The Art of Resistance: Defending Academic Freedom since 1933 | Page 88

‘I Shall Bear Witness’, on leaving Dresden?
Monica Petzal
The Dresden Project is an on-going reflection upon my maternal
family. The project of almost fifty prints, from which this is
selected, explores a rich family archive, contemporary historical
documentation and my own personal experience through the
fertile medium of print.
There is tragedy at the heart of my relationship to Dresden.
The city provided my mother and her parents with stability,
prosperity and a remarkable cultural life in the early 1920s, and
then repressed and excluded them, forcing their departure in
mid-1936. The city was destroyed by the very country that offered
them safe haven and a life free from persecution.
Perhaps the most profound and detailed account we have of life
in Germany, and in particular in Dresden, under National Socialism,
are the diaries of Victor Klemperer. A Professor of Romance
Languages at the University of Dresden, Klemperer was a Jew
married to an Aryan. In his writing, Klemperer demonstrates the
importance of his almost daily record. He aspired to “become a
writer of contemporary cultural history”. The diaries, covering
1933 to 1945, bring together the most detailed observation and
linguistic skills, and an educated and knowledgeable scepticism.
These chronicles, with their mix of political acuity, domestic
minutiae and unflinching self-reflection, have become a standard
source for historians of National Socialism. So, as my mother Lore,
aged seventeen was about to take her school leaving certificate,
this was Klemperer’s diary entry:
30th January, 1934 Hitler Chancellor. What up to election
Sunday on 5th March I called terror was a
mild prelude. Now the business of 1918 is
being exactly repeated, only under a
different sign, under the swastika. Again,
it’s astounding how easily everything
collapses.
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The Art of Resistance? Defending Academic Freedom

The print considers the relationship between the Isakowitz
family and Victor Klemperer. Klemperer’s wife Eva was my
grandfather’s dental patient and the two families became friends.
The lace tablecloth, Rosenthal porcelain and family silver with my
grandparents Erich and Sofie’s intertwined initials, are items which
were brought by the family from Dresden to London. The story
is told most eloquently by Klemperer himself; the following quotes
about the Isakowitz Family are selected from:
Victor Klemperer ‘I shall bear witness 1933-41’
10th August, 1933 Stepun sent me a Fraulein Isakowitz for
vocational guidance. She took her school
leaving certificate at Easter, father a
Jewish dentist. She would like to become an
interpreter. How? The institute in Mannheim
has been moved to Heidelberg, Gutkin removed
- who knows where- non-Aryans are not
admitted. She wants to try and study here
for one or two semesters. Questionable if
she’ll be allowed to.
9th November, 1933 At the first lecture Monday, French
Renaissance, five people, for the exercises,
Renaissance lyric poetry, four, today at
Corneille, two. These two Lore Isakowitz,
yellow Jewish card- she really wants to be
an interpreter, I have already been advising
her for some time…

2nd March, 1934 I wound up this bad semester on Wednesday.
I took the penultimate Corneille class with
the ‘Jewish quota’, that is little
Isakowitz, and the last one with her and a
young man who will now take his state
examination with Wengler.

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