Letters Yad Vashem, Israël III.
Letterby Susanne Ledermann to Paulieneke Citroen, her niece.
Lieve Paulieneke,
You’re lucky again in the way only a child can be lucky—one whose name begins with the letters P, A, U and ends with L, I, E, N, E, K, and E.
Because when I received your melodious letter, I had just felt like writing one myself. So I sat down and grabbed a pen…
Do you see this writing paper? It’s from Aunt Lalla. Nothing is good enough for you! (If you were here, I would press you painfully tight against my bosom—but that’s not possible, because you’re not here and neither is my bosom.)
There you have it again. What luck that you have a German teacher who doesn’t actually know German! Ours does know it—but I don’t. That’s how things go in the world. A disgrace to the whole family—past, present, and future generations whose name I bear—if I get a 6 in German.
We now have a kind of leisure time at school on Wednesday afternoons where you can also play table tennis. Gabi is no longer with us; she’s back with the Goslars. The book still hasn’t arrived, and my longing for that truly beautiful book is impossible to control (you’d say so too, right?).
Well then, brother—oh no, sister—oh no, cousin—many thanks again for your nice epistle, and shaking your hand, kissing you, sending greetings to the family, thanking Aunt Lien for her note and kissing her, I sign,
your Susanne.
P.S. I forbid you from getting sick in the future without my permission, understood?
—Susanne
Dear Uncle Paul,
You are a savior in time of need (never knew that, did you?), because when your wonderful gift arrived, I had just spent my last three cents on a five-cent ice cream (borrowed 2 cents).
You’re lucky again in the way only a child can be lucky—one whose name begins with the letters P, A, U and ends with L, I, E, N, E, K, and E.
Because when I received your melodious letter, I had just felt like writing one myself. So I sat down and grabbed a pen…
Do you see this writing paper? It’s from Aunt Lalla. Nothing is good enough for you! (If you were here, I would press you painfully tight against my bosom—but that’s not possible, because you’re not here and neither is my bosom.)
There you have it again. What luck that you have a German teacher who doesn’t actually know German! Ours does know it—but I don’t. That’s how things go in the world. A disgrace to the whole family—past, present, and future generations whose name I bear—if I get a 6 in German.
We now have a kind of leisure time at school on Wednesday afternoons where you can also play table tennis. Gabi is no longer with us; she’s back with the Goslars. The book still hasn’t arrived, and my longing for that truly beautiful book is impossible to control (you’d say so too, right?).
Well then, brother—oh no, sister—oh no, cousin—many thanks again for your nice epistle, and shaking your hand, kissing you, sending greetings to the family, thanking Aunt Lien for her note and kissing her, I sign,
your Susanne.
P.S. I forbid you from getting sick in the future without my permission, understood?
—Susanne
Dear Uncle Paul,
You are a savior in time of need (never knew that, did you?), because when your wonderful gift arrived, I had just spent my last three cents on a five-cent ice cream (borrowed 2 cents).
Part of a letter by Susanne Lederman to her niece Paulieneke, written medio december 1942.
But now at least I can give something to my parents + Barbara, Omi, and the great-aunts with Chanukah.
Annoying, such a big sister! Now she has a boyfriend! Quite nice, actually—but now I have to give him something too. Oh well, it’ll be fine. I’ll just give everyone a roll of licorice and that’ll be that. Handy, having such a rich uncle! Never had one before. “My rich uncle from Wassenaar!” Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Today I stayed home from school because of a possible roundup. Of course nothing happened. But there was excitement, and that’s what matters in the end. Our school has to move—I think tomorrow. Then we’ll be put into the Lyceum. Not nice at all! I think a proper school belongs in its own building. None of us can stand the Lyceum—except me. There’ll be murder and mayhem because of that!
Now I don’t know whether I should go to my old school tomorrow (which is going back to the municipality) or to the new one. I’ll just go to the old one first. If I end up being late at the new one, I won’t get punished (special case).
Well then, bye,
Handshake, Susanne
Annoying, such a big sister! Now she has a boyfriend! Quite nice, actually—but now I have to give him something too. Oh well, it’ll be fine. I’ll just give everyone a roll of licorice and that’ll be that. Handy, having such a rich uncle! Never had one before. “My rich uncle from Wassenaar!” Sounds good, doesn’t it?
Today I stayed home from school because of a possible roundup. Of course nothing happened. But there was excitement, and that’s what matters in the end. Our school has to move—I think tomorrow. Then we’ll be put into the Lyceum. Not nice at all! I think a proper school belongs in its own building. None of us can stand the Lyceum—except me. There’ll be murder and mayhem because of that!
Now I don’t know whether I should go to my old school tomorrow (which is going back to the municipality) or to the new one. I’ll just go to the old one first. If I end up being late at the new one, I won’t get punished (special case).
