Posted
on May 21, 2014
Here's
a nice change: a story of an artist whose life was mostly very
pleasant and nice.
Until Hitler and World War II, that is. But we'll get to that later.
Berta
Hummel was born in Bavaria, Germany. Her family was large and loving
and happy, two parents and six kids living above the dry goods store
that was the family business.
Bavaria
is beautiful mountain country – the Alps! – and Hummel was a
cheerful girl who loved the outdoors as well as drawing. The town
thought of her as “the artist,” and she ended up going to the
Academy of Applied Arts in Munich.
Hummel
was very religious and decided to become a nun. As Sister Maria
Innocentia (her religious name), Hummel taught art to children. But
she continued to make her own original art, too, and the other nuns
sent it out to a company for possible publication.
Indeed,
the company was very interested. At the time, in the early 1930s,
postcards with artwork were very popular, and the company released
many of Hummel's drawings as postcards. It also published a
collection of her drawings.
Enter
Franz Goebel; he owned a porcelain company, and he was on the lookout
for art he could translate into figurines. He loved Hummel's pictures
of rosy-cheeked children, and he asked if he could have the rights to
the drawings for manufacturing as figurines.
But
it was at this point that Hitler comes into the story. And of course,
the story turns from happy and successful to difficult and tragic:
Hitler
apparently hated Hummel's art and said that she was presenting the
world with a picture of German children having “hydrocephalic
heads.” (Hydrocephalus is medical condition that can cause
enlargement of the head.) The Nazis allowed Hummel to work and took
half of the money generated from the work – but they wouldn't allow
anyone in Germany to sell or buy the figurines. And the Nazis seized
the convent and forced most of the Sisters to leave; those who
remained were forced to live in one small section of the convent
without heat. Food was scarce, and the nuns relied on the Hummel
sales (after the Nazis got their cut) for the little bit that they
had. The nuns suffered, and Hummel ended up catching tuberculosis.
She died at age 37.
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