Books
Traces of a Jewish Artist:
The Lost Life and Work of Rahel Szalit
Penn State University Press, March 2024
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Graphic artist, illustrator, painter, and cartoonist Rahel Szalit (1888–1942) was among the best-known Jewish women artists in Weimar Berlin. But after she was arrested by the French police and then murdered by the Nazis at Auschwitz, she was all but lost to history, and most of her paintings have been destroyed or gone missing. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, this biography recovers Szalit’s life and presents a stunning collection of her art.
Szalit was a sought-after artist. Highly regarded by art historians and critics of her day, she made a name for herself with soulful, sometimes humorous illustrations of Jewish and world literature by Sholem Aleichem, Heinrich Heine, Leo Tolstoy, Charles Dickens, and others. She published her work in the mainstream German and Jewish press, and she ran in artists’ and queer circles in Weimar Berlin and in 1930s Paris. Szalit’s fascinating life demonstrates how women artists gained access to Jewish and avant-garde movements by experimenting with different media and genres.
This engaging and deeply moving biography explores the life, work, and cultural contexts of an exceptional Jewish woman artist. Complementing studies such as Michael Brenner’s The Renaissance of Jewish Culture in Weimar Germany, this book brings Rahel Szalit into the larger conversation about Jewish artists, Expressionism, and modern art.
“This first-ever critical biography of Rahel Szalit skillfully recovers and reassembles the scattered fragments of her life to create a vivid mosaic of an artist forgotten because she was Jewish, a woman, queer, and in many ways, stateless. Based on meticulous archival work, Kerry Wallach’s brilliant book recuperates an unjustly neglected chapter in the history of Jewish art and interwar culture.”
―Daniel H. Magilow, Professor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
“Wallach creates a rich, lively, and very detailed picture of Rahel Szalit-Marcus as an artist and a person through extensive research across a wide range of resources. Traces of a Jewish Artist gives depth and nuance to scholarly conversations about modern Jewish art in Europe. It expands histories of Jewish and women artists in early twentieth-century Germany and poignantly demonstrates the significant loss of so many stories.”
―Celka Straughn, Deputy Director, Spencer Museum of Art, University of Kansas
“This masterful historical reconstruction gives welcome due to a forgotten talent.”
―Publishers Weekly
This book was generously supported by:
Gettysburg College
Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Research Award
Sharon Abramson Research Grant from the Holocaust Educational Foundation of Northwestern University
AJS Gender Justice Caucus Cashmere Subvention Award in Jewish Gender, Sexuality, and Women's Studies
Interviews and Lectures about Traces of a Jewish Artist
Listen:
New Books in Jewish Studies Podcast (hosted by Paul Lerner)
Watch:
Fritz Ascher Society
Yiddish Book Center - May 30, 2024
Read:
Gettysburg College News Story
Penn State University Press Tumblr Q&A
Other press:
Rokhl's Golden City - Tablet Magazine
Art Herstory - New Books About Women Artists
Reviews of Traces of a Jewish Artist
Passing Illusions: Jewish Visibility in Weimar Germany
University of Michigan Press, 2017
Passing Illusions examines constructions of German-Jewish visibility, as well as instances in the 1920s and early 1930s when it was concealed, revealed, or contested. The book’s introduction and conclusion bring German-Jewish passing into dialogue with African American racial passing and queer passing to offer insight into present-day discourses of minority visibility.
Read more via the University of Michigan Press
“A powerful and original work of scholarship . . . Wallach brings a fresh theoretical perspective to the study of early twentieth-century German-Jewish history and culture, drawing her concept of passing from African-American and LGBT Studies and paying systematic attention to the category of gender throughout.”
—Jonathan Hess, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Represents the dazzling work of a seasoned scholar, whose vast erudition, unusually supple mind, and rhetorical panache are on full display at nearly every turn in this superb book."
—Noah Isenberg, University of Texas at Austin
“Wallach’s superbly researched study convincingly shows that German Jews of this era not only had the ability to pass or not-pass as Jewish, but also had ample reasons for taking advantage of this powerful assimilation strategy. One of its great strengths is the author’s careful attention to detail about how the need for Jews to pass or not-pass varied according to time, place, and gender.”
—Lisa Silverman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
"Wallach’s clear writing, deft analysis, and the wealth of fascinating detail in her book left me wanting more."
—Valerie Weinstein, University of Cincinnati, for The German Quarterly
"Wallach has unearthed a surprising wealth of little-known material and has presented it in a refreshingly lucid and immensely engaging manner that enriches our understanding of the conflicted positions of Germans of Jewish descent in the Weimar Republic."
—Christian Rogowski, Amherst College, for Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies
Interviews and Lectures about Passing Illusions
Blog of the Los Angeles Review of Books
New Books in Jewish Studies Podcast
Passing Illusions and Babylon Berlin Event at the Leo Baeck Institute, NY with Noah Isenberg
Lecture at the German Historical Institute London: "'Coming Out' as Jewish in Weimar Germany"
Reviews of Passing Illusions
Shofar: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Jewish Studies (36.1)
American Historical Review (123.4)