Hello. Shabbat shalom. My name is Olga Keshelman-Kalashnikov, I live in Israel and am interested in the history of Zionism. Therefore I studied the biography of your grandfather Nathan. I know that he is buried in Scheveningen with your grandmother Rosa, but I can’t find photos of the grave and geographical coordinates. Could you help me with this?

My cousin Mirjam Birnbaum, Uriel’s daughter, told me that the originals of “Moses” were bought by a rich man in Vienna and were in his villa there. When the Nazis took over Austria, the owner fled. The house was occupied by a very senior Nazi (SS) officer, who presumably threw the pictures out, as “decadent Jewish art”.

My uncle Uriel Birnbaum was indeed self-taught. He did all his art work on paper, or as lithographs: with coloured inks, coloured and “black-and-white” lithographs (e.g. “Das Buch Jonah”), black ink on paper, both coloured and plain pencils.

About half of the originals of the 50 “Der Kaiser und der Architekt” pictures are in the Albertina in Vienna, also a series of figurative pencil drawings . Copies of both of the books of 50 plates “Moses” and “Der Kaiser und der Architekt” are sometimes available on the internet. The Juedische Museum in Vienna has a horrifying series of drawings in coloured pencils of his terrible experiences on the Eastern Front in WW1, and his original pen-and-ink drawings for his book “In Gottes Krieg” sometimes appear for auction (we have a few of them). Many other books contain his drawings, including “Der Seelen-Spiegel: 120 Grotesken (also sometimes available on the internet).

Mirjam told me that he considered his writings much more important than his artistic work. He wrote books, articles in periodicals (e.g Aristo-), and many thousands of poems (about 1000 of them in “Gedichte, eine Auswahl”). Many original drafts of these works are in the Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, as well as elsewhere (including in our Archives).

David Birnbaum,
Director,
Nathan & Solomon Birnbaum Archives,
Toronto.

Dear David Birnbaum, I thank you so much for your two comments. Above all, that you’ve commented in the Blog because I think that it is important, that the “world” can read your additions.

I’ve corrected “Marie”, “Toronto” and “1989” (sorry, typing error) immediately and I’ve added in both blogposts a linked reference to your comment!

thank you once more and best wishes, Johannes Reiss

I have listed below a few corrections (and additions) to your articles on the Währinger Friedhof, I hope you can arrange for the corrections to be made to the blogs themselves.

• p.1. The Birnbaum family in Toronto arranged for the gravestone to be raised, repaired and repainted in 2004 – that is why it is so legible. I have been told that it’s the only gravestone in that cemetery that has been restored.
• p. 2. Marie (not Maria) Seelenfreund – but she was generally known by her Jewish name which was Miriam.
• p.3. “Nathan Birnbaum, der vor allem unter der Pseudonym Mathias Acher wirkte ….” Nathan B. did not use the pseudonym Mathias Acher all his life – only from about 1898 to about 1912, and during that time he quite often signed with his own name.
• p.4. “Anerkennung des Jiddischen als Einheits und Weltsprache”. Some people at the Czernowitz (spelling) Conference wanted to designate Yiddish as “the ethno-national Jewish language”. Nathan B. did not agree with this, and as a compromise it was finally decided to call it “an ethno-national Jewish language”.
• p.4. My father Dr. Solomon/Salomo A. Birnbaum died in 1989 (not1889) and is buried in Toronto, Canada (not New York).
• p.4. In addition to his pioneering work in Yiddish and Yiddish linguistics – which he taught at Hamburg University, later at London University – he was the pioneer of Hebrew palaeography, which he also taught in London University. He wrote the first properly organized Yiddish Grammar in 1915 while in the Austrian army at the battle-front.
• p.5. “Menachem Birnbaum”: This sentence seems to imply that Menachem Birnbaum and all his family were murdered in 1945 in Auschwitz. He was murdered there (or on the “death march” from there in early 1945). But his family had died long before – we don’t know where, perhaps in Auschwitz, perhaps at another death camp.
• p.5. “Uriel Birnbaum’s Moses Zyklus”: Another zyklus of 50 paintings – even more well-known – was Der Kaiser und der Architekt. His daughter Miriam told me that she thought that this Zyklus was even better than Moses.