It must have been a bitter moment for Clemens Fränkel when he opened the letter from the German consulate in Bozen in March 1942. The content of the letter will probably not have surprised the almost seventy-year-old landscape painter of Jewish origin, far too much had already happened for that. He is no longer a German citizen, he reads. “Your property has lapsed into the German Reich. Your passport has been confiscated.” Fränkel is dead two years later, murdered in the Ausschwitz concentration camp.
A 1921 portrait of the painter Clemens Fränkel by Hermann Barrenscheen.
(Photo: Fränkel Collection)
In its banal sobriety, the official document is one of the most shocking exhibits in the Aschenbrenner Museum. The small house in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, specializing in dolls, porcelain and cribs, took the 150th birthday of Fränkel as an opportunity to dedicate a fine, own show to the painter, who had disappeared from the art world, the first since 1933. The museum director became aware of the artist Karin Teufl in 2019 while researching for another exhibition. At that time she was looking for mementos of people who had to flee the Werdenfelser Land during the Nazi era. She came across a picture of Frankel, who had lived in Garmisch-Partenkirchen for a few years. It’s a bit irritating at first that he was so forgotten there as well. Finally, his son Kurt O. Fraenkel, who had fled to Italy with his father, returned to the town in the fall of 1945 to work as an art dealer again. Until 1995 he ran his gallery and art shop. But he didn’t talk much about the National Socialist era or his father, says Karin Teufl. “He didn’t want to appear as an accuser.”
As a painter, he celebrates success with his landscapes. They are sold as far away as the USA
Clemens Fränkel, born in Frankfurt in 1872 as the son of a Jewish businessman, is a late representative of the Munich School, studies in Munich first with Otto Seitz, a student of the Piloty, and then with Ludwig von Löfftz, who introduced him to the tradition of Munich plein air painting and Impressionism. Fränkel is enthusiastic and captures his landscape views on paper, cardboard or small pieces of canvas in a relaxed style. In 1903 he left the academy, traveled to Italy for a year to paint, stayed in Florence, Rome and on the island of Capri. After his return, he prefers to paint on the Amper in the Dachauer Moor, sharing a studio with Alfred Kubin and Emile Cardinaux on Theresienstrasse in Schwabing. In the exhibition, enchantingly designed, densely written postcards tell of the friendly relationship with Kubin.
In Munich he met his future wife, the Protestant Louise Scheidemantel. Religious affiliation played no role for Fränkel in those years; even in official papers, as his biographer Thomas Steppan writes in the highly recommended catalogue, he is described as “freely religious”. After marrying in 1908, the couple lived in Leoni on Lake Starnberg; Frankel had founded an open-air painting school there. As a painter, he soon celebrated success with his landscapes; the renowned Heinemann picture gallery on Lenbachplatz always had a selection of his works in stock.
Clemens Fränkel creates excellent gouaches in the great outdoors, such as that of the “Zugspitz Group Garmisch early in the morning”.
(Photo: Thomas Steppan)
He survived the First World War as a nurse on the medical column and in the projectile inspection squad. After that, Fränkel resumed his artistic work with seemingly no effort, his paintings are more in demand than ever and are sold as far away as the USA. Mountains did not appear in his work until the 1920s, presumably not just because the art market valued alpine subjects at the time. He does not deliver the coveted conservative alpine panoramas. He increasingly experiments with color contrasts, even if his expressionism remains very moderate.
First he paints in a hut in Hintergraseck above the Partnach Gorge, but in August 1929 he and his wife move to Partenkirchen. Son Kurt, now 20 years old, follows four months later. One can only speculate about the reasons for the move, but Steppan is certainly not wrong when he suspects that Munich became unbearable for people of Jewish origin in the late 1920s. Frankel’s productivity is still unchecked. He continues to paint a lot in the great outdoors, making excellent gouaches, some of the most impressive paintings in the exhibition. Only the large-format oil paintings – the last ones date from 1933 – are created in the studio. In the summer of 1931 he showed his mountain landscapes in a show organized by the artists’ association and secession in the Deutsches Museum – his last national appearance.
Fränkel’s everyday life is characterized by harassment and anti-Semitic attacks
Fränkel was not the only one who withdrew to Werdenfelser Land. Rolf Cavael (1898-1979), who worked in the abstract and was banned from painting and exhibiting in 1933, moved from Berlin to Garmisch-Partenkirchen to continue working in secret. But he was denounced and interned in the Dachau concentration camp for nine months. Fränkel has not been allowed to take part in any exhibition since 1933, and his pictures cannot be sold. Harassment and anti-Semitic attacks characterize his everyday life. The now widowed painter moves to Ohlstadt. But it’s no better there. In 1937 he fled to Cortina d’Ampezzo. The Nazis forced his son Kurt, who had been an art dealer and gallery owner in Partenkirchen since 1930, to close his shop in 1935. He accompanies his father in the hope of being able to continue his profession in the tourist resort. At first it works. Kurt opens the art shop “Arte Alpina”, his father paints again, more colourful, reduced and concentrated than ever before.
One of Clemens Fränkel’s last pictures: the bridge near Florence.
(Photo: Thomas Steppan)
However, the hope of an unencumbered life does not last long, even if Fränkel manages to travel to Florence again in 1943 with an identity card as an Italian citizen. There he creates his last pictures, including “The Bridge near Florence”, a frighteningly pale, depressing picture. In January 1944 father and son are arrested. While the son survived the last year of the war as a forced laborer in Munich, the father was abducted to an unknown destination in February. For years no one knew what happened to him. It was only after the death of his son that it turned out that Fränkel had been taken from Bozen via Trento to Fossoli, Italy’s largest transit camp. He was probably deported to Auschwitz on February 22, 1944, along with 650 fellow sufferers. And there, if he survived the transport, murdered.
Clemens Frankel (1872-1944). Munich, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Aschenbrenner Museum, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, until November 6th