Beatrice Zweig

The journeys of an artist might best characterise her biography. Looking at her photos , we discover the ideal image of an unorthodox unconventional  bohemian spirit at the beginning of the last century. The photos are not just interesting and extravagant, they are defined by their differentness, penetrated by her melancholy beauty and fragility.

Both she and her husband Arnold Zweig- who shared the same surname as cousins-were part of that group of artists who used the spaces of the post war republic to challenge social and cultural conventions. “We are different , we belong to a new emerging world. Let me paint, let him write”.

Driven by the energy and joy of their differentness , creating the freedoms that both of them needed to survive. Arnold Zweig was an incredibly successful writer , but she didn’t live in his shadow. She created her own light and shadows in her painting ,at the same time as bringing up two young children. They both decided to leave Hitler Germany in 1933 recognising the obvious dangers and moved to Palestine.

Palestine invigorated Dita’s (Dita was the name which she was called) creativity- the light, the sounds, the vegetation , the smells of the orient inspired her. Her husband lost his language and his readership, she discovered a world of artistic possibility. Surprisingly perhaps Arnold took much more responsibility for the children in Palestine, thus creating the space that Dita needed for her creative work.

Arnold was greatly handicapped by his deteriorating eyesight, she became his chauffeur and with her Adler - a German car-she found it possible to glide through the Palestinian landscapes, either on her own or with him as her passenger. Palestine was not her promised land, but it offered her the opportunity of feeling comfortable and unthreatened in her Jewishness. She wasn’t put off by the hostility that German Jews experienced, and she didn’t become a disappointed Zionist like her husband, she was a progressive who might distrust Zionist nationalism, without rejecting the whole project.

The decision to leave the newly founded Jewish State in 1948 disrupted her life and her art. Arnold could not resist the recognition and honours offered him by the GDR/DDR, where he could be printed and read again after years of neglect , so the decision was made to return. She didn’t want to be in Berlin ,or in any other part of Germany- she still very much belonged to her devastated people, and was too aware of the murderous reality that the two new German states were being built upon.