{
"id": "p16022coll216:14",
"object": "https://cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/p16022coll216/id/14",
"set_spec": "p16022coll216",
"collection_name": "Fritz Hirschberger - The Fifth Horseman",
"collection_name_s": "Fritz Hirschberger - The Fifth Horseman",
"collection_description": "This series of oil paintings, beginning with imagery of the horsemen of the Apocalypse, continues the work begun in the Sur-Rational Holocaust series.\n
\nThe Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) is a research center at the University of Minnesota that promotes academic research, education and public awareness on the Shoah, other genocides and current forms of mass violence. From its founding in 1997, a major focus of CHGS has been the study and exhibition of artistic responses to mass atrocities as a means to foster remembrance and education.",
"title": "The Yekkes",
"title_s": "The Yekkes",
"title_t": "The Yekkes",
"title_search": "The Yekkes",
"title_sort": "theyekkes",
"description": "We have lived here in believingWhat we were taught:That things consist in their consistencyAnd we have built on this foundationA castle of playing cardsWith the appearance of appearancesWith shadows of shadows.- Miguel de UnamunoGerman Jews had lived for hundreds of years in Germany, making tremendous contributions to German science, industry, economy, and arts. During the First World War, they had fought valiantly for their Vaterland, many decorated with the coveted Iron Cross First Class. Yet from one day to another they were deprived of their nationality and citizenship.Yekkes is a term describing Jews who adopted fully the snobbish German Jewish cultural values. They were contemptuous of those they called Ostjuden, small-town (shtetl) Jews from Eastern Europe. However, German Jews, who were highly assimilated into German society, found themselves being identified by racial laws in the 1930s, culminating in the Law for the Protection of German Honor of September 15, 1935. This law defined a Jew as anyone with three or four Jewish grandparents, irrespective of their current religious affiliation.After the rise of the Nazis to power in 1933, even Jewish men who had served in the Imperial German Army of World War I were accused of illegally earning medals and were given only a temporary respite from deportation.[Note: \"Yekkes\" is a Yiddish term referring to German-Jews who immigrated to Israel in the 1930's. The refugees were seen as snobbish and wary of assimilating into Israeli life and culture. \"Yekke\" is actually Yiddish for jacket and was used to describe the refugees formal attire in the informal, hot Middle East. A derogatory term in in the 1930s and 40s, the term is now used historically and without disrespect, as the first generation of German Jews are now looked upon for their contributions to pre-Israeli and Israeli culture.]",
"date_created": [
"1990?"
],
"date_created_ss": [
"1990?"
],
"date_created_sort": "1990",
"creator": [
"Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004"
],
"creator_ss": [
"Hirschberger, Fritz, 1912-2004"
],
"creator_sort": "hirschbergerfritz19122004",
"notes": "About The Fifth Horseman Series; The Fifth Horseman continues the work begun in Fritz Hisrchberger's \"Sur-Rational Holocaust Paintings\" series, and should not be be seen as independent of one another. The exhibition draws its title from Hirschberger's painting of the same name, which references the Book of Revelations (6:1-8):; \"And now I saw a pale horse, and its rider's name was Death. And there followed after him another horse whose rider's name was Hell. They were given control of one-fourth of the earth, to kill with war and famine and disease and wild animals.\"; Hirschberger presents a Fifth Horseman, operating in the shadow of the Fourth. It was common belief, especially during the Reformation, that one could not defend oneself or one's faith against those things that one could not discern with their physical senses. The war that will be waged against a person by the Fifth Horseman will occur on a different plane. It is a plane that the physical senses are not able to discern. And despite this apparent handicap, the Fifth Horseman will not have pity on you, and will show mercy to none.; Hirschberger equates the Fifth Horseman to the Nazis whose methods and ideology defied rational thought, and created a scenario of Hell on earth for their