Charlotte Salomon

"..And with dream awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew she had to vanish for a while from the human surface and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths. And from that came Life or Theater???"

"That which van Gogh attained later in life.. ..a brushstroke of unprecedented lightness, which unfortunately seems to have a distinctly pathological side, I have attained already.."

"I became my mother, my grandmother. I learned to travel all their paths and became all of them.. .I knew I had a mission, and no power on earth could stop me."

"My life began when my grandmother decided to take hers, when I found out that my mother's whole family did the same thing [told bij het grandfather c. 1941], when I found out that I am the only one surviving, and when I felt the same inclination deep inside of me, craving for despair and death."

"Keep this safe, it is my whole life."

"'Life? or Theater?' - A Play with Music - C.S."

"Consisting of a 'Prelude', a 'Main Section', and an 'Epilogue' - (dedicated to Ottillie Moore)"

"'The tri-coloured play with music begins' (in Deutsch: Das Drei Farben Singespiel beginnt..) the cast is as follows Dr. and MRS. Knarre, a married couple Franziska and Charlotte, their daughters Dr. Kahn, a physician Charlotte Kahn, his daughter Paulinka Bimbam, a singer Dr. Singsong, a versatile person Professor Klingklang, a famous conductor An Art teacher Professor and Students at an art academy and Chorus.. ..The action takes places during the years 1913 to 1940 in Germany, later in Nice, France"

"..Since I myself needed a year to discover the significance of this strange work, many of the texts and tunes, particularly in the first paintings, elude my memory and must - like the creation as a whole so it seems to me - remain shrouded in darkness."

"The creation of the following paintings is to be imagined as follows: A person is sitting beside the sea. She is painting. A tune suddenly enters her mind. As she starts to hum it, she notices that the tune exactly matches what she is trying to commit to paper. A texts forms in her head, and she starts to sing the tune, with her own words, over and over again in a loud voice until the painting seems complete. Frequently, several texts take shape, and the result is a duet, or it.."

"..even happens that each character has to sing a different text, resulting in a chorus. The varied nature of the paintings should be attributed less to the author than to the varies nature of the characters to be portrayed. The author [= Charlotte Salomon] has tried.. ..to go completely out of herself to allow the characters to sing or speak in their own voices. In order to achieve this, many artistic values had to be renounced, but I hope that.. ..this will be forgiven. - The author, St. Jean, August 1940/42"

"Franziska (mother of Charlotte): 'In Heaven everything is much more beautiful than here in earth – and when your Mummy has turned into a little angel she'll.. ..bring a letter, telling her what's like in Heaven..'. Franziska was of somewhat sentimental disposition."

"Fashion drawing teacher: Yes, drawing is a difficult art. One has to have some talent for it - and unfortunately you haven't. Charlotte: 'No, I refuse to stay here with this stupid old cow, where through the dirty window even the sun's bright ray can only dimly play.. .Only he who dares can win. Only he who dares can begin."

"Daberlohn's diagnosis [about the etching she made as his portrait] holds encouragement for Charlotte.. ..Daberlohn (in his letter) 'In my opinion you are destined to create something above average.' .. ..'Above average.' She is elated by his letter and really feels quite proud.. .While beginning to paint the buttercup-strewn meadow where she happens to be sitting, she decides to make his prophecy come true and actually create something 'above average'."

"Charlotte: 'I have some more [paintings she recently made] to show you'. Daberlohn: Well, let's meet this evening... .. Isn't it absurd to address each other so formally? You're such a baby – here, let me hold your hand.. ..Real painter's hands'. Charlotte: 'To me they're just ugly'.. ..'You would be a wonderful subject for a portrait -' Daberlohn (to himself) : 'Little girl, if you only knew what one has to go through to be able to paint'."

"The following pictures are those which to the author seem the strangest. Without doubt they have their origin in Michelangelo Rome series of the main section that was sung with the loudest and most penetrating voice of this entire opus. ('Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo')"

"Daberlohn writes: 'The creation of Adam is God's final act which He hurls from His heights into the depths. It is not the same God Who creates eve. This is the tragedy of the king who must hand over his dominion to his son…"

"Daberlohn: 'One must first go into oneself to be able to go out of oneself. One means of going out of oneself is, for me, the movie, man's machine for producing himself'."

"..Thus in the presence of the scorching sun, purple sea, and luxuriant blossoms, the memory of an experience of her fervid early love [Daberlohn = Alfred Wolfsohn ] came back to her. And she tried to visualize that face, that figure. And Io, she succeeded, and she noticed that this was a very interesting occupation. For she discovered that that figure..."

"...might possibly preserve her from suicide inasmuch as she remembered one of Amadeus's favorite utterances: Love, know thyself first in order to love thy neighbour. And then: one has to go into oneself - into one's childhood - to be able to go out of oneself. And he felt that the movie was the machine of modern man as a means of going out of oneself. And finally she recalled the famous couple embracing under a bathrobe, functioning as one person."

"And now something strange happened to our Charlotte. While busy painting, as she always was, she fell asleep in the midday sun. And when she awoke, the finished portrait of her once so ardently beloved Daberlohn [ = Alfred Wolfsohn ] lay before her. However, she tore the sheet into a hundred thousand shreds.. ..she sought for an explanation.. .Then her glace fell on one of her old paintings representing Death and the Maiden. And suddenly she knew..."

"...two things. First that Daberlohn's eyes seemed to say: 'Death and the Maiden, that is the two of us;' and second, that she still loved him as much as ever. And if he was Death, then everything was alright, then she did not have to kill herself like her ancestors.. .So she was in fact the living model for his theories, and she remembered..."

"...his book, Orpheus, or the Way to a Death Mask, of which he had said that he regretted not having written it as a poem. And with dream-awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew: she had to vanish for a while from the human plane and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths."

"And from that came: Life or Theatre?"

"Life or Theatre?"

"[Charlotte's unremitting silence] forced me to play the clown.. ..She was extraordinarily taciturn, and unable to break through and emerge from the barrier that she had built round herself."

"One day her grandmother brought her to see me, and there she stood, slender, blue eyed.. .The conversation was of no interest for her. The only thing that absorbed her for the moment was the southern landscape Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. All this light and colour was new to her and struck a profound chord in her mystical, sensitive nature.. .All day long she sat in the garden, drawing and painting. Or she would lie for hours under an orange tree, looking in the blue sky.. .Wherever she happened to be, she pulled out her sketchbook. She had to unburden herself, and her language was pencil or brush.."

"We know from Marthe Pècher, the owner of a small hotel in St. Jean Cap Ferrat where Charlotte Salomon completed her work, that she always hummed while working. The music she uses to accompany her paintings is a medley of classical themes: Carmen by Bizet, Orpheus & Euridice by Gluck, melodies by Bach, but also popular tunes, folk-songs, film music. In the second series she hardly ever mentions the music - apparently she did not need it any more to create the intended effect on the reader."

"In a few words she [Charlotte] touches on the key points of his [ = Alfred Wolfsohn, her former lover in Germany, she called Amadeus Daberlohn in her work] philosophies, rushing past them - Adam and Eve, Original Sin, Judaism, Christianity, The film ass a modern menas to gain insight into oneself: the voice of the infant, leading to the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice, to singing - the gold in the throat expressing the soul."

"And yet, apart from a handful of depictions of the Third Reich, Salomon's work is not about the Holocaust at all but, rather, about herself, her family, love, creativity, death, Nietzsche, Goethe, Richard Tauber, Michelangelo, and Beethoven. It chronicles the genesis of an artist from a family of dark secrets - mental illness, nervous breakdowns, molestation, suicides, drug overdoses, and Freudian love triangles: a harbinger to our age of grand confessionals."

"A few days later the grandfather feels a sharp pain, He leaves the house and walks toward the pharmacy. He finally reaches it, but collapses just outside. And dies. Having learnt the news, Charlotte felt such relief, as if a weight fell off her shoulders. In the back of her mind, she wanted the grandfather to leave for so many times.. .Did Charlotte precipitate this event? Later, in one of the letters, she confessed that she had poisoned her grandfather. Is it true? Or the theatre again? This is incredible and still acceptable, If you remember how much grief he [the granfather] brought to her, - constant scolding, and contempt for her work, And sexual harassment.."