Gertrud Simon (1887–1970), known professionally as Gerty Simon, was a German photographer who worked during the

interwar period In the history of the 20th century, the interwar period lasted from 11 November 1918 to 1 September 1939 (20 years, 9 months, 21 days), the end of the World War I, First World War to the beginning of the World War II, Second World War. The in ...

. Born Gertrud Cohn in Bremen to a well-to-do Jewish family with her father being a lawyer, she practiced in Berlin and later in London.

Career

She was a German-Jewish photographer who captured many important political and artistic figures in Weimar Berlin, including

Kurt Weill Kurt Julian Weill (March 2, 1900April 3, 1950) was a German-born American composer active from the 1920s in his native country, and in his later years in the United States. He was a leading composer for the stage who was best known for his fru ...

Lotte Lenya Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best ...

Käthe Kollwitz Käthe Kollwitz ( born as Schmidt; 8 July 1867 – 22 April 1945) was a German artist who worked with painting, printmaking (including etching, lithography and woodcuts) and sculpture. Her most famous art cycles, including ''The Weavers'' and ''T ...

Max Liebermann Max Liebermann (20 July 1847 – 8 February 1935) was a German painter and printmaker, and one of the leading proponents of Impressionism in Germany and continental Europe. In addition to his activity as an artist, he also assembled an important ...

and

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

. Her Berlin studio was at Clausewitzstrasse 2.

Personal life

Gerty Simon moved to Berlin after the

First World War 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 ...

. Her husband, Wilhelm, like her father, was a lawyer. They had one son, Bernard (Bernd), born in 1921.

Exile

With the arrival of the Nazi Party in power in 1933 life became very difficult for Simon and her family. In 1933, her son's school, the Landschulheim Herrlingen (later the

Bunce Court School The Bunce Court School was an independent, private boarding school in the village of Otterden, in Kent, England. It was founded in 1933 by Anna Essinger, who had previously founded a boarding school, Landschulheim Herrlingen in the south of Germa ...

), a progressive boarding school transferred from Southern Germany to

Otterden Otterden is a civil parish and village on the Kent Downs in the borough of Maidstone in Kent, England. History Otterden is mentioned in the Domesday Book under Kent in the lands belonging to Adam FitzHubert. The book which was written in 1086 sai ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

. Simon followed, while her husband remained in Berlin, unable to continue as a lawyer and judge, but finding work as a notary. The family was not reunited until 1939, and father and son were both imprisoned as enemy aliens. At 19, Bernard was even sent to an internment camp in Australia (until 1942) despite having lived in the UK for seven years. Simon rapidly re-established her studio in Chelsea, and portrayed many significant individuals there, such as Sir Kenneth Clark, Dame Peggy Ashcroft and

Aneurin Bevan Aneurin "Nye" Bevan PC (; 15 November 1897 – 6 July 1960) was a Welsh Labour Party politician, noted for tenure as Minister of Health in Clement Attlee's government in which he spearheaded the creation of the British National Health ...

. She stopped working as a professional photographer from 1937 for unknown reasons. Her husband died in 1966, and Simon died in 1970. Their son died in 2015 and donated his mother's collection of works to the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in

Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...

, London.

Exhibitions

Simon's work was shown at major photography salons of the day. She was represented at probably the most important German photography exhibition of the

Bauhaus The Staatliches Bauhaus (), commonly known as the Bauhaus (), was a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts.Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edn., 200 ...

period, ''Fotografie der Gegenwart'' ("Contemporary Photography") in

Magdeburg Magdeburg (; nds, label=Low Saxon, Meideborg ) is the capital and second-largest city of the German state Saxony-Anhalt. The city is situated at the Elbe river. Otto I, the first Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Archdiocese of Magdebur ...

in 1929. Upon her arrival in London she exhibited in a show entitled "London Personalities", held at the Storran Gallery in Kensington in 1934. Simon was the subject of a major retrospective, ''Berlin/London: The Lost Photographs of Gerty Simon'', at the Wiener Holocaust Library in London from May–October 2019 followed by ''Gerty Simon. Berlin / London'' at the

Liebermann Villa The Liebermann Villa is the former summer residence of the German painter Max Liebermann. It is located directly at the shores of Lake Wannsee in Berlin. It has been open to public since April 30, 2006 and shows a collection of Liebermann's pain ...

in Berlin in 2021.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Simon, Gerty 20th-century German photographers 20th-century British photographers Photographers from Bremen (state) 1887 births 1970 deaths Jewish emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom