Rahel Szalit-Marcus

{{Infobox artist

| name = Rahel Szalit-Marcus

| image = Rahel_Szalit-Marcus_Self-Portrait.png

| imagesize =

| caption = Rahel Szalit-Marcus Self-Portrait, 1926

| other_names = Rachel Szalit-Marcus

| birth_name =

| birth_date = {{Birth date|1888|07|02|df=y}}

| birth_place = Telz, Russian Empire

| death_date = {{BirthDeathAge| |1888|07|02|1942|8|}}

| death_place = Auschwitz concentration camp, German-occupied Poland

| nationality =

| education =

| field = Painting, illustrating

| training =

| movement =

| works =

| patrons =

| spouse = Julius Szalit

| awards =

| website =

| partner =

}}

Rahel Szalit-Marcus (2 July 1888 – August 1942) was a Jewish artist and illustrator. Born Rahel Markus in Telz [Telsiai] in the Kovno region of Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire, she was active in Berlin during the Weimar Republic and in Paris in the 1930s. She was best known for her illustrations of East European Jewish subjects. Szalit-Marcus was murdered at Auschwitz in August 1942.{{Cite book|last=Fenster|first=Hersh|title=Nos artistes martyrs|publisher=Hazan|year=2021|location=Paris}}{{Cite book|last=Koller|first=Sabine|title=Leket: Yiddish Studies Today|publisher=Düsseldorf University Press|year=2012|editor-last=Aptroot|editor-first=Marion|location=Düsseldorf|pages=207–31|chapter=Mentshelekh un stsenes. Rahel Szalit-Marcus illustriert Sholem Aleichem|editor-last2=Gal-Ed|editor-first2=Efrat|editor-last3=Gruschka|editor-first3=Roland|editor-last4=Neuberg|editor-first4=Simon}}{{Cite web|title=Rahel Szalit-Marcus and Solomon Gershov Illustrate Sholem Aleichem|url=https://derfneronline.org/main/rahel-szalit-marcus-solomon-gershov/|website=Derfner Judaica Museum|date=13 April 2021}}

Life

Rahel Markus spent her later childhood years in Lodz{{cite web |title=Szalit-Marcus, Rachel |url=https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/szalit-marcus-rachel |website=Jewish Virtual Library |access-date=1 May 2021}} and eventually acquired Polish citizenship. A native Yiddish speaker, she also learned Polish, German, and French. In 1911, her parents sent her to Munich to study at the Art Academy. She moved to Berlin in 1916, becoming a member of the November Group, a circle of young avantgarde artists,{{cite web | url=https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Menshelakh-stsenes-zekhtsen-tseykhenungen-tsu-Sholem/5593521154/bd | title=Menshelakh un stsenes : Zekhtsen tseykhenungen tsu Sholem Aleykhems verk "Motl Peysi dem hazens yingel" [YIDDISH] by Szalit-Marcus, Rachel; Baal-Makhshoves: G Hardcover (1922) First edition. | ERIC CHAIM KLINE, BOOKSELLER (ABAA ILAB) }} and befriended Jewish artists Henri Epstein and Marcel Słodski.{{Cite book|last=Fenster|first=Hersh|title=Undzere farpaynikte kinstler|publisher=|year=1951|location=Paris|pages=231–35}} She also studied in Paris and London. Rahel was married to actor Julius Szalit (born Julius Schalit in 1892) from 1915 until his death by suicide in 1919.

Rahel Szalit-Marcus lived in Berlin from 1916 to 1933, and from 1921 onwards she resided at Stübbenstrasse 3 in the Bavarian Quarter of Schöneberg.{{Cite web|title=Berliner Addressbücher|url=https://digital.zlb.de/viewer/cms/155/}} She went by the name Rahel Szalit beginning in the mid-1920s. Her work appeared in several exhibitions of the Berliner Secession, a German art movement that was established at the turn of the century. Szalit was acquainted with Jewish Expressionist artists Ludwig Meidner and Jakob Steinhardt, and she had the support of art historians Karl Schwarz and Rachel Wischnitzer, among others.{{Cite journal|last=Schwarz|first=Karl|date=1920|title=Rahel Szalit-Marcus|journal=Ost und West|volume=3–4|pages=74–77}} Szalit spent time at well-known cafés frequented by artists and émigrés. She built connections to such intellectuals as Polish-German writer Eleonore Kalkowska.{{Cite book|last=Dzabagina|first=Anna|title=Polish Avant-Garde in Berlin|publisher=Peter Lang|year=2019|editor-last=Stolarksa-Fronia|editor-first=Malgorzata|location=Berlin|pages=151–69|chapter=Berlin’s Left Bank? Eleonore Kalkowska in Women’s Artistic Networks of Weimar Berlin}} Szalit's lithographic images were at times compared to the work of Käthe Kollwitz.{{Cite book|last=Wallach|first=Kerry|title=Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany|publisher=University of Michigan Press|year=2017|location=Ann Arbor|pages=48–50}}

Active in the Association of Women Artists in Berlin beginning in 1927, Szalit was able to exhibit her paintings and other work alongside such renowned artists as Käthe Kollwitz, Lotte Laserstein, Julie Wolfthorn, Käthe Münzer-Neumann, Grete Csaki-Copony, and Else Haensgen-Dingkuhn.{{cite web|last1=Szalit-Marcus|first1=Rahel|title=Rahel Szalit-Marcus, Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen 1867|url= https://www.vdbk1867.de/enzyklopaedie/szalit-marcus-rahel/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210123044715/https://www.vdbk1867.de/enzyklopaedie/szalit-marcus-rahel/ |archive-date=23 January 2021 |url-status=live}} She became better known internationally with a prizewinning painting in the 1929 exhibition Die Frau von heute.

Szalit fled to France after the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933. She lived in Montparnasse, where she was affiliated with the School of Paris.In June 1935, she gave a solo exhibition at the Galerie Zborowski (founded by Léopold Zborowski), and remained active in Paris through 1939.

In July 1942, Szalit-Marcus was arrested in the Vel d'Hiv Roundup, and she was deported to Auschwitz in August 1942. Her Paris studio was plundered, and many of her original works were destroyed or lost.

Work

Rahel Szalit-Marcus was a painter and graphic artist known for her lithographic illustrations. She created oil paintings, watercolors, and drawings (in ink, pastel, and chalk), and she began to exhibit her paintings around 1920. In the early 1920s, she illustrated books and print portfolios, most of which have survived. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, she continued to paint, and her illustrations appeared in numerous periodicals.

= Surviving Works: Illustrated Books and Print Portfolios =

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Das Krokodil, 1921
Leo Tolstoy, Die Kreutzersonate, 1922
Sholem Aleichem, Menshelakh un stsenes (Motl, the Cantor's Son), 1922 – portfolio
Mendele Moykher Sforim, Fischke der Krumme, 1922 – portfolio
Hayim Nachman Bialik, Ketina Kol-bo, 1923
Charles Dickens, Londoner Bilder (stories from Sketches by Boz), 1923
Heinrich Heine, Hebräische Melodien, 1923 – portfolio
Claude Tillier, Mein Onkel Benjamin, 1927

Gallery

File:Rachel Szalit-Marcus - Hebrew melodies, 1923.jpg|Hebrew melodies, 1923

File:Rachel Szalit-Marcus Mentshelekh un stsenes 010.jpg|Motl the Cantor's Son, 1922

File:Rachel Szalit-Marcus Die Schaffenden 010.jpg|Camel in the Desert, 1926

References

Literature

"Szalit, Rahel." The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, volume 10, (1943).
"Rachel Szalit-Marcus." Jewish Virtual Library
Hedwig Brenner, Jüdische Frauen in der bildenden Kunst. Ein biographisches Verzeichnis, Vol. 2, ed. Erhard Roy Wiehn (Konstanz: Hartung-Gorre Verlag, 2004), 331–32.
Anna Dzabagina, “Berlin’s Left Bank? Eleonore Kalkowska in Women’s Artistic Networks of Weimar Berlin” in Polish Avant-Garde in Berlin, ed. Malgorzata Stolarksa-Fronia (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2019), 151–69.
Hersh Fenster, Undzere farpaynikte kinstler (Paris: H. Fenster, 1951), foreword by Marc Chagall, 231-35.
Hersh Fenster, Nos artistes martyrs (Paris: Hazan, 2021).
Gerd Gruber, “Szalit, Rahel.” Allgemeines Künstlerlexikon. Die Bildenden Künstler aller Zeiten und Völker. Vol. 107 (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2020), 329.
Sabine Koller, “Mentshelekh un stsenes. Rahel Szalit-Marcus illustriert Sholem Aleichem, in Leket: Yiddish Studies Today, ed. Marion Aptroot, Efrat Gal-Ed, Roland Gruschka, and Simon Neuberg (Düsselfdorf: Düsseldorf University Press, 2012), 207–31.
Kerry Wallach, Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), 48–50.
Kerry Wallach, Traces of a Jewish Artist: The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, 2024).

External links

{{Commons cat inline|Rachel Szalit-Marcus}}
[https://objekte.jmberlin.de/Suche?q=Rahel+Szalit Works by Rahel Szalit at Jewish Museum Berlin]
[https://cbj.jhi.pl/?q=szalit&m=metadata Works by Rahel Szalit at Jewish Historical Institute Warsaw]
[https://polona.pl/item/menshelakh-un-stsenes-zekhtsen-tseykhenungen-tsu-sholem-aleykhems-verk-motl-peysi-dem,OTgwODY5OTc/13/#info:metadata Polona Site] with digitized images of Szalit's Motl illustrations
[https://www.mahj.org/ Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme]
[http://museums.cjh.org/web/pages/cjh/Display.php?irn=13610&QueryPage=%2FOAI Center for Jewish History]
[https://derfneronline.org/main/rahel-szalit-marcus-solomon-gershov/ "Rahel Szalit-Marcus and Solomon Gershov Illustrate Sholem Aleichem,"] virtual exhibition of the Derfner Judaica Museum
[https://www.vdbk1867.de/enzyklopaedie/szalit-marcus-rahel/ Verein der Berliner Künstlerinnen]
Rahel Szalit-Marcus, [http://ecoledeparis.org/rahel-szalit-marcus/ Artistes juifs de l'École de Paris]

Category:Jewish illustrators

Category:Jewish women painters

Category:Jewish painters

Category:Expressionist painters

Category:Polish modern painters

Category:Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to France

Category:Polish people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp

Category:1888 births

Category:1942 deaths

Category:German Jews who died in the Holocaust

Category:Polish Jews who died in the Holocaust

Category:German people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp