Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Erna Nonnenmacher artist

Erna Nonnenmacher (née Rosenberg) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin in 1889, studying design at Reimann Schule in Berlin and ceramics in Bunzlau, before working with the renowned Rosenthal porcelain factories, sharing a studio in Potsdam with her gentile sculptor husband, Hermann Nonnenmacher. The Nonnenmachers fled to England due to antisemitic legislation in 1938 and, following their internment as 'enemy aliens', shared a home/studio in Archway, north London. They exhibited with the Artists International Association, Free German League of Culture and Ben Uri, among other venues, and taught at Morley College.

Born: 1889 Berlin, Germany

Died: 1980 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1938

Other name/s: Erna Rosenberg


Biography

Sculptor, ceramicist and teacher, Erna Nonnenmacher (née Rosenberg) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany on 12 December 1889. She studied at the city's progressive Jewish-owned Reimann Schule, the Kunstgerwerbeschule for Arts and Crafts, and at ceramics technical school in Bunzlau (now Bolesławiec, Poland), joining the regional women artists’ support network, GEDOK (formed in 1926). After marriage in 1919 to the non-Jewish sculptor, Hermann Nonnenmacher (1892–1988), both shared a studio at 29 Potsdamerstrasse (previously owned by Bauhaus master, Lyonel Feininger). Post-First World War, Erna was employed by Rosenthal porcelain factories in Selb and Fraureuth as a modeller (three pieces are held in the Fraureuth archives); her modish portrait sketch from 1925 by fellow Jewish Berlin artist, Gertrude Sandmann (1893–1981) is held by the Berlinische Galerie.

Following the rise of Nazism, Hermann left Germany on account of Erna, despite the regime inviting him to remain – if he divorced his Jewish wife. Together, they escaped to England in February 1938. In the same year, they held their first sculpture exhibition in London at Gerald Holtom’s furniture shop in Tottenham Court Road. Holtom, an artist, gained significant recognition for designing the symbol for the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, which was later used as a peace sign. The Nonnenmachers’ shared plight as artist refugees highlighted in a Jewish Chronicle review of the First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors at the Wertheim Gallery, London (June 1939, the first show under the auspices of the newly founded Free German League of Culture (FGLC)), in which Erna showed a typical feminine work, Little Girl. With the onset of mass internment in spring 1940, Erna was interned in Holloway prison, before transfer to Rushen women's camp on the Isle of Man (Hermann was held in Onchan). Her artistic legacy from internment is a single incised ceramic tile, inspired by a carving on the local Calf of Man (Manx National Heritage). MNH also holds Erna's registration document, with her photograph and dates of arrival, tribunals, and eventual release in spring 1941. Returning to north London, husband and wife settled into their home/studio at 49 Hornsey Lane Gardens, Archway, showing in group exhibitions, including the joint Artists International Association (AIA) and FGLC Exhibition of Sculpture and Drawing (November 1941). In the catalogue foreword, critic Herbert Read declared that these artists '[...] have been uprooted, deprived of their studios, their materials, their very tools. They work tentatively with great difficulty without adequate economic support in their exile. [...] they represent a tradition of which we in England know too little' (Read, 1941).

The Nonnenmachers became part of the informal, post-internment network of émigrés in London, as described by Sheila Lahr (daughter of Charles Lahr, émigré anarchist and owner of the Progressive Bookshop, Holborn), in her autobiography: '[...] the ground floor of their Archway house forms one large studio [...] They are childless and the stone people to which their hands give birth are more to them than flesh and blood' (Lahr, 2015). In October 1945, both exhibited in the AIA touring show, Sculpture in the Home at Heals' Mansard Gallery, which presented sculpture progressively, integrated into domestic settings; Erna showed with the Women's International Art Club in 1946, and both showed together in their studio in 1953. Erna also assisted Hermann teaching modelling and pottery at south London's Morley College for adult education; although officially registered from 1962–69, it is possible that she worked gratis from the 1950s; both are photographed in smart white lab coats during a visit of HRH The Queen Mother to their classes (1958, Lambeth Archives). Both also participated in the inaugural exhibition for Morley Gallery in 1969. Erna, however, was unable to re-establish her commercial career, often overshadowed by Hermann's trajectory – though that too was modest. Most of her later English exhibitions were confined to London Jewish community contexts (although she showed one work at the Royal Glasgow Institute of Fine Arts Annual Exhibition in 1950). Her sculpture and portraiture in various materials were displayed regularly at Ben Uri, including a three-person show with Walter Trier and Elsa Fraenkel (1947), annual shows in 1958 and 1963, and inaugural shows at Berners Street (1961) and Dean Street (1966). Erna showed with contemporary Jewish artists at Zion House, Hampstead (1957) and was reviewed in AJR Information (Association of Jewish Refugees), her supporters in print including refugee art historian, Helen Rosenau, and critic, Alfons Rosenberg. Elected an Associate at the Royal Society of British Sculptors in 1964, aged 75 (proposed by fellow émigré, Arthur Fleischmann, (1896–1990)) Erna's last exhibition was London Artists from Germany at the new building for the Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany (1978). Erna Nonnenmacher died in London, England in 1980 and her obituary in AJR Information was written by Kurt Frankenschwerth (1901–1982), himself an émigré furniture designer and former internee at Huyton camp, Liverpool. Her work is held in the UK public domain in the Ben Uri Collection.

