Metadata : Personal Papers of Gertrude Elias
Collection
- Country:
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Holding institution:
- Marx Memorial Library
- Holding institution (official language):
- Marx Memorial Library
- Postal address:
- 37a Clerkenwell Green London Greater London United Kingdom EC1R 0DU
- Phone number:
- Telephone: 020 7253 1485
- Web address:
- https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/
- Country:
- United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
- Holding institution:
- Marx Memorial Library
- Holding institution (official language):
- Marx Memorial Library
- Postal address:
- 37a Clerkenwell Green London Greater London United Kingdom EC1R 0DU
- Phone number:
- Telephone: 020 7253 1485
- Web address:
- https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/
- Reference number:
- GE
- Title:
- Personal Papers of Gertrude Elias
- Title (official language):
- Personal Papers of Gertrude Elias
- Creator/accumulator:
- Elias, Gertrude, 1913-1998, artist and political activist
- Date(s):
- 1993/1998
- Language:
- English
- French
- German
- Extent:
- 3 boxes
- Scope and content:
- The papers mostly consist of notes, press cuttings, and typescripts relating to Elias’ political activism. Palestine, Zionism, and Nazism are the most common topics, but there is also much material on Jewish, Middle Eastern, and European history as well as South African and Russian politics and history. Smaller series cover Elias’ correspondence, child psychology, art exhibitions, and non-political essays and stories.Most material is in English, with a significant minority in German, and occasional items in French and Arabic.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Gertrude Elias, artist and political activist, was born in 1913 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Elias attended the RG8 grammar school for girls followed by the College for the Applied Arts, both in Vienna, before becoming a knitwear designer at a factory in Oberlungwitz, Germany, in 1929. She returned to Vienna in 1933 in direct response to Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany, but the deteriorating political and economic situation within Austria forced Elias to flee to London in 1938.In 1941 Elias submitted a propaganda cartoon depicting Nazis as pigs misruling a farm to the British Broadcasting Corporation, at which Eric Blair [George Orwell] was working. Elias’ work was rejected, but in 1945 Orwell published Animal Farm, using a similar premise.Elias worked in various capacities as an illustrator and textiles designer in England. From the mid-1950s Elias became increasingly interested in anti-colonial struggles. During the 1960s Elias edited the anti-colonial journal South Arabia, and from 1965 to 1972 she co-edited Liberation, the magazine of the Movement for Colonial Freedom; many illustrations and articles by Elias appear in these periodicals.From 1975 Elias exhibited her work, beginning with her role as exhibition organiser for the Camden Council for International Co-operation’s UN Decade for Women exhibit, titled The World as We See It. In 1979 her photographic exhibition Child and World was staged at the Swiss Cottage Public Library, and in 1982 Women’s Contributions to the Liberation of Humanity was displayed at the Edinburgh Festival.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Elias, Gertrude
- Subject terms:
- Correspondence
- Historical research
- Nazism
- Zionism
- Access, restrictions:
- Open
- Finding aids:
- Online catalogue see https://marx.soutron.net/Portal/Default/en-GB/RecordView/Index/60850
- Yerusha Network member:
- AIM25
- Reference number:
- GE
- Title:
- Personal Papers of Gertrude Elias
- Title (official language):
- Personal Papers of Gertrude Elias
- Creator/accumulator:
- Elias, Gertrude, 1913-1998, artist and political activist
- Date(s):
- 1993/1998
- Language:
- English
- French
- German
- Extent:
- 3 boxes
- Scope and content:
- The papers mostly consist of notes, press cuttings, and typescripts relating to Elias’ political activism. Palestine, Zionism, and Nazism are the most common topics, but there is also much material on Jewish, Middle Eastern, and European history as well as South African and Russian politics and history. Smaller series cover Elias’ correspondence, child psychology, art exhibitions, and non-political essays and stories.Most material is in English, with a significant minority in German, and occasional items in French and Arabic.
- Administrative/biographical history:
- Gertrude Elias, artist and political activist, was born in 1913 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. Elias attended the RG8 grammar school for girls followed by the College for the Applied Arts, both in Vienna, before becoming a knitwear designer at a factory in Oberlungwitz, Germany, in 1929. She returned to Vienna in 1933 in direct response to Adolf Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany, but the deteriorating political and economic situation within Austria forced Elias to flee to London in 1938.In 1941 Elias submitted a propaganda cartoon depicting Nazis as pigs misruling a farm to the British Broadcasting Corporation, at which Eric Blair [George Orwell] was working. Elias’ work was rejected, but in 1945 Orwell published Animal Farm, using a similar premise.Elias worked in various capacities as an illustrator and textiles designer in England. From the mid-1950s Elias became increasingly interested in anti-colonial struggles. During the 1960s Elias edited the anti-colonial journal South Arabia, and from 1965 to 1972 she co-edited Liberation, the magazine of the Movement for Colonial Freedom; many illustrations and articles by Elias appear in these periodicals.From 1975 Elias exhibited her work, beginning with her role as exhibition organiser for the Camden Council for International Co-operation’s UN Decade for Women exhibit, titled The World as We See It. In 1979 her photographic exhibition Child and World was staged at the Swiss Cottage Public Library, and in 1982 Women’s Contributions to the Liberation of Humanity was displayed at the Edinburgh Festival.
- Access points: persons/families:
- Elias, Gertrude
- Subject terms:
- Correspondence
- Historical research
- Nazism
- Zionism
- Access, restrictions:
- Open
- Finding aids:
- Online catalogue see https://marx.soutron.net/Portal/Default/en-GB/RecordView/Index/60850
- Yerusha Network member:
- AIM25