Well then, bye,
Handshake, Susanne
My beloved eldest, and you two little women who together make such a lovely pair! 14-12-1942
Now I have also found a messenger who is willing to bring you my birthday cake.
I embrace you in my thoughts as well, each of you individually, very warmly, with all the good wishes for you in my heart—wishes which, because you already know them, I hardly need to put into words. Only this one: that we may never again have to spend this day apart from one another.
It still feels strange to me that I cannot rejoice exuberantly at spending this day together with you in the happy harmony of earlier years; yet one can think they are gone, and still smile because they have been, and hopefully will return again.
There you are now, all three of you, lying in bed early in the morning. Paulieneke can hardly wait to come in with her surprises; and when he or she has delighted in and marveled at them enough, mother immediately reaches under the bed and brings out the presents. And Paulchen is not empty-handed either—everyone gets their share, and the unwrapping begins all over again.
Ah, it does one so much good just to think about it. And you are right, my boy—the good has remained with us, now doubly so.
I will now begin preparing the cake for Bendien, and I hope it won’t be too troublesome for Panki to bring along the bottle intended for this. When it arrives, you can enjoy it together with your friends as well. They will surely come, as always, in the evening after dinner. And perhaps Aunt Fietje can join too.
How are you all doing now? Write soon and in detail—my warmest thoughts are with you. Is the sausage already finished and well made? Hopefully you and Paulchen will soon be able to be of good service again.
I was able to pass Hans and Ruth’s letters to Franz the very same day, when he appeared unexpectedly, so you may already have received them. You will surely send them a reply again soon. Perhaps they imagine their life there somewhat differently than it has turned out. At first everything seemed so fairy-tale-like, and it is certainly not easy for them. But for freedom and security, many sacrifices must be made.
So then, my beloved three, this was the so-called birthday letter, which I close with a heartfelt embrace.
All my love!
Your Mutti.
Now I have also found a messenger who is willing to bring you my birthday cake.
I embrace you in my thoughts as well, each of you individually, very warmly, with all the good wishes for you in my heart—wishes which, because you already know them, I hardly need to put into words. Only this one: that we may never again have to spend this day apart from one another.
It still feels strange to me that I cannot rejoice exuberantly at spending this day together with you in the happy harmony of earlier years; yet one can think they are gone, and still smile because they have been, and hopefully will return again.
There you are now, all three of you, lying in bed early in the morning. Paulieneke can hardly wait to come in with her surprises; and when he or she has delighted in and marveled at them enough, mother immediately reaches under the bed and brings out the presents. And Paulchen is not empty-handed either—everyone gets their share, and the unwrapping begins all over again.
Ah, it does one so much good just to think about it. And you are right, my boy—the good has remained with us, now doubly so.
I will now begin preparing the cake for Bendien, and I hope it won’t be too troublesome for Panki to bring along the bottle intended for this. When it arrives, you can enjoy it together with your friends as well. They will surely come, as always, in the evening after dinner. And perhaps Aunt Fietje can join too.
How are you all doing now? Write soon and in detail—my warmest thoughts are with you. Is the sausage already finished and well made? Hopefully you and Paulchen will soon be able to be of good service again.
I was able to pass Hans and Ruth’s letters to Franz the very same day, when he appeared unexpectedly, so you may already have received them. You will surely send them a reply again soon. Perhaps they imagine their life there somewhat differently than it has turned out. At first everything seemed so fairy-tale-like, and it is certainly not easy for them. But for freedom and security, many sacrifices must be made.
So then, my beloved three, this was the so-called birthday letter, which I close with a heartfelt embrace.
All my love!
Your Mutti.
Brief van Ellen Citroen-Philippi aan haar zoon Paul en zijn gezin.
Roelof Paul Citroen (Berlin, 15 December 1896 – Wassenaar, 13 March 1983) was a Dutch painter, draughtsman, and collage artist, as well as an art collector, photographer, and stamp designer. He was a co-founder of the Nieuwe Kunstschool in Amsterdam and, as a teacher, played an important role in the history of 20th-century Dutch art.
Paul Citroen grew up in Berlin in a Jewish family. His Dutch father, Hendrik Roelof Citroen (1865–1932), ran a fur business in Berlin. His mother, Ellen Philippi (1872–1945), was of Berlin-Jewish origin. Citroen described the environment in which he grew up as “bourgeois.” There was much attention to art and culture, and his early talent for drawing was encouraged by his parents. Paul attended the Askanisches Gymnasium. At the age of fourteen, he left the Gymnasium for an art school. Two years later, in 1912, he continued his studies at the Studien-Ateliers für Malerei und Plastik, where he received a traditional naturalistic training. He became interested in the avant-garde developing in Berlin and became acquainted with modern movements such as Expressionism, Dadaism, and Cubism.
Because his father was Dutch, Paul was mobilized into the Dutch army during the First World War. Some details of this can be found in the military register of the municipality of Amsterdam. On 29 May 1915, Paul, measuring 1707 millimeters in height, was declared fit for service; however, due to a “varicose vein rupture,” it was advised not to place him in mounted troops. There are reports that he may have been stationed in Alkmaar; however, the register notes an initial placement in December with the infantry in Naarden. By Christmas 1915, he was already granted postponement of initial training and returned to Germany on extended leave. This was prolonged until 1918, and in September of that year he was definitively declared unfit for service (“discharged due to physical defects”).
Meanwhile, in 1917, Citroen had become the representative for the Netherlands of the Berlin expressionist art gallery Der Sturm, run by Herwarth Walden. This brought him into the book trade, and between 1916 and 1918 he continued to visit the Netherlands regularly. After the war, he resumed his artistic training and attended the Hochschule für die Bildenden Künste in Berlin (now the Universität der Künste Berlin) from 1919 to 1921. During this period, he began collecting art, particularly works by painters of Der Blaue Reiter. With his school friend Erwin Blumenfeld—later a world-famous photographer, who married Lena Citroen (a cousin of Paul) in 1921—he had already carried out early photographic experiments. From 1922 to 1924, he completed his studies at the Bauhaus in Weimar. There, his teachers included Johannes Itten and László Moholy-Nagy, as well as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, who had joined the Bauhaus after Der Blaue Reiter.
Citroen continued to travel internationally and trade in art and—somewhat under pressure from his father—in furs as well. After brief stays in Switzerland and Paris, he settled permanently in Amsterdam at the end of 1928, where he married Céline (Lien) Bendien in 1929. As a wedding gift, his in-laws gave him his first (9 × 6 cm) camera. In 1930, their only child was born, a daughter whom they named PauLien. In 1936, the family moved from Amsterdam to Wassenaar, where Citroen lived until his death.
The Second World War had a profound impact on Citroen. Because of their Jewish background, the family had to go into hiding and survived with the help of resistance members. On 28 August 1942, Citroen was warned of an imminent arrest. He fled to Maria Helena Friedlaender, who was sheltering more people in hiding in the attic of her house in Wassenaar. Maria was the non-Jewish wife of Henri Friedlaender (a well-known graphic artist), a Jewish childhood friend of Citroen from Berlin. Henri himself was hiding in the garden house in Wassenaar during the war years.
After the Citroen family had been in hiding with the Friedlaenders for over a year, a safer location had to be found in early 1944. Céline and Paulien found shelter at the publishing house “De Driehoek” of Henri Methorst in ’s-Graveland. Paul moved to a hiding place in Laren. During the war, he continued to work; in this period of isolation, this mainly meant creating self-portraits. After D-Day in June 1944, he rejoined his wife and daughter in ’s-Graveland. As far as is known, he was able to remain there until the end of 1944; afterward, possibly separated from his family, he is believed to have stayed at several hiding addresses in the countryside.
During the period in hiding, Citroen’s intensive contact with other artists and his friends had almost completely disappeared. From this wartime period date several subdued self-portraits and family portraits, especially charcoal drawings. This lesser-known body of work reflects Citroen’s state of mind: personal and restrained in tone. Only after the war was he able to actively resume his preferred genre, portrait painting.
Paul Citroen’s father had died in 1932, before Hitler’s rise to power. His mother perished in Bergen-Belsen shortly before the end of the war. Paul’s sister Ilse and her husband were murdered in Auschwitz.
The self-portrait occupies a central place in Citroen’s oeuvre. Nevertheless, Metropolis (1923)—a photo collage about “the big city”—is one of his best-known early works. It bears the hallmarks of Bauhaus and Dadaism. The work inspired the German director Fritz Lang in making his film classic Metropolis (1927). Citroen later said that the idea for Metropolis came to him after seeing a postcard made by his friend Erwin Blumenfeld, composed of cut-out images of houses. Metropolis is preserved in the print room of Leiden University Library, which also holds Citroen’s negative archive, donated in 1986 by his widow Christi Frisch.
Before his career as a painter, Citroen had developed into a highly accomplished photographer. While he initially focused on amateur family photography, between 1930 and 1935 he devoted himself to professional portrait photography. The art of portraiture, which he would practice throughout his life, thus began for him in photography. At the end of 1924, his Bauhaus friend Otto Umbehr familiarized him further with this “new medium.” By applying it as an art form, Citroen rode the wave of New Photography.
However, his breakthrough only came in 1929, when his Berlin friend Marianne Breslauer—briefly a student of Man Ray—invited him to Paris. As early as 1928, at the age of eighteen, she had made an iconic photograph of him. He was fascinated by her, and she may have inspired him to pursue nude photography, a genre he practiced extensively for a time. It was also Breslauer who introduced him to Werner Rohde, an artist-photographer from Bremen temporarily living in Paris. Citroen became close friends with him, and they engaged in in-depth discussions about László Moholy-Nagy’s Bauhaus book Malerei Fotografie Film (1925). In Citroen’s view, photography limited (his) possibilities for artistic expression, and technical knowledge of photography was never a priority for him.
