad blood.
Some mothers forbid their daughters to hang around with Jewish girls.
What if it’s contagious?
Others are outraged.
They must come together and fight the Nazis, they protest.
But such talk is dangerous.
So people speak out ever more quietly.
Until finally they fall silent for good.
Albert does his best to reassure his daughter.
But do any words have the power to diminish other people’s hatred?
Charlotte withdraws further into herself.
She reads constantly, dreams less and less.
It is during this period that drawing enters her life.
Her passion for the Renaissance enables her to leave behind her own era.
4
Charlotte’s grandparents often go away in the summer.
This year, they are taking a long cultural trip around Italy.
And they want to take their granddaughter.
Despite the anxieties of the past, her father and Paula don’t hesitate.
She will be happy far from the abyss.
For Charlotte, this trip will prove crucial.
Her grandparents are crazy about ancient civilizations.
About anything that resembles a ruin.
They are especially fascinated by mummies.
And by painting, of course.
Charlotte deepens her knowledge.
Discovers new horizons.
In front of certain pictures, her heart pounds as if she was in love.
Summer 1933: the true birth date of her destiny.
A precise point exists in the trajectory of any artist.
The moment where his or her voice begins to be heard.
Density spreads through it, like blood through water.
During the journey, Charlotte asks questions about her mother.
The memory of her presence has faded through the years.
It’s been reduced to vague sensations, imprecise emotions.
It hurts to have forgotten her voice, her scent.
The grandmother avoids the subject: too painful.
Charlotte realizes it is better not to ask anything.
Franziska continues her journey in silence.
The cause of her death remains secret to her daughter.
The grandfather comforts himself with works of art.
They give him an absurd optimism.
Europe will not sink into murderous insanity again.
This is what he declares when they visit the ruins.
The power of ancient civilizations is reassuring.
As he spouts his theories, his arms wave wildly.
His wife follows him, her husband’s eternal shadow.
Watching this improbable duo, Charlotte smiles.
They look so old.
The grandfather sports a long white beard, like an apostle.
He walks with a stick, though he remains robust.
The grandmother is increasingly skeletal.
Kept on her feet by a miraculous secret known on
ly to her.
The two old people stride relentlessly through galleries.
Charlotte is the one who keeps begging for a break.
She’s exhausted by the insistent pace.
All three of them want to see every museum.
Charlotte thinks sometimes that this constant craving is futile.
Wouldn’t it be better to grow attached to a single work?
To offer it her exclusive gaze?
Surely it is preferable to know one picture perfectly.
Rather than squander her attention and finally lose it.
She wants so much to settle on something.
To stop searching for what she cannot find.
5
The return to Germany is difficult.
After a summer surrounded by wonders, reality is an attack.
This reality that they must look in the face.
So the grandparents decide to leave their country.
They do not expect ever to go back.
Their exile will be definitive.
They met an American once, during a trip to Spain.
Of German origin, Ottilie Moore is recently widowed.
So it is that she finds herself heir to a fortune.
She owns a vast estate in the South of France.
Where she welcomes all kinds of refugees, children especially.
While visiting Berlin, she becomes aware of the violence.
She offers to let the grandparents stay with her.
For an unlimited time, she adds.
She appreciates their erudition and their humor.
With her, they would be sheltered from the coming storm.
After a long hesitation, they agree.
In Villefranche-sur-Mer, the property is a little piece of paradise.
With gardens that are beautiful, even exotic.
Filled with olive trees, palms, cypresses.
Ottilie is a cheerful woman, always smiling, almost exuberant.
Charlotte stays in Berlin with her father and Paula.
She goes back to school, where the humiliations never end.
Until the day when a law forbids her from pursuing her studies.
One year before her baccalauréat exam, she has to drop out.
She leaves with a school report praising her impeccable behavior.
She and Paula live like hermits in the apartment.
Not only do they not support each other, they don’t even understand each other anymore.
Charlotte blames her stepmother for her exclusion from the world.
Paula is the only person she can yell at.
Some days are calmer.
They talk about the future.
Charlotte draws more and more, dreams of joining the art school in Berlin.
Sometimes she walks to the building and stands out in front.
She watches the students come out carrying their portfolios.
Then she lifts her eyes.
A huge Nazi flag flies from a pole on the roof.
Her father tells her it will be complicated to join the Academy.
They accept only a very small quota of Jews, barely 1 percent.
He encourages her to enroll in a fashion design school instead.
There, Semites are tolerated.
And it will still be artistic.
She could create clothes.
Reluctantly, she agrees.
After all, she has given up deciding how to live her life.
Stupefied, she stays there only one day.
But those few hours make her sure of her vocation.
She wants to paint.
Her first pictures are promising, it’s true.
Albert decides to pay for private lessons.
It’s essential she receive a proper training, he says.
Yes, it’s essential for the future.
6
The lessons turn out to be pitiful.
Her professor seems to think that painting ended in 1650.
