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Why Did Birds of a Feather Flock Together?

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Title

Why Did Birds of a Feather Flock Together?

Creators

Fritz Hirschberger

Date

c. 1990

Caption

Birds of a feather flock together, And so will pigs and swine; Rats and mice Will have their choice, And so will I have mine.

Description

"The Fifth Horseman Series" 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.

Annotation

This painting is meant to remind the viewer of Eugene Delacroix's (1798-1863) "Dante and Virgil in Hell," also known as "The Barque of Dante" (1822). The romantic painting was inspired by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri’s (1265-1321) "Inferno" (1306-21). In the painting, as in the book, the Latin poet Virgil (in the red robe) guides Dante through Hell, where the demonic souls of the Florentines try to get into the boat as it crosses the River Styx.

Extent

32" x 40"

Physical Form

Oil on Canvas

Type of Resource

Still Image

Subject

Holocaust
Artistic Response
Survivor

Note

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.

Physical location

University of Minnesota, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. http://chgs.umn.edu/

purl

http://purl.umn.edu/229213

Access conditions

Use of this image is governed by U.S. and international copyright laws. Please contact the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies for permission to publish this image. http://chgs.umn.edu/

Categories:

Fritz Hirschberger: The Fifth Horseman

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