Ben Uri Research Unit

Born: 1911 Cologne, Germany

Died: 1995 London, England

Year of Migration to the UK: 1922

Biography

Painter, illustrator and cartoonist, art dealer and collector, Walter Goetz was born in Cologne, Germany on 24 November 1911 to a wealthy family who owned a owned a cotton mill. The family’s sizable art collection had, however, been partially sold off after the First World War to contribute to British war reparations. In 1922, following the assassination of Walter Rathenau, the Jewish foreign minister of Germany, Goetz was sent to England for his safety and education at Bedales School in Petersfield, Hampshire. He later returned to Germany and studied painting in Berlin from 1929 to 1931 but left without graduating. In 1931, he resettled in England and attained British citizenship in 1934.

In London Goetz began working for the BBC and the British government; he was a particularly useful asset following his public school education in England and his ability in languages. With his German-Jewish father and French mother, Goetz was trilingual, fluent in English, German, and French. His wartime tasks included designing posters for the secret Political Warfare Executive, aiming to inform German civilians about the horrors of the Third Reich. He associated with notable figures in intelligence and espionage, such as George Weidenfeld, Sefton Delmer, Alan Moorhead, Alistair Horne, and Beresford Clark, but the full extent of his involvement in spying activities remains ambiguous. On 27 September 1938, Goetz unexpectedly provided the first voice broadcast on the BBC's German Service. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain's Munich speech ('Peace in Our Time') was to be broadcast in translation in both French and German, and Goetz, who had no experience of broadcasting, was recruited at the last minute to deliver the German version, translated piecemeal from news wires. This led to some British listeners believing that the Nazis had taken over the airwaves, and Goetz had to be smuggled out of Broadcasting House for his own safely.

With regard to his artistic career in England, Goetz, mostly self-taught after his incomplete formal education in Berlin, became a cartoonist and illustrator, contributing to a number of well-known publications, including Bystander, Harper’s Bazaar,Lilliput, News Chronicie and Vogue. He also created the comic strip Colonel Up and Mr Down for the Daily Express in 1933. This wordless satirical cartoon depicted two friends of different social classes but of similar appearances and ran for 15 years. After 1945, another strip by Goetz, Dab and Flounder, was featured in the same newspaper. His commercial output also included posters for London Transport, including a series highlighing travel to the most 'English' sporting events, such as Ascot Races, the Davis Cup at Wimbledon and the Boat Race on the Thames, as well as book jackets and illustrations. In 1939, he illustrated the satirical book Europe, going, going, gone! by Count Ferdinand Czernin, as well as Pierre Daninos’s Les Derniers Carnets Du Major Thompsonseries (1954–57). These satirical books became a hit in France. Major Thompson was portrayed as the quintessential English army officer and gentleman who, despite being a caricature, gave a biting political commentary.

After the Second World War, Goetz continued painting, including spending time in Wales with artist John Piper. As an artist he often painted landscapes, exhibiting his works with The New Art Centre at Roche Court outside Salisbury and and with the Michael Parkin Gallery in London (dates not verified). He also drew pencil portraits. Respected as a reliable German-speaking art connoisseur, Goetz was also selected postwar to help evaluate Hitler’s personal art collection. Goetz then relocated to France postwar and established himself as an art dealer, primarily specialising in Old Master and Impressionist artworks. He returned permanently to England in 1980.

Goetz was married thrice: first to Gillian Crawshay-Williams in 1934, then to Tony Mayo in 1939, and finally to Fiona Muir in 1968, with whom he had two sons and fostered another. A longtime member of the Garrick Club in London, Goetz professional and social activities dwindled in old age due to increasing deafness. Walter Goetz died in London, England on 13 September 1995. In the UK public domain his work is represented in several public collections, including the London Transport Museum, National Portrait Gallery, V&A and in the British Cartoon Archive at the University of Kent. The Fiona and Walter Goetz Collection was sold by Bellmans auctioneers in spring 2023.