Ben Uri Research Unit

for the study and digital recording of the Jewish, Refugee and wide Immigrant contribution to British visual culture since 1900.


Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag artist

Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1902. She studied under Franz Cižek and attended the Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule between 1917 and 1922. After travelling to Haifa in Palestine with her architect husband in 1934, the couple settled in London in 1936, where she remained until her death in 1958, working as an artist, designer and art teacher.

Born: 1902 Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria)

Died: 1958 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1935

Other name/s: Gretl Berger-Hamerschlag, Margareta Berger-Hamerschlag, Margarete Hamerschlag, Gretl Hamerschlag, Margarete Hammerschlag, Margarethe Berger-Hamerschlag


Biography

Artist, printmaker, designer and illustrator, Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag was born into a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1902. In 1911, following the recommendation of artist Kolo Moser, she attended a junior art class under noted artist Franz Cižek. From 1917 until 1922, she studied at the Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Applied Art) in Vienna, attending classes given by architect Oskar Strnad and interior designer Eduard Wimmer-Wisgrill, as well as print workshops led by Bertold Löffler. During this time, she established her reputation as a highly-skilled artist, producing woodcuts, watercolours and illustrations, and publishing an illustrated book, Kinderfreuden. In 1922 she became an editor for the magazine Wiener Mode and illustrated newspapers and periodicals such as Die Muskete and Der Sontag. She also produced a suite of lithographs illustrating Edgar Allen Poe's Die Maske des Roten Todes, published by the Wiener Werkstätte in 1924. She exhibited with Galerie Schames in Frankfurt, and with Galerie Würthle and the Hagenbund in Vienna. Following the First World War, women were still not allowed to exhibit as members of art societies, but by 1927, she participated in the first women's exhibition at the Museum für Kunst und Industrie. In 1928, she was commissioned to design costumes for Anton Bragaglia’s La Morte di Dottor Faust at the Teatro degli Indepententi Sperimentale in Rome. Throughout her studies and subsequent travels in Europe, she was strongly influenced by modernist movements, including Futurism and Neue Sachlichkeit. She married fellow student, modernist architect Josef Berger in 1922. Both were politically active, and much of her work functioned as a social critique as she sought to ‘provoke through art’. During the 1920s, the couple lived in the Rosenhügel artists’ colony in Vienna, and spent summers in artist colonies, including with the Hagenbund in 1929.

In May 1934, frustrated by the lack of artistic opportunities in Austria, and following establishment of the Austro-fascist regime, the couple spent two years in Haifa, where Josef had received a commission to design a hotel and where Berger-Hamerschlag painted the landscapes and people of Palestine, and travelled to Syria and Lebanon, exhibiting at the New Gallery in Jerusalem in 1935. In December 1935, she travelled from Haifa to London where her husband joined her in 1936. She immediately showed work in Ben Uri's Annual Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists and exhibited her watercolour landscapes at the Austrian Shop on Clifford Street (1936). Settling in Sussex Gardens, Paddington, their son, Florian, was born in 1937. In the same year her work was featured with that of David Bomberg and Horace Brodzky at Foyle's Art Gallery and she also illustrated for Cassell & Co Ltd The Buried Candelabrum by Austrian Jewish novelist Stefan Zweig. Zweig, who was one of Europe’s most popular authors at the time, had immigrated to England in 1934 following Hitler's rise to power in Germany. In 1939 her work was included in the First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors, organised by the Free German League of Culture (FGLC) at the Wertheim Gallery. Settling in Sussex Gardens, Paddington, their son, Florian, was born in 1937. In the same year her work was featured with that of David Bomberg and Horace Brodzky at Foyle's Art Gallery. In 1939 her work was included in the First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors, organised by the Free German League of Culture (FGLC) at the Wertheim Gallery. After the outbreak of the Second World War, she was evacuated with Florian to Wooton Fitzpaine and Bridport in Dorset. Returning to London, she was separated from her husband again when he was interned as an 'enemy alien' on the Isle of Man, from July to December 1940. After their flat was bombed in the Blitz, mother and son relocated to Oxford. Following Josef's release, the family returned to London in 1941, settling in Warwick Avenue, Maida Vale, where they supported other refugees fleeing Nazism, some of whom would stay at their home. Berger-Hamerschlag was in contact with other emigrant artists, including Siegfried Charoux, Bettina Ehrlich Bauer and Georg Ehrlich. She participated in group exhibitions, including Contemporary European Women Painters, London (1946) and The Artist: Self-Portrait and Environment at Ben Uri (1951). She also produced theatrical sketches made during performances, such as Strike It Again at the London Prince of Wales Theatre (1944), Henry IV at the Old Vic (1945–46) and the Ballet Nègres, the first black ballet company to perform in England, at the Twentieth Century Theatre, Kensington in 1946 – she made 16 drawings, plus watercolours and pastels, of the dancers, including two of the company’s founder, Jamaican dancer and choreographer Berto Pasuka in training. Berger-Hamerschlag also designed clothes for émigré actress Elisabeth Bergner and wrote for Die Zeitung, the News Chronicle and Night and Day. In 1945 her work featured in the Exhibition of Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings & Sculptures organised by the Austrian Centre at Foyle’s Gallery. After the war, she travelled across southern Europe, her diaries, letters and paintings documenting her time in Corsica, Sardinia, mainland Italy, and Austria between 1947 and 1954. From around 1950, she taught evening classes at a youth club in a deprived part of Paddington; her 1955 publication, Journey into a Fog, described her teaching years, accompanied by 16 original illustrations. 25,000 copies of the book were sold and a paperback edition was published in 1956. With the money earned from the book's success, the family bought a house in Hampstead, where she lived until her death from cancer in 1958.


