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    Artist

  • Ziegler, Adolf, 1892-1959

    • Title

  • [Erich and Gerda Wronker]

  • Physical Description

    1 painting : oil on canvas ; 107 cm x 72 cm ; 42.13" x 28.35"

  • Date

    circa 1928

  • Summary

    Gerda Wronker as a young girl sits on a tree swing, holding the ropes as her older brother, Erich, stands next to her holding the swing as if poised to push it forward. Gerda wears a light-colored dress, while Erich wears a cream colored shirt underneath a light blue jacket and matching blue shorts. Hills and a hint of a cityscape or castle are in the background.

  • Depicted

    Wronker, Erich; Wronker, Gerda

  • Subject

    Children, Portraits; Children in art; Playgrounds

  • Genre

    Portraits

  • Medium

    Paintings; Oil paintings

  • Part Of

    Lili Wronker Family Collection, AR 25255

  • Accession Number

  • URL

Biographical/Historical Information

Erich Wronker (1921-1996) and Gerda Wronker (1924-1986) were the children of Max Wronker, who was a son of the German-Jewish department store owner Hermann Wronker (1867-1942; killed in Auschwitz). Hermann W. had three children: Max (1892-1966); Erich (1894-1918); and Alice (1898-1985). When Erich died in WWI., Max named his first son after him. In 1933, Max, his wife Irma, and their children Erich and Gerda escaped to Paris, then to Cairo in 1936, eventually immigrating to the United States in the early 1940s.

Adolf Ziegler (1892-1959) was the leading exponent of Nazi-controlled, realist art that was the showcase of Nazi aesthetic ideology. In 1936, Ziegler was appointed president of the Reich’s Chamber of Art and put in charge to organize the infamous "Degenerate Art" exhibition in Munich in 1937. It presented artworks of modern masters of the past 50 years that included works from Klee to Kandinsky, from Beckmann to Kokoschka, to name a few. In 1939, about 4000 canvases were burned in the courtyard of the Berlin Fire Brigade.

Related Works in the LBI Catalog

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Citation

Ziegler, Adolf: [Erich and Gerda Wronker], Leo Baeck Institute, 2003.27.