Hermann and Erna Nonnenmacher

When my mother died, I inherited a large collection of family photos, some dating back to the 19th century. Large numbers of the photos were loose in plastic bags, others sorted away in albums. Among one album, carefully, if sometimes illegibly, annotated in my mother's handwriting, I found this picture of the German artists Hermann and Erna Nonnenmacher.

Renate Pniower, as she was then, grew up in Berlin during the Nazi years; her parents, Georg and Ruth Pniower, were friends of the Nonnenmachers. A quarter Jewish herself, my mother was no stranger to the anti-semitism of that time, but Erna Nonnenmacher was fully Jewish. The Nazis classified their work as entartete Kunst (degenerate art), and destroyed much of it. Thankfully Erna and Hermann managed to emigrate to London in 1938.

The photo is undated, but I presume it dates from around the time of their departure from Berlin. Hermann Nonnenmacher is holding up a bunch of flowers, as if waving farewell. Yet their cart is loaded with artworks rather than personal possessions. Also, several pieces are still standing around the laden cart, so at least one more journey will be required. And whose are the coats hanging on the railings?

One interesting feature: the sculpture of a hugging couple that stands prominently in front of the wagon is Hermann's Abschied (Farewell), now on display at the Berlinische Galerie. Whether any of the other works survive I haven't been able to establish.

Oddly, when I first learned the term entartete Musik and mentioned it to her, my mother was unfamiliar with the phrase. She certainly knew the concept though. An anecdote she told me on more than one occasion was of how she and a group of friends would huddle in one of their basements and listen to forbidden jazz records, imported clandestinely from Sweden.

For the rest of her life, Jazz was always the Sound of Freedom.