Hier ist jetzt die Situation
unerträglich geworden…
(The situation here has now
become unbearable...)
'The situation here has now become unbearable, and just like today's circumstances were unimaginable, it is impossible to foresee what else may happen.'
Martha Liebermann to Emma Zorn on 18 October 1941.
Max Liebermann was one of the 20th century's great painters. He was born on this day 175 years ago. His works were removed from the museums after the Nazis rose to power in 1933. He died, lonely and publicly vilified, in his house near the Brandenburg Gate in 1935. His wife Martha was left alone in Berlin. When the mass deportation of Jews began in the autumn of 1941, her friends tried to save her life in a desperate race against time. However, the already promised permission to leave the country was ultimately not granted due to the impossible sum of money the Nazi authorities demanded. When Martha Liebermann heard that she was to be deported to Theresienstadt, she took her own life in March 1943. Thus ended the history of a German Jewish family that had greatly influenced life in Prussia and Berlin for 200 years. Martha Liebermann's fate, typical for that of so many others, will be commemorated with diary entries, texts by her contemporaries and historical reports.
Guests of the Stiftung Brandenburger Tor foundation will be able to experience this reading at the Max Liebermann Haus in Berlin on 6 October.
