#Kete Parsenow

[majestativa]

You are the wonder of this earth Rose oil flows under your skin.

Dreams quench their thirst From the gold of your hair Revealing the sense of the poets.

— Else Lasker-Schüler, Selected Poems, (2002), on Kete Parsenow

[random-brushstrokes]

Julie Wolfthorn - Portrait of Kete Parsenow (ca. 1910)

Wolfthorn was an important member of the women's movement in Berlin and was involved in founding the Berlin Secession in 1898 and the Verein der Künstlerinnen und Kunstfreunde Berlin (Association of artists and art lovers in Berlin). From 1906, she was listed as a member of the Deutscher Künstlerbund (Association of German Artists). In the same year, she also founded the exhibition cooperation Verbindung Bildender Künstlerinnen (Society of Women Visual Artists) with Käthe Kollwitz. She is admired in particular for her portraits. The Image of the actor Kete Parsenow was created in about 1910.

During the Second World War, Wolfthorn continued to stay in Berlin but, because of her Jewish heritage and the associated repression by the National Socialist regime, could only exhibit at the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (Cultural Federation of German Jews) – until its activities were declared illegal in 1941. On 28 October 1942, 78-year-old Julie Wolfthorn and her sister Luise Wolf were deported to the concentration camp in Theresienstadt, where Julie died two years later. Before she was deported, she had to declare her assets but she did not list any artworks. Her apartment was seized in May 1943 by the Vermögensverwertungsstelle (Asset Reclamation Office). But what happened to her works there? Had she managed to store her pictures in the cellar or give them to friends, or did they stay in the possession of the family? Were they confiscated or perhaps even destroyed? And where was the portrait of Kete Parsenow at that time?

Kete Parsenow, who was born in 1880 in Stettin and died in 1960 in Tübingen, worked as an actor, among others, under Max Reinhardt in Berlin. She moved in Berlin's artistic circles and knew Karl Kraus and Else Lasker-Schüler. After the war, she wrote to director Julius Bab, co-founder of the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Cultural Foundation of German Jews) that she had lost "everything I owned" during the National Socialist era. (source)

[chlorinatedpopsicle2]

Art by German painter Julie Wolfthorn (1864–1944).

Portrait of Marta Baedeker

Dark-haired Woman in an Armchair

Girl with Blue-Green Eyes

Portrait Study, Blue Hat

Girl in a Hat in Front of a Window

Portrait of Käthe/Kete Parsenow

Portrait of Hedda Eulenberg

[paaleiko]

EIN LIED AUS GOLD (An Kete Parsenow) Nun kentert meine Seele Du schlanke, goldene Fischin. Durch deines Leibes Gewebe Schimmert kühles Gold. Ich schenke dir einen Strand mit goldenen Muscheln Und mein Herz, das rauscht. Mein Herz möchte in deinem goldenen Schooss liegen. Dein goldenes Spielzeug sein. Seitdem du da bist Seh ich die Sterne nicht mehr - Vor lauter Golddichten. O, du meine goldene Nacht - Goldsyrinxe... (Else Lasker-Schüler)

[paaleiko]

EIN LIED AUS GOLD (An Kete Parsenow) Nun kentert meine Seele Du schlanke, goldene Fischin. Durch deines Leibes Gewebe Schimmert kühles Gold. Ich schenke dir einen Strand mit goldenen Muscheln Und mein Herz, das rauscht. Mein Herz möchte in deinem goldenen Schooss liegen. Dein goldenes Spielzeug sein. Seitdem du da bist Seh ich die Sterne nicht mehr - Vor lauter Golddichten. O, du meine goldene Nacht - Goldsyrinxe... (Else Lasker-Schüler)