Franziska Schlopsnies, '' born Spangenthal ''(born on 1 December 1884 in

Frankfurt Frankfurt, officially Frankfurt am Main (; Hessian: , "Frank ford on the Main"), is the most populous city in the German state of Hesse. Its 791,000 inhabitants as of 2022 make it the fifth-most populous city in Germany. Located on its na ...

am Main; died on 30 December 1944 in

Auschwitz concentration camp Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

) was a German fashion, poster and

graphic designer A graphic designer is a professional within the graphic design and graphic arts industry who assembles together images, typography, or motion graphics to create a piece of design. A graphic designer creates the graphics primarily for published, ...

. In the 1920s, her

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

illustrations and covers appeared in, among others, the weeklies '' Jugend'', ''

Simplicissimus :''Simplicissimus is also a name for the 1668 novel Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus, Simplicius Simplicissimus and its protagonist.'' ''Simplicissimus'' () was a satire, satirical German language, German weekly magazine, headquartered in Munich ...

'', ''

Meggendorfer-Blätter ''Meggendorfer-Blätter'' was a German language, German art and satirical magazine, which was published in Munich, Germany, from 1888 to 1944. The magazine was closely related to the illustrator and painter Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925). Histo ...

'', and '' Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung''.

Biography

Franziska Spangenthal was born in Frankfurt am Main as the eldest of three daughters of the

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

merchant Robert Spangenthal and his wife Henriette Klein. Her father was a wholesaler of chemical products and machine oils. Shortly after the death of her father in 1905, she met painter, puppet-maker and

caricaturist A caricaturist is an artist who specializes in drawing caricatures. List of caricaturists * Abed Abdi (born 1942) * Al Hirschfeld (1903–2003) * Alex Gard (1900–1948) * Alexander Saroukhan (1898–1977) * Alfred Grévin (1827–1892) * Alf ...

Albert Schlopsnies. The son of a Protestant landowner from

East Prussia East Prussia ; german: Ostpreißen, label=Low Prussian; pl, Prusy Wschodnie; lt, Rytų Prūsija was a province of the Kingdom of Prussia from 1773 to 1829 and again from 1878 (with the Kingdom itself being part of the German Empire from 187 ...

, he studied at the

Munich Art Academy The Academy of Fine Arts, Munich (german: Akademie der Bildenden Künste München, also known as Munich Academy) is one of the oldest and most significant art academies in Germany. It is located in the Maxvorstadt district of Munich, in Bavaria ...

with Gabriel von Hackl from 1903. On 15 September 1910 in Frankfurt Franziska married Albert, who was by then employed as a freelancer at Margarete Steiff GmbH, for which he designed catalogs and numerous dolls and stuffed animals. In 1913, Franziska and Albert moved to

Munich Munich ( ; german: München ; bar, Minga ) is the capital and most populous city of the States of Germany, German state of Bavaria. With a population of 1,558,395 inhabitants as of 31 July 2020, it is the List of cities in Germany by popu ...

and settled in the Schwabing district. In May 1915 their daughter Irmgard Erika was born. After

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Franziska Schlopsnies began designing posters for fashion shows, department stores and exhibitions. One of her earliest surviving designs was made in 1920 for the Tietz department store. After the couple's

divorce Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage or marital union. Divorce usually entails the canceling or reorganizing of the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage, thus dissolving the ...

on 18 December 1922 she often signed her designs with the name "Slopsnies". From the mid-1920s, she preferred to draw figurines and costumes. Along with Doris Buscher, Liliane and Margaret von Suttner she was considered among the most important fashion illustrators. Her Art Deco-inspired fashion drawings and caricatures were regularly published in magazines, such as ''Jugend'', ''Simplicissimus'', ''Eleganten Welt'', ''Berliner Illustrirten Zeitung'', ''Sport im Bild'' and the monthly ''Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte''. For the satirical periodicals ''

Fliegende Blätter The ' ("Flying Leaves"; also translated as "Flying Pages" or "Loose Sheets") was a German weekly humor and satire magazine appearing between 1845 and 1944 in Munich. Many of the illustrations were by well-known artists such as Wilhelm Busch, Co ...

'' and ''Meggendorfer-Blätter'', she designed numerous covers in the second half of the 1920s. After

Adolf Hitler's rise to power Adolf Hitler's rise to power began in the newly established Weimar Republic in September 1919 when Hitler joined the '' Deutsche Arbeiterpartei'' (DAP; German Workers' Party). He rose to a place of prominence in the early years of the party. Be ...

