Metadata: Lasnitzki archives
Collection
- Country:
- Belgium
- Holding institution:
- Museum of Fine Arts Ghent
- Holding institution (official language):
- Museum voor Schone Kunsten Gent
- Postal address:
- Hofbouwlaan 29, 9000 Gent
- Phone number:
- +32 (0)9 240 07 09
- Web address:
- http://www.mskgent.be/
- Email:
- museum.msk@gent.be
- Reference number:
- MFA-Ghent-Fonds Lasnitzki
- Title:
- Lasnitzki archives
- Title (official language):
- Fonds Lasnitzki
- Creator/accumulator:
- Simon-Wolfskehl, Tony
- Date(s):
- 1908/1991
- Date note:
- ca. 1910-1989
- Language:
- German
- Dutch; Flemish
- French
- Extent:
- 1.5 linear metres
- Scope and content:
- This fonds firstly contains personal correspondence of Tony Simon-Wolfskehl, covering the years ca. 1910 – late 1980s. We mainly find letters and postcards (i.a. from her husband Roderick Lasnitzki, imprisoned in southern France, as well as a few letters by Carl Einstein). Concerning the various other documents, we note i.a. business cards, documents related to Simon-Wolfskehl’s personal finances, a file on the remodelling of her house, etc. Moreover we also find many manuscripts (roughly dated ca. 1916-1922, the 1940s and 1970s-1980s) and typescripts, generally written in German. They consist of various autobiographical note’s, poems and poetry collections, prose, novellas, plays, literary texts, etc. The fonds lastly contains a number of beautiful, annotated photo albums (probably dated 1920s-1930s and 1950s) and many single travel photos, family pictures, photos of friends, etc. In addition, we also point out a box of archival material (mainly correspondence) produced by Irène Demaret, Tony Simon-Wolfskehl’s later companion.
- Archival history:
- Bequest by Tony Simon-Wolfskehl in 1991.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Tony Simon-Wolfskehl (1893-1991) originated from the wealthy, assimilated Jewish-German bourgeoisie in Frankfurt. She studied architecture in Darmstadt and at the newly founded Bauhaus in Weimar. Simon-Wolfskehl frequented the bourgeois-radical circles and artistic societies of a turbulent Germany in the 1920s. Her brief relationship with art critic Carl Einstein – a point of reference for the rest of her life – dates from this period. She was able to emigrate legally to Belgium in 1936 with her husband Roderick Lasnitzki. The couple lived in Ghent. Like many refugees, Lasnitzki was deported to southern France in 1940; he died in Auschwitz. Simon-Wolfskehl survived the war, hidden by her friend Irène Demaret. After the war Simon-Wolfskehl became somewhat of a mother figure for Flemish avant-garde authors and artists (such as Hugo Claus) i.a. because of her past involvement in German expressionist circles. From 1960, Tony Simon-Wolfskehl lived a withdrawn life in the villa Le Sablier in Koksijde-Sint Idesbald on the Belgian coast. Her literary ambitions (i.a. as a playwright) were ultimately not very successful. She only published a children’s book (Zondagskinderen. Een sprookje, 1976) under the pseudonym Tony Sintides. Late in her life Simon-Wolfskehl achieved some notoriety among experts on the life and work of Carl Einstein. In 1991 she bequeathed the six works of German expressionists she had inherited from her father to the Museum voor Schone Kunsten in Ghent.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Demaret, Irène
- Einstein, Carl
- Lasnitzki, Roderick
- Simon-Wolfskehl, Tony
- Yerusha Network member:
- State Archives of Belgium
