Franz Hecht was born in Braunschweig, Germany in 1877, probably into a Jewish family, and moved to Munich at the age of 20, where he was trained in drawing and painting. His woodcuts were commissioned for the prestigious 'Der Ganymed-Mappe' engravings portfolio, published in Munich in 1922–23. In 1924 his work was included in the exhibition of German-Jewish Artists' Work, organised at the Parsons Gallery, London by German-Jewish émigré dealer, Carl Braunschweig (later Charles Brunswick); and in 1939 Hecht fled to England with his wife; after which little is known of his later life. His work is represented in the Ben Uri collection.
Graphic artist Franz (Emanuel) Hecht was born in Braunschweig, Germany on 5 April 1877, probably into a Jewish family. He moved to Munich in 1897 at the age of 20 and studied privately at Heinrich Knirr’s drawing school, and at Anton Ažbe’s painting school, where Kandinsky was also a pupil (Kemp 2017, p. 19); he completed his artistic training in Paris (Vollmer 1956, p. 399). Afterwards, Hecht exhibited alongside renowned artists including Max Liebermann and Alfred Kubin in Munich, Amsterdam and Berlin, and became known for his dramatic expressionist woodcuts of bold landscapes and scenes inspired by the Old Masters. In January 1919, his woodcut portfolio, Bäume (Trees), was praised in the German art and literature fantasy magazine Der Orchideengarten (The Orchid Garden), where Hecht was described as ‘a master of woodcuts’, whose landscapes were as ‘primeval and lonely as if they were still waiting for the creation of humans and animals’; he also illustrated a short horror story with a woodcut of a gallows. His graphic work was commissioned in the second and third editions of the prestigious Der Ganymed-Mappe (The Ganymed Portfolio), a collection of independent engravings by artists including Kandinsky, Max Beckmann and Lovis Corinth, published in Munich in 1922 and 1923. Hecht was also immersed in Munich’s lively music scene and known equally for his regular performances as a trained opera singer and actor at the popular cabaret club, Die Elf Scharfrichter, where he performed under the name Emanuel Franz. Hecht married the pianist Helene Würzburger, and the couple lived and worked in a studio in Munich’s Keplerstraße.
After Hitler’s accession to the Chancellorship in 1933 and the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation, three of Hecht’s watercolours were included in the Exhibition of German-Jewish Artists' Work: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture (5–15 June 1934), organised at the Parsons Gallery, London by German-Jewish émigré dealer, Carl Braunschweig (later Charles Brunswick), featuring in total 221 artworks by 86 artists suffering persecution under the Nazi regime, and he is known to have had contacts in England. Following the increasing deportation of many Munich Jews to nearby Dachau, and Hecht’s detention for questioning by the Gestapo in September 1939, the couple sought support from Lord Ivor Spencer-Churchill, a known patron of the arts and cousin of Sir Winston Churchill (owing to this connection, they feared interception of their correspondence, and addressed a telegram simply to ‘Lord Ivor’). With his help, they obtained an entry permit to England, sometime the same year (Behrend, 1945).
Little is known about Hecht’s life and work after coming to England including his place and date of death. Although a number of sources give 1964 as his date of death (Getty Research Institute), accounts of Helene’s death indicate that she was already widowed when she died in 1956. Although she died in Devon, it is likely that Franz returned to Munich (see Biographisches Gedenkbuch der Münchner Juden, 1933–1945). In the UK, his work is also held by the British Museum and five of his prints were included in Ben Uri’s picture shows in 1970, 1971, 1976, 1985, and 1988.
Franz Hecht in the Ben Uri collection
Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Franz Hecht]
Publications related to [Franz Hecht] in the Ben Uri Library