The Island of Extraordinary Captives: A True Story of an Artist, a Spy and a Wartime Scandal by Simon Parkin

Author:Simon Parkin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781529347227
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2022-02-02T16:00:00+00:00

Having flattered the commandant, Bruckmann, with lawyerly slickness, shifted tack. ‘We know, Sir, just how interested you and your officers are in our cases and that you do all in your power to help us to get our early release … Let me wind up this little speech by expressing my hope that this will be a very successful exhibition, but also our last.’

The commandant declared the event open and it fell to Hinrichsen, as curator, to introduce the artists to the delegation of officers. The exhibition, which wound through a number of rooms, featured more than ninety works. For the young art historian, the tour presented a chance to play the satisfying role of educator to men who were, in the camp hierarchy, his superiors. Hinrichsen’s knowledge combined with the fact that, as he put it, ‘all German styles were represented’, allowed him to take his jailers on a tour, not only of the premises, but of German art history – from classicism to expressionism, impressionism to Neue Sachlichkeit – new objectivity.

Hinrichsen had set aside his personal tastes in favour of a magnanimous approach. As well as his preferred artists, he selected pieces from those whose work he enjoyed far less, such as Fritz Kraemer, whom Hinrichsen considered a better bridge player than artist.54 He had also widened the scope of the exhibition by including crafts such as marquetry boxes, a chess set and the Kasperle figures first used six days earlier in House 23 for a Punch and Judy puppetry show written by The Camp’s editor Michael Corvin and produced by Hermann Fechenbach.55

The businessman Hans Gussefeld, who had whittled his Prees Heath tent pegs into crocodile letter openers,56 had been encouraged by Fechenbach to enter the designs into the second art exhibition. Hinrichsen welcomed this expression of folk art and hung the pegs in a crescent splay at eye level beside one of the doors.

For the camp’s commandant, the exhibition was a testament to the creative environment he had fostered in the camp at his wife’s urging. He was, as Fred Uhlman recorded in his diary that day, ‘very pleased’,57 and appeared to warm to the role of patron, so much so that, during the tour, he began to make critical pronouncements of the work.58 The commandant disliked the distorted limbs that could be seen in Erich Kahn’s drawings and etchings; Fred Uhlman’s gloomy grey scenes of imprisonment featuring a child clutching a balloon were, he said, rather depressing. Schwitters, Captain Daniel concluded, was the undisputed master of the exhibition; he urged the other artists to learn from his portraits.

For this, the opening ceremony, the artists had been invited to stand by their work so that Hinrichsen could introduce Daniel and his entourage to the artists behind the art. For Peter Fleischmann it was a moment of supreme pride. His artistic efforts had been recognised and rewarded by Hinrichsen, who, despite being only a decade older than the student, had adopted a fatherly attitude towards the Artists Café’s youngest member.

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