Berger-Hamerschlag's work is represented in the UK in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, while her papers (which include her theatrical sketches) were donated posthumously to the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London, and are now managed by Senate House Library on behalf of the Institute; costume designs from the bequest featured in Ben Uri's exhibitions: The Inspiration of Decadence. Dodo Rediscovered (2012) and Out of Austria: Austrian Artists in Exile in Great Britain, 1933-45 (2018). A retrospective, Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag – A Lifetime of Passionate Endeavour was held at the Austrian Cultural Forum, London in 2010.

Related books

  • Susanne Blumesberger, 'Hamerschlag-Berger Gretl', in Ilse Korotin ed., BiografiA: Lexicon of Austrian Women, Volume 1 (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2016), pp. 1171-1172
  • Anna Nyburg, 'Margarete Berger Hamerschlag and the Theatre. Vienna, Rome, London', in Charmian Brinson et al., German-speaking Exiles in the Performing Arts in Britain after 1933 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, Rodopi, 2013), pp.125-142
  • Anna Nyburg, 'Margarete Berger Hamerschlag and the Theatre. Vienna, Rome, London', in Charmian Brinson et al., German-speaking Exiles in the Performing Arts in Britain after 1933 (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, Rodopi, 2013), pp.125-142
  • Rudolf Minichbauer, Margarete Hamerschlag 1902 Wien – 1958 London (Wien, Galerie Walfischgasse: 2008)
  • Veronika Pfolz, 'A Clan of Artists in Exile', in Andrew Chandler, Katarzyna Stokłosa and Jutta Vinzent eds., Exile and Patronage: Cross-cultural Negotiations Beyond the Third Reich (Münster, Germany: Lit Verlag, 2006), p. 38
  • Mel Wright, Beyond the Jiving: Margreta Berger-Hamerschlag, 1902-1958: Exploring an Artist's Experience of Working in London Youth Clubs During the Fifties (London: Deptford Forum, 2008)
  • Jutta Vinzent, 'List of Refugee Artists (Painters, Sculptors, and Graphic Artists) From Nazi Germany in Britain (1933-1945)', in Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933-1945) (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006), pp. 249-298
  • Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag, Journey into a Fog (London: Victor Gollancz, 1955)
  • Angela Milne, 'Journey into a Fog', The Sketch, Vol. 222, Fasc. 2888, 15 June 1955, p. 610
  • Nesta Roberts, 'Youth Club',  The Manchester Guardian, 10 June 1955, p. 4
  • B. Faithfull-Davies, 'An Artist in Slumland', The Observer, 22 May 1955, p. 17
  • S., 'Margarete Hamerschlag's Delightful Landscapes', Jewish Chronicle, 10 April 1936, p. 12

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Wiener Kunstgewerbeschule (student)
  • Hagenbund (member)
  • Wiener Frauenkunst (member)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • City of Women: Women Artists in Vienna from 1900 to 1938, Österreichische Galerie Belvedere (2019)
  • Out of Austria: Austrian Artists in Exile in Great Britain, 1933-45, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2018)
  • The Inspiration of Decadence. Dodo Rediscovered, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (2012)
  • Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag – A Lifetime of Passionate Endeavour, Austrian Cultural Forum (2010)
  • Margareta Berger-Hamerschlag, June Berry, Tiffany McNab, Honor Oak Gallery, London (1996)
  • Some Creative Children and what became of them, Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood (1989)
  • The Artist: Self-Portrait and Environment, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (1951)
  • Contemporary European Women Painters, London (1946)
  • Exhibition of Paintings, Watercolours, Drawings & Sculptures, Foyle’s Gallery (1945)
  • For Liberty, AIA exhibition (1943)
  • Artists Aid Russia Exhibition (for Mrs. Winston Churchill 's Aid to Russia, Wallace Collection (1942)
  • First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors, organised by the Free German League of Culture (FGLC), Wertheim Gallery (1939)
  • England Through Foreign Eyes, Arcade Gallery, London (1939)
  • Retrospective Exhibition with David Bomberg and Horace Brodzky, Foyle Art Gallery (1937)
  • Unity of Artists for Peace, Democracy, and Cultural Development, Grosvenor Square (1937)
  • Annual Exhibition of Works by Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum (1936)
  • Landscapes by Margarete Hamerschlag, Austrian Shop, Clifford Street (1936)
  • Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag, New Gallery, Jerusalem (1935)
  • 'Rakúsko’ (Austria), Východoslovenské Museum in Košice, Czech Republic (1935)
  • First Women's Exhibition, Museum für Kunst und Industrie, Vienna (1927)
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Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag] in the Ben Uri Library