victims in the form of the ghettos, slave-labor camps, extermination centers, and killing fields in the East. The Fifth Horseman series brings forth both Christian iconography from the Bible and plays on artistic themes and works from the Renaissance, while introducing us to symbols of death used by the Nazis for mass murder into this visual milieu.; Hirschberger offers commentary on these paintings in more depth than then with the Sur-Rational, driven by his research on the Holocaust. Though he is not a historian, he uses historical facts to more clearly communicate the meaning of his paintings.; -----; About the Artist; Fritz Hirschberger was born in Dresden, Germany, in 1912. His father came from the Austrian partition lands of Poland in Galicia, and his mother from Bohemia. Both were Jewish. Hirschberger received a traditional liberal arts education in 1930s Dresden. During his studies he developed an affection for the painting of the Renaissance, especially the works of Giotto and Dürer, as well as the German Expressionists of the 1920s.; In 1938, Hirschberger and his family were arrested by the Gestapo as Polish-Jewish aliens and expelled to Poland, his father's native land. His family was forced at gunpoint by armed SS men to cross the border into Poland.; In September 1939 Hirschberger fought in the Polish Army against the invading Nazis. After the defeat of Poland on September 15, his regiment no longer existed, and he fled into the Soviet Occupied Zone. Here, Hirschberger was arrested by NKVD, the Soviet Secret Police, for being a member of the Zionist organization Betar. Subsequently he was sentenced to 21 years and shipped to a slave labor camp in the Soviet Socialist Republic of Komi, behind the Polar Circle.; On June 22, 1941 Germany invaded the Soviet Union. As a result the Soviets joined the Allies to fight against the German's. Hirschberger was at the time considered a political prisoner, and set free to either fight in the Polish \"Anders\" Army or Soviet forces. Hirschberger fought with the Ander's Army in North Africa against General Erwin Rommel and participated in the Battle of Monte Cassino in Italy.; After the war, Hirschberger, discovered that his father had been killed at the Dora labor camp during the Holocaust, but that his fiancée Gisela was alive and living in England. The Hirschbergers came to America in 1948, settling in New York, where he worked with various artists at the New School on 12th Street. In 1984, he and his family moved to San Francisco where he lived until his death on January 8, 2004.",
"types": [
"Still Image"
],
"format": [
"Paintings (visual works) | http://vocab.getty.edu/aat/300033618"
],
"format_name": [
"Paintings (visual works)"
],
"dimensions": "48 inches x 36 inches",
"subject": [
"Holocaust",
"Artistic Response",
"Survivor",
"Germany"
],
"subject_ss": [
"Holocaust",
"Artistic Response",
"Survivor",
"Germany"
],
"contributing_organization": "University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.",
"contributing_organization_name": "University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.",
"contributing_organization_name_s": "University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.",
"contact_information": "University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. 214 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th Ave S, Minneapolis, MN 55455; https://cla.umn.edu/chgs",
"dls_identifier": [
"1087923"
],
"persistent_url": "http://purl.umn.edu/229209",
"local_rights": "Use of this item may be governed by US and international copyright laws. You may be able to use this item, but copyright and other considerations may apply. For possible additional information or guidance on your use, please contact the contributing organization.",
"page_count": 0,
"record_type": "primary",
"first_viewer_type": "image",
"viewer_type": "image",
"attachment": "12.jp2",
"document_type": "item",
"featured_collection_order": 999,
"date_added": "2017-12-15T00:00:00Z",
"date_added_sort": "2017-12-15T00:00:00Z",
"date_modified": "2018-07-30T00:00:00Z",
"_version_": 1710337853511172096,
"type": "Still Image",
"collection": "p16022coll216",
"is_compound": false,
"parent_id": "14",
"thumb_url": "https://cdm16022.contentdm.oclc.org/utils/getthumbnail/collection/p16022coll216/id/14",
"thumb_cdn_url": "https://dkp5i0hinw9br.cloudfront.net/b2cf43a45e73daba2d7ae7261dc3d39d10f7fba0.png",
"children": [
]
}