, she produced no known published drawings. To secure her livelihood and that of her daughter, she rented some rooms in her apartment to students. Both her sisters and her mother succeeded in

emigrating Emigration is the act of leaving a resident country or place of residence with the intent to settle elsewhere (to permanently leave a country). Conversely, immigration describes the movement of people into one country from another (to permanentl ...

, while Franziska could have been at first spared deportation because she was the mother of a daughter who, by the definition of the National Socialists, was a "

Mischling (; " mix-ling"; plural: ) was a pejorative legal term used in Nazi Germany to denote persons of mixed "Aryan" and non-Aryan, such as Jewish, ancestry as codified in the Nuremberg racial laws of 1935. In German, the word has the general denota ...

erson of Jewish mixed raceof the first degree". Regarding the date of her deportation, the record is contradictory. She was deported in 1943 or January 1944 with an unknown destination. On 30 December 1944 Franziska Schlopsnies died in the concentration camp Auschwitz. Her daughter Erika survived

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

and emigrated to the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 1946. Today at international auctions Franziska Schlopsnies' graphics and prints reach prices of up to several thousand

Euros The euro (symbol: €; code: EUR) is the official currency of 19 out of the member states of the European Union (EU). This group of states is known as the eurozone or, officially, the euro area, and includes about 340 million citizens . T ...

Selection of works

* Advertisement for a fashion show in Hause Tietz, 1920 * Advertisement for Schirm Schönherr,

Theatinerstraße The Theatinerstraße is a street in Munich's old town. It connects the Odeonsplatz with the southern lying Marienhof and houses a number of classical buildings and several shops. The street received its name due to the adjoining Theatinerkirche ...

; München 1923 * Advertisement for the exhibition ''Der gedeckte Tisch'', München 1926 * Advertisement for the company Andreas Kaut * Advertisement for the company Gebr. E & J Marx, München * ''Die modische Linie'', 1923 (Jugend Heft 22) * ''An der Riviera'', 1926, (Jugend Heft 36) * ''Geeignet'', 1926 (''Meggendorfer-Blätter'' Nr. 1875) * ''Offenherzig – Elegantes Paar im Gespräch über den Wert der Zeit des Mannes'', 1927 (''Meggendorfer-Blätter'' Nr. 1895) * ''Die Spanierin'', 1926 (Velhagen & Klasings Monatshefte Nr. 41 6), 1928 (''Illustrirte Zeitung'' Nr. 4347-4359) * ''Der Geschiedene'', 1927 (''Meggendorfer-Blätter'' Nr. 1890) * ''Vor dem Spiegel'', 1927 (''Sport im Bild'' 1927 Nr. 2) * ''Kühl'', 1927, (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4278) * ''Pietät'', 1928 (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4320) * ''Die prüde Gattin'', 1928 (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4328) * ''Paradox'', 1928 (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4335) * ''Paar beim Spaziergang mit Hund'', 1928 (''Fliegende Blätter''. Nr. 4368) * ''Fasching der eleganten Welt: auf dem Ball Pare im Deutschen Theater zu München'', 1928, (''Illustrirte Zeitung'' Nr. 4323) * ''Argument'', 1929 (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4367) * ''Der Tag fängt an'', 1929, (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4375) * ''Eben wollt ich 'nen Kuss, Thea'', 1929, (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4379) * ''Aber Meta..- mit diesen Launen quälst du dich und mich'', 1931, (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4493) * ''Diese Segler sind mir zu dreist'', 1932, (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4528) * ''Große Wirkungen'', 1932, (''Fliegende Blätter'' Nr. 4551) Schlopsnies Offenherzig (cropped).jpg, ''Offenherzig,'' 1927 Schlopsnies Auf der Terrasse von San Sebastian.jpg, ''Auf der Terrasse von San Sebastian.'' 1927 Schlopsnies Die pruede Gattin (cropped).jpg, ''Die prüde Gattin,'' 1928 Schlopsnies Mit dir kann man nie gehn, Vetter (cropped).jpg, ''Mit Dir kann man nie gehen, Vetter..,'' 1929 Schlopsnies Aber Meta (cropped).jpg, ''Aber Meta..,'' 1931 Schlopsnies Diese Segler sind mir zu dreist (cropped).jpg, ''Diese Segler sind mir zu dreist,'' 1932

Notes

External links

*
artnet.de: Franziska Schlopsnies: ''Modeschau im Hause Tietz'', 1920
{{DEFAULTSORT:Schlopsnies, Franziska Art Deco designers Advertising artists and illustrators German caricaturists German graphic designers German women artists 1884 births 1944 deaths German Jews who died in the Holocaust German people who died in Auschwitz concentration camp Women graphic designers Jewish artists Jewish women artists 20th-century German women