Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Alfred Lomnitz artist

Alfred Lomnitz was born into a Jewish family in Eschwege, Germany in 1892. Working as a painter and commercial artist, he continued this dual career in England, where he settled in 1933, escaping racial persecution in Nazi Germany. In 1940 he was interned as an 'enemy alien' at Huyton Camp, Liverpool, which inspired him artistically, and he published an autobiographical account of his experiences entitled 'Never Mind, Mr Lom' (1941). Although the onset of Parkinson’s disease curtailed his postwar artistic activities, his reputation has seen a posthumous re-evaluation.

Born: 1892 Eschwege, Germany

Died: 1953 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1933

Other name/s: Lom, Walter Lomnitz, Walter Alfred Lomnitz


Biography

Artist Alfred Lomnitz (Lom), was born into a Jewish family on 30 September 1892, in Eschwege, Germany. He studied at the Weimar School of Applied Arts under Henri Van de Velde, and was strongly influenced by Paul Klee, a fellow teacher. Afterwards, he worked as a painter and commercial artist, running the Litz design studios for painting, graphics and design in Berlin in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1919 he held his first solo exhibition at the Neumann Gallery in Berlin, showing woodcuts and signing his work as 'LOM’. He also exhibited with the Novembergruppe and the Free Secession. In order to make ends meet, he occasionally designed vending machines. Despite the lack of financial means, Lomnitz undertook study trips to France, Switzerland and Italy.

After the promulgation of Nazi antisemitic legislation, Lomnitz immigrated to England in 1933, exhibiting at the Ryman Gallery, Oxford, the following year. In summer 1940 he was interned as a so-called ‘enemy alien’ at Huyton Camp, Liverpool, where his fellow internees included émigré artists Hugo Dachinger, Walter Nessler and Samson Schames. Lomnitz described Huyton as a place where every corner was ‘a potential picture’ and ‘[...] the quietness of life and absence of any external distraction gave a splendid opportunity for more concentrated work than would have been possible in the normal way of life’ (Lomnitz, 1941). He produced watercolours and sketches of daily life, among them Girl Behind Barbed Wire and Suburban Scene (Huyton Camp) (both Ben Uri Collection). Lomnitz was given a room in which to paint by the Company Captain and he crafted a collapsible easel from salvaged wooden posts and door hinges, using a piece of slate as a palette and, at least initially, working with watercolours and cartridge paper brought from home. Within a year of his release an autobiographical account of his internment was published by Macmillan in 1941, entitled Never Mind, Mr Lom, with a cover design of a figure silhouetted against coils of barbed wire. Apparently, the title was the cheery parting given by Lom’s charlady as he was escorted from home by two policemen, leaving behind his mother and schoolboy son. Lomnitz captured the irony of internment through a mixture of wit and sober reflection and the book was widely reviewed. The Spectator noted that ‘it is the earlier part of the book, before conditions improved and monotonous and almost contented life supervened, that is interesting. The fact that it is the first account of life in an English internment camp for aliens gives the book a peculiar interest’ (Heathcote 1941, p. 288). The Tatler and Bystander observed that ‘Mr. Lom is not an artist for nothing; he makes us see, feel, almost smell whatever he writes about – the wind racing down that awful barbed-wire racecourse, the mud of Huyton […] – He has illustrated, excellently, this book with drawings done in the camp (Bowen 1941, p. 21).

Little is known of Lomnitz's career post-internment; the later onset of Parkinson’s disease eventually curtailed his artistic activities, his latter work becoming looser and more mystical. By 1941 he was living in Oxfordshire, as suggested by a photograph of him painting in his cottage at Aston Rowant, published in The Tatler and Bystander (17 September 1941, p. 416). By the time of his naturalization in 1946 he was working as an artist, ‘publicity consultant’, graphic and window designer for well-known companies such as Lyons Tea, Brodericks, and Simpsons. A versatile practitioner, he experimented in a variety of media, including etching, woodcut, oils, pen and ink, chalk, and watercolours, and partipated in a Ben Uri group shopw in 1949. Lom also received particular support from Cyril J. Ross, Ben Uri’s treasurer, who provided him with studio space and employment as advertising manager within his Oxford Street furrier business, Swears & Wells; he also bequeathed numerous artworks to Ben Uri following Lomnitz’s death.

Alfred Lomnitz died in London, England on 23 November 1953. Ben Uri held a memorial retrospective in 1954, but Lomnitz's reputation remained largely obscured until the 1980s when gallerist, John Denham, who had a particular interest in the Hitler émigrés, featured his work in both a solo and group show. Barry Fealdman, art critic of the Jewish Chronicle (and Ben Uri's Secretary), praised ‘this sadly neglected artist’, in particular his pen and ink drawings, including Berlin cityscapes that ‘reflect his feelings about the life of the city’. He also noted that ‘His oils show the impact on his style of German Expressionism, though in general he adopted less violent colours and softer contours’ (Fealdman 1986, p. 12). Ben Uri has featured Lom's collection works in several posthumous exhibitions including Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Great Britain c. 1933-45. His work is represented in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection and the British Museum.

Related books

  • Ines Newman, Rachel Dickson, Charmian Brinson, Internment in Britain in 1940: Life and Art Behind the Wire (Elstree: Vallentine Mitchell, 2020)
  • Rachel Pistol, A Comparative Study of Second World War Internment Experiences in Great Britain and the United States of America, PhD dissertation, Royal Holloway, University of London (2017), pp. 12, 91
  • Sarah MacDougall, Rachel Dickson, 'Out of Chaos: Ben Uri: 100 Years in London' (London: Ben Uri, 2015)
  • Anthony Grenville and Andrea Reiter eds., 'Political Exile and Politics in Britain after 1933', Yearbook of the Research Centre of German and Austrian Exile Studies, Vol. 12 (Amsterdam/New York, 2011)
  • Hans Joachim Bodenbach, 'Nochmals zu: Alfred Lomnitz (1892 – 1953) Graphiker, Kunstmaler und Designer aus Eschwege–Künstler der verschollenen Generation', Eschweger Geschichtsblätter, No. 15, 2004, pp. 89–91
  • Angela and Detlef Borowski, 'Alfred Lomnitz, Painter from Eschwege' The Werraland, Vol. 49, No. 4, 1997
  • Walter Schwabe and Julia Weiner eds., Jewish Artists: the Ben Uri Collection - Paintings, Drawings, Prints and Sculpture (London: Ben Uri Art Society in association with Lund Humphries Publishers Ltd, 1994), pp. 71-73
  • Anna Maria Zimmer, Jews in Eschwege: Development and Destruction of the Jewish Community – from the Beginning to the Present (Eschwege: Zimmer, Selbstverlag, 1993)
  • Barry Fealdman, 'Perspectives of Life in Exile', Jewish Chronicle, 15 June 1990, p. 13
  • Barry Fealdman, 'Art in Exile', Jewish Chronicle, 22 August 1986, p. 12
  • Siegmund Kaznelson ed., 'Hans Feibusch, Arnold Marx, Alfred Lomnitz, Erich Isenburger... Are Among the Best Jewish Talents of this Generation...', in Jews in the German Cultural Area (Berlin, 1959)
  • 'Lom Memorial Exhibition', The Jewish Chronicle, 25 June 1954, p. 15
  • 'Lom', Jewish Chronicle, 2 July 1954, p. 25
  • 'Alfred Lomnitz's Book', Country Life, 10 October 1941, p. 699
  • 'New Publications', International Affairs Review Supplement, No. 19, 1941, p. 326
  • Elizabeth Bowen, 'Mr Lom Tries not to Mind', The Tatler and Bystander, 1 October 1941, pp. 16, 21
  • 'Life in a British Internment Camp: Mr. Lom Remembers', The Irish Times, 27 September 1941, p. 5
  • Francis Heathcote, 'In an Internment Camp', The Spectator, 19 September 1941, p. 288
  • Alfred Lomnitz, Never mind, Mr Lom! (London: Macmillan, 1941)
  • Hans Vollmer ed., 'Lomnitz, Alfred, Painter and Graphic Artist in Berlin', in General Encyclopedia of Visual Artists from Antiquity to the Present, Vol. 23 (Leipzig: E A Sailor, 1929)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Free Secession (member)
  • German Association of Artists (member)
  • Novembergruppe (member)
  • Reich Association of Fine Artists of Germany (member)
  • Weimar School of Applied Arts (student, 1910–12) (student, 1910–12)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • The Lives of Others: German Refugee Artists in Britain, Ben Uri Gallery (2017)
  • Out of Chaos Ben Uri: 100 Years in London, Somerset House (2015)
  • The Inspiration of Decadence: Dodo Burgner 1907-1998, Ben Uri Gallery (2012)
  • Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Great Britain c. 1933-45, Ben Uri, London, Isle of Man, Birkenhead (2009–10)
  • Jewish Artists The Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Gallery (1994)
  • Jacob Bornfriend, Eugen Hersch, Alfred Lomnitz and Else Meidner, John Denham's Gallery (1990)
  • Alfred Lomnitz: Paintings – Drawings – Prints, John Denham Gallery, London (1986)
  • Art in Exile in Great Britain 1933–45, Camden Arts Centre and Goethe Institut, London (1986)
  • Lom (Alfred Lomnitz) Memorial Exhibition, Ben Uri Gallery (1954)
  • Contemporary Jewish Artists: Exhibition of Paintings, Sculpture, Drawings, Ben Uri Gallery (1949)
  • Ryman Gallery, Oxford (1934)
  • Woodcuts by Alfred Lomnitz, Neumann Gallery, Berlin (1919)
  Alfred Lomnitz
   
Ben Uri collection

Alfred Lomnitz in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Alfred Lomnitz]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Alfred Lomnitz] in the Ben Uri Library