Ben Uri Research Unit

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


Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz artist

Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz (née Pamina Liebert) was born into a Jewish family in Berlin, Germany in 1904; she later studied sculpture at the Berlin Academy, winning the Prix de Rome, which she was unable to collect due to Nazi opposition. She immigrated to Britain in 1939, and as a so-called 'enemy alien' was detained in Holloway Prison, then interned on the Isle of Man between 1940 and 1942. After release, she worked as a china restorer, before resuming her sculptural practice and taking up painting and drawing.

Born: 1904 Berlin, Germany

Died: 2004 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1939

Other name/s: Pamina Mahrenholz, Pamina Liebert


Biography

Sculptor and painter Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz (née Pamina Liebert) - her father named her after the heroine in Mozart's Magic Flute - was born into a middle-class, Jewish family in Berlin, Germany on 27 April 1904. After attending the Hohenzollern Lyceum in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, she was apprenticed to a local milliner until 1928, when she decided to pursue a career in art. She studied under German sculptor Fritz Klimsch at the Prussian Academy of Art, Berlin, when Max Liebermann was President, and soon became known as Klimsch's ‘master student'. In 1931 she won a bronze medal for her work and the Prix de Rome the following year, which she was unable to accept due to Nazi opposition. Despite this, in 1934, she exhibited her work at the Staatliche Akademie Der Künste but increasingly her opportunities were curtailed. In 1929 she married Rolf Mahrenholz (1902–1991), an up and coming (non-Jewish) portrait photographer, and, following the introduction of anti-Semitic legislation, they decided to seek refuge in Britain. Rolf immigrated to London in 1938 with his brother, Harald (at risk of persecution as a homosexual) and his mother, Helene, who was pro-Nazi. The presumed knowledge of their father, Ernst, a colonel in the Germany army, of the direction of Nazi strategy may have been of profound influence over Rolf and Harald’s decision to leave Germany as soon as possible. Pamina, who had to wait for the necessary work permit. followed in late August 1939, only a week before Britain's declaration of war on Germany, arriving with only a handful of belongings and the statutory £10 allowance. Her mother, Bertha, who remained behind, subsequently perished in a concentration camp.

Although registered as a 'refugee from Nazi oppression', following implementation of the British government's mass internment policy in spring 1940, Liebert-Mahrenholz was temporarily incarcerated in Holloway Prison in London, where she transformed her daily bread ration into sculpture, before being transferred to Rushen Camp for women at Port Erin, and Ballaqueeney at Port St. Mary, on the Isle of Man in July 1940, where she remained until September 1942. She suffered from poor health and was only able to meet Rolf, who was interned separately in Peveril Camp, Peel, for two hours once a month at a camp café. Due to the trauma of exile and paucity of resources and art materials, she was unable to sculpt for several years, and after release, took on a series of other jobs including working in a lampshade factory, bundling kindling and working as a china restorer. Eventually, the Mahrenholzs returned to London and their small apartment in West Hampstead, which she occupied for the remainder of her life.

By the 1960s, Liebert-Mahrenholz had resumed sculpting, mostly in a classical manner, although her painting employs a bolder, Expressionist style, notable in her late self-portrait. She was described by her great niece by marriage, Janet Markham, as 'As English as the English but still with a strong German accent' (Janet Markham, 'Great Aunt Pamina', Youtube video). After resuming painting, she established her own studio, where she both taught and worked until her nineties, enjoying a Bohemian lifestyle with Rolf, weekending in Eastbourne and opening themselves to New Age ideas and philosophies, 'revelling in their freedom'. In 1964 she exhibited in the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition and went on to hold solo shows at the Camden Institute (1977), at Ben Uri Gallery in 1981 and 1988 - the latter was a joint show with her husband - and at Camden Art Centre in 1983, where Barry Fealdman in the Jewish Chronicle noted that she showed 'solidly constructed, well-balanced paintings and drawings that demonstrate her ability to express herself pictorially' and that 'her sensitively modelled sculptures' were 'immediately attractive'. She regularly exhibited in Ben Uri's annual open shows from the 1970s onwards and was included in the group exhibition London Artists from Germany, at the German Embassy, London in 1978, in Kunst im Exil in Grossbritannien 1933-45, at the Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst in Berlin in 1986, partly reprised at the Camden Arts Centre, London later the same year. In summer 1987 she exhibited with the gallerist John Denham, a noted supporter of artists in exile, in his group show Bildende Kunstler im Exil.

Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz died in London, England on 21 September 2004, having been photographed celebrating her 100th birthday with her congratulatory letter from the Queen, only months before. In 2008 a posthumous joint exhibition, Two Berliners: Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz and Margaret Marks, was held at the Boundary Gallery, London, and her work has been included in group shows at Ben Uri Gallery including the touring exhibition Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933-45 (2009-10); Refugees: The Lives of Others (2017) and Finchleystrasse: German artists in exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933-1945, presented at the German Embassy in London (2018). In 2019 her work was included in the touring exhibition Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art. Her work is represented in UK public collections including the Ben Uri Collection and the Ruth Borchard Collection of self-portraits.

Related books

  • Peter Wakelin, Refuge and Renewal: Migration and British Art (Bristol: Sansom and Company, 2019)
  • Sarah MacDougall, ed., Finchleystrasse: German artists in exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933-1945, exhib. cat., Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany, London (2018)
  • Rachel Dickson, ‘Our Horizon is the Barbed Wire: Artistic Life in the British Internment Camps,’ in Monica Bohm-Duchen ed., Insiders Outsiders: Refugees from Nazi Europe and Their Contribution to British Visual Culture (London: Lund Humphries, 2019)
  • Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall, Out of Chaos: Ben Uri – 100 years in London (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2015), p. 190
  • Rachel Dickson and Sarah MacDougall, ‘Artists in Exile c. 1933–45,’ in Sarah MacDougall and Rachel Dickson, eds., Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain, c. 1933–45 (London: Ben Uri Gallery, 2009) pp. 31-35
  • Gloria Tessler, ‘Art Notes,’ AJR Information, November 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
  • Barry Fealdman, 'Art, Jewish Chronicle, 22 July 1983
  • Alice Schwab, ‘German-Born Artists in London,’ AJR Information, December 1978

Public collections

Related organisations

  • Berlin Academy of Art (student)
  • Hohenzollern Lyceum (student)
  • Prix de Rome (recipient)

Related web links

Selected exhibitions

  • Finchleystrasse: German artists in exile in Great Britain and beyond 1933-1945, German Embassy, London (2018, curated by Ben Uri)
  • Refugees: The Lives of Others, Ben Uri Gallery and Museum, London (2017)
  • Forced Journeys: Artists in Exile in Britain c. 1933–1945, Ben Uri Gallery (2009)
  • Two Berliners: Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz and Margaret Marks, Boundary Gallery, London (2008)
  • Jewish Artists in the Ben Uri Collection, Ben Uri Art Society (1994)
  • Open Exhibition, Ben Uri Art Society (1992)
  • Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture of Pamina Mahrenholz. Refinement in Colour Photography, Rolf Mahrenholz, Ben Uri Art Society (1988)
  • Open Exhibition, Ben Uri Art Society (1987)
  • Art in Exile in Great Britain 1933–45, Camden Art Centre (1986)
  • Kunst im Exil in Grossbritannien 1933-45 (1986) Neue Gesellschaft fur Bildende Kunst, Berlin, Germany
  • Selected Works from the Permanent Collection, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1983)
  • Pamina Liebert Mahrenholz, Camden Art Centre (1983)
  • Paintings, Drawings, Sculpture by Pamina Mahrenholz, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1981)
  • Open Exhibition, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1980)
  • London Artists from Germany, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany (1978)
  • Annual Mixed Exhibition, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1978)
  • Annual Mixed Exhibition, Ben Uri Art Gallery (1972)
  Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz
   
Ben Uri collection

Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz in the Ben Uri collection

Ben Uri archive

Consult items in the Ben Uri archive related to [Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz]

Ben Uri library

Publications related to [Pamina Liebert-Mahrenholz] in the Ben Uri Library