Jewish Women Ceramicists from Germany after 1933

The Haël products sold well and the company even survived the financial crisis of the late 1920s. With the tragic death of her husband and brother-in-law in a 1928 car accident, Margarete was left alone to run the company. She was later denounced by the local National Socialist group for “subversive activities” and sold Haël in 1933, well below its value, to an NSDAP member. He invited the young Hedwig Bollhagen to take over as artistic director of the workshops.

An article published in 1935 in the National Socialist newspaper Der Angriff defamed Heymann-Loebenstein’s designs as “degenerate” while praising those of Bollhagen as exemplary. Their ceramic products were shown in juxtaposition—Bollhagen’s designs are shown on the right side of the photograph.

This is one of the actual Haël teapots that was presented and denigrated in the Angriff article. It is now in the collection of the Jewish Museum Berlin.

The huge success that Marks had experienced with her ceramics in Germany proved elusive in British exile. She remained financially dependent on her husband and grew increasingly embittered.

Over time, she turned her attention to painting and traveled a great deal in search of new landscapes. In all, Margaret Marks lived in Britain for 54 years. She died in 1990 at the age of 91.

Ceramics manufacture in Palestine had traditionally been dominated by rural Arabic potteries. Their products were limited to a group of traditional forms whose roots go back to antiquity, including the ever-present clay water jugs.

For many Jews, the unglazed water jug had a nostalgic association with the biblical story of Rebecca watering Isaac’s camels at a well. The figure of a woman carrying a water jug became a popular motif in Israeli folk art.

The earthenware jug was still a common, practical feature of everyday life.

When the two German Zionists Eva Samuel and Paula Ahronson founded their pottery workshop in Rishon le-Zion in 1934, they adopted the ubiquitous local motif and named their workshop Kad we Sefel—“Jug and Mug.”

Hanna Charag-Zuntz was enchanted by Roman ceramics and intrigued by an ancient pottery technique called “terra sigillata.” A potter of extraordinary technical ability, she rediscovered this lost practice. She worked local clay into thin layers and fired the objects at very high temperatures, managing to achieve a surface shine without burnishing or using glaze. She took the secret of her technique with her to her grave.

Charag-Zuntz was interested in industrial production and designed household ceramics, for the Palceramic Company in Haifa, among others.

If one compares the aforementioned teapot with this model, produced in Germany in the 1930s, the striking similarity in color, form, and material cannot be overlooked.

The Lapid ceramic works also experimented with minimalist, modern designs for Jewish ritual objects.

Nora Herz was a sculptor as well as a ceramicist. This head of a young woman is now in the collection of the Jewish Museum Berlin.

In a private collection, we discovered two vases thrown by the gifted Jewish potter Valery Jorud, who worked in the Berlin ceramic workshop of Jan Bontjes van Beek. She was killed when the workshop was bombed in 1945. Today, this artist is known to only a handful of connoisseurs.

An article published in The Jewish Chronicle in 1936 about Lea Halpern, referring to her as the “Van Gogh of potters,” drew our attention to her ceramic Jewish ritual objects, which had long been forgotten.

In the course of further research we came across a Hanukkah lamp made by Lea Halpern which was ultimately acquired for the collection of the Jewish Museum Berlin.

Finally, Michal S. Friedlander, curator for Judaica and Applied Arts at the Jewish Museum Berlin, reports on the search for traces of the German-Jewish ceramicists after 1933. The film was produced in 2013, on the occasion of the exhibition Tonalities.