Related books

  • Monica Bohm-Duchen ed., Insiders/Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019)
  • Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
  • Sylvia Glaser, Neuzugang in der Keramiksammlung, Kulturgut aus der Forschung des Germanischen Nationalmuseums, II Quartal, No. 49, 2016, pp. 2-3
  • Rachel Dickson, unpublished paper, ‘I hear only what my eyes tell me’: Two Jewish Women Émigré Sculptors: Else Fraenkel (1892–1975) and Erna Nonnenmacher (1889–1989), (PMSA and 3rd Dimension Annual Conference on Émigré Sculptors in Britain, 2016)
  • Sheila Lahr, Yealm: A Sorterbiography (London: Unkant Publishers, 2015)
  • Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall eds., Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933–45, (London: Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, 2009)
  • Jutta Vinzent, Identity and Image: Refugee Artists from Nazi Germany in Britain (1933–1945), (Kromsdorf/Weimar: VDG Verlag, 2006)
  • Hartmut Krug, Michael Nungesser, et. al., Kunst im Exil in Grossbritannien 1933–1945 (Berlin: Frölich & Kaufmann, 1986)
  • London Artists from Germany (London: Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, 1978)

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Artists International Association (exhibitor)
  • Free German League of Culture (exhibitor)
  • GEDOK (member)
  • Manx National Heritage (archives)
  • Morley College (tutor and exhibitor)
  • Royal Society of British Sculptors (member)
  • Women's International Art Club (exhibitor)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Refugees: The Lives of Others – two exhibitions of works by German refugee artists, Ben Uri Gallery (2017)
  • Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933–45, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London, touring in Sayle Gallery, Douglas, Isle of Man Williamson Art Gallery, Birkenhead (2009–10)
  • German Artists in London, Embassy of Federal Republic of Germany, London (1978)
  • Contemporary Artists Associated with Morley College, Morley Gallery, London (1969)
  • Open Air Sculpture Exhibition, Isleworth Polytechnic (1967)
  • Opening Exhibition, Dean Street, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1966)
  • Opening Exhibition, Berners Street, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1961)
  • Annual Exhibition, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1958)
  • Zion House, Hampstead (1957)
  • Tercentenary Exhibition of Contemporary Anglo-Jewish Artists, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1956)
  • Erna and Herman Nonnenmacher, 49a Hornsey Lane Gardens, London (1953)
  • Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts Annual Exhibition (1950)
  • Child Portraiture, organised by The Observer, RWS Galleries (1950)
  • Exhibition of Watercolours and Drawings by Walter Trier and Sculpture by Elsa Fraenkel and Erna Nonnenmacher, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1947)
  • Women's International Art Club, London (1946)
  • Sculpture in the Home, Heal & Son, London (1945)
  • Artists International Association and Free German League of Culture, Exhibition of Sculpture and Drawing, AIA, Upper Park Road, London (1941)
  • First Group Exhibition of German, Austrian, Czechoslovakian Painters and Sculptors, Wertheim Gallery, London (1939)
  • First London exhibition of sculpture, Hermann and Erna Nonnenmacher, Gerald Holtom's, 259b Tottenham Court Road, London (1938)
  Erna Nonnenmacher
   
Ben Uri collection

Erna Nonnenmacher in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Erna Nonnenmacher]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Erna Nonnenmacher] in the Ben Uri Library