All We Know About Them

Spatial installation (2021)

The project is an homage to Christian Boltanski’s Le Lycée Chases, one of the earliest visual art works dealing with the extermination of European Jewry. The installation consists of 24 backlit photographs on electroluminescent panels, showing students and a teacher of a high school class in Vienna in 1931. Through a choreography of illumination, juxtaposed with historical material of art and a school community in exile, the portraits question some myths of a modernist perspective on the Holocaust.
description
photos

All We Know About Them

Spatial installation (2021)

The project is an homage to Christian Boltanski’s Le Lycée Chases, one of the earliest visual art works dealing with the extermination of European Jewry. The installation consists of 24 backlit photographs on electroluminescent panels, showing students and a teacher of a high school class in Vienna in 1931. Through a choreography of illumination, juxtaposed with historical material of art and a school community in exile, the portraits question some myths of a modernist perspective on the Holocaust.
description
photos
All We Know About Them
The photograph was taken in 1931. It depicts the 6th grade of Chajes Gymnasium, Vienna’s Jewish high school: Berta Bernstein, Toni Dresdner, Paula Drimmer, Bronja Feldmann, Alice Feldstein, Armin Freudmann, Gideon Gelernter, Leo Glückselig, Richard Glückselig, Nathan Kalischer, Schulim Klahr, Walter Kornblüth, Miriam Landau, Oswald Lehrer, Paula Müller, Eva Neumann, Norbert Rosner, Marta Schönberg, Rosi Seidmann, Leo Spiegel, Shoshana Süssmann, Gina Weinhart, Emanuel Zuckerberg, and their teacher Israel Kästenbaum.

The photo was published in 1984 on the cover of the book “Matzo Island”, an homage to Vienna’s Jewish district before its destruction during Nazism. Three years later it served the French artist Christian Boltanski as a basis for his installation “Le Lycée Chases”. Through this piece the 23 students and their teacher became protagonists of art history. But what makes a protagonist?

CHAYES REUNION/NEW YORK/OCTOBER 1990. Some 55 Chajesniks and their spouses and/or girlfriends, mostly living on the east coast of the US participated at the reunion on October 28, 1990 at the Lincoln Square Synagogue in Manhattan. The display of old class photos brought back many memories of yore. Not all could agree on the identification of faces of classmates, all so young and hopeful of some fifty years ago. At the reunion photos of individual participants were also taken but alas no group picture. The whole affair was a most enjoyable occasion, meeting old friends, some not seen for decades and renewing old acquaintances. Remarks by some of the Chajesniks rounded out a memorable and nostalgic event.
Chajes Newsletter, 1990
(Photos: Lena Prehal)