This woman bundled up in an old-fashioned beige suit.
With her Coke-bottle glasses, she looks like a frog.
Charlotte tries to comply obediently.
After all, this is a financial sacrifice for her father.
But the boredom is immeasurable.
The frog asks her to draw a cactus.
Several times, she coldly erases Charlotte’s drawing.
The number of thorns is not correct!
This isn’t painting, it’s photography.
For weeks on end, Charlotte does nothing but still lifes.
This seems apt, as her own life is so still, so silent.
Charlotte cannot express what she feels.
Her drawing improves, though.
She finds a style midway between the traditional and the modern.
She deeply admires Van Gogh, discovers Chagall.
She reveres Emil Nolde, who once said:
“I like it when a picture looks as if it painted itself.”
There’s Munch too, of course, and Kokoschka and Beckmann.
Nothing but painting matters now: it has become an obsession.
She absolutely has to apply to the art school in Berlin.
She prepares rigorously.
The demon grows inside her.
Albert and Paula begin to worry about the intensity of her passion.
But for Charlotte it is a source of joy.
After feeling so lost, she has at last found her way.
She presents her portfolio to the art school.
Professor Ludwig Bartning is intrigued by her style.
He senses an immense potential in this candidate.
He is adamant she must join the Academy.
But so few Jews are admitted.
The only point in her favor: Charlotte’s father is a military veteran.
Occasionally one can find breathing spaces in the general suffocation.
But nothing is certain yet.
First they must present her portfolio to the committee.
Ludwig wants to meet the young artist.
He is a kindly man, who campaigns against the racial laws.
Charlotte will become his protégée.
Perhaps he sees something in her that he does not possess?
Ludwig paints flowers.
Elegant flowers.
But perfectly calm and rational flowers.
The day of the admission committee, the tension is palpable.
Charlotte’s talent is obvious.
But it is out of the question that she should join the art school.
It’s too much of a risk.
Where is the risk? Bartning demands indignantly.
She could pose a danger to the young Aryans.
Jewish girls are temptresses, deviants.
Bartning says he has met Charlotte.
He guarantees that she does not represent any kind of threat to the students.
And he goes further: she is actually very shy.
In this way the potential menace of Charlotte is analyzed.
Her talent is not even mentioned.
In the end, though, Ludwig Bartning’s insistence is rewarded.
It is a remarkable victory.
Charlotte Salomon, excluded everywhere else, is admitted.
She will study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin.
7
Thrilled and eager, she gets down to work.
Her professors appreciate her rigor, her inventiveness.
Sometimes they reproach her for being so silent.
They need to figure out what they want.
She has been told to act discreetly, not to speak to other students.
She does manage to make a friend, however.
Barbara, the beautiful blonde, the quintessential Aryan girl.
I’m so beautiful, heil Hitler! says Barbara.
They like to walk home together in the evenings.
Charlotte listens as her friend confides in her.
She tells her about her beaux.
Her life seems wonderful.
If only Charlotte could be a little bit Barbara.
…
At the Academy, artistic freedom is gradually reined in.
The professors are subject to stricter constraints.
The Nazis have decided to bring the painters to heel.
Armed men sometimes storm into the building.
And stand there, inhaling the scent of decadence.
Modern art must quite simply be eradicated.
How dare anyone paint anything other than blond peasants?
Athletes must be glorified, strength and virility honored.
Certainly not the twisted, torn, mad-eyed figures of Beckmann’s pictures.
How horrific that artist is, the very essence of degenerate art.
Beckmann, a German genius, decides to leave his country in 1937.
After hearing Hitler’s speech in Munich.
The speech he gave at the opening of the German House of Art:
“Before National Socialism took power …
There existed in Germany so-called modern art.
Every year a new modern art!
What we want is a German art with eternal values!
Art is not founded on time, an era, a style, a year.
But solely on a people!
And what do you produce?
Twisted cripples and cretins.
Women who can inspire only disgust.
Men who look more like animals than human beings.
Children who, if they existed in real life …
Would be immediately considered a divine curse!”
Thus defined, degenerate art is at the heart of a major retrospective.
To show what people are forbidden to like.
The eye must be educated, an army of taste molded.
And above all: those guilty of decadence must be named and shamed.
Place of honor is given to Marc Chagall, Max Ernst and Otto Dix.
They come in droves to vomit on artistic Jewishness.
First they burned books, now they spit on paintings.
Alongside the works of art, there are exhibitions of children’s scribblings.
Or pictures painted by mentally handicapped people.
So the stage is set for the execution of modern art.
8
Charlotte positions herself on the side of the despised artists.
She is interested in pictorial progress, in the latest theories.
She owns books by the art historian Aby Warburg.
When I discovered this, it all seemed clear to me.
Before I knew about Charlotte, I was fascinated by Aby Warburg.
In 1998, I read an article in Libération.
The title was: “Rescuing Warburg.”
The journalist Robert Maggiori mentioned a mythical library.
Charlotte Page 4