Although Citroen’s photographs clearly show influences from his Bauhaus years and his affinity with Blumenfeld, they run counter to the trends of the time through their looser style and occasional use of blur. Citroen followed his feeling and intuition, paying close attention to the posture and facial expression of his models. In photography, however, he missed the physical relationship with the material. For Citroen, as a “people person,” drawing and painting were ways to come closer to someone. Many well-known artists who appeared before his camera later posed for a painting or drawing by his hand.
Encouraged by the artists around him, Citroen conceived the idea of compiling a book on contemporary Dutch painting. In 1931, the publisher De Spieghel in Amsterdam released Palet: A Book Devoted to Contemporary Dutch Painting. In addition to portraits of the artists by Citroen, it included reproductions of their works, as well as their own written contributions in prose or poetry—thus offering a broad palette.
Citroen photographed, among others, the sculptors John Rädecker and Hildo Krop, the painters Else Berg and Carel Willink, the architect Gerrit Rietveld, and the performers Chaja Goldstein and Estella Reed. Of the latter two, series of portraits exist that move from photograph to drawing to oil painting. This progression also illustrates Citroen’s artistic development and working method.
Something similar applies to his contacts with the writer and cabaret artist Erika Mann, the eldest daughter of Thomas Mann. In 1934, Citroen became acquainted with the Mann family and met Thomas Mann for the first time. In 1935, Erika Mann asked Citroen to make a portrait drawing of her as a surprise for her father’s 60th birthday. Citroen created this portrait partly based on photographs he had taken of her. Reportedly, Thomas Mann was very pleased with it. In later years (1939, 1947, and 1955), Citroen also made three portraits of him during his stays in Noordwijk aan Zee. Various internationally renowned colleagues from the expressionist movement were portrayed by Citroen, including Max Ernst, Otto Dix, Oskar Kokoschka, and Marc Chagall.
With his Bauhaus training as a foundation, Citroen painted abstract compositions in the 1920s and 1930s and experimented with color and form. This was especially influenced by his teacher Johannes Itten. Kandinsky also contributed through his teachings on analysis and synthesis, particularly in exercises involving theoretical and emotional contrasts in color and materials. Building on the work of his teachers and following the Bauhaus example, Citroen co-founded the Nieuwe Kunstschool in Amsterdam in 1933 together with Charles Roelofsz. Despite financial difficulties, the school managed to continue until 1943, when German raids made further operation impossible.
Partly due to financial constraints in Amsterdam, Citroen also began teaching in 1937 at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. Apart from interruptions during the war, he remained there until 1960. Among his students were Co Westerik, Hermanus Berserik, Kees Bol, and Jan Wolkers; Citroen’s influence is particularly visible in the work of Berserik. There was close contact and mutual influence among the teachers at the KABK, including Willem Schrofer, Rein Draijer, and Willem Jacob Rozendaal. They opposed the popular CoBrA movement and instead drew their more figurative inspiration from the Barbizon School and the Hague School. Together with other artist groups from The Hague region—such as Verve and the Posthoorn Group—they formed a collective movement known as the New Hague School.
Citroen owes his public recognition primarily to his paintings. His work moves between modernism, expressionism, and portraiture. He is regarded as a bridge between the German avant-garde (Bauhaus) and Dutch artistic practice. His (self-)portraits—drawings and paintings in oil or watercolor—form the most important part of his oeuvre. His self-portraits reveal an introspective approach, often reflected in black-and-white tones (drawing and photography). By contrast, his painted portraits are expressive, also through their distinctive use of color. In some portraits, Citroen used intensified skin tones (yellow, blue, purple) to convey an inner emotional state. He created more than 7,000 portraits—described as “psychologically powerful”—in oil, drawing, and photography, depicting friends, writers, and visual artists. His oil portrait of Menno ter Braak (1939) is an example of his New Objectivity style, with sharp contours, while the eyes convey strong emotion. Nearly twenty years later, he was commissioned to create an official portrait (drawing) of Princess Beatrix. In addition to portraits, Citroen also painted landscapes and figures, often in a loose, lyrical style.
The work of Paul Citroen is included in major collections: Museum de Fundatie (Zwolle), the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Jewish Historical Museum, the Kunstmuseum in The Hague, and also in major museums in New York—see the list below.
In 1948, Citroen sold an important work by Carlo Carrà (Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1911) to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This helped to establish his reputation more firmly in the art world and the art trade.
From 1975 onwards, the province of Overijssel acquired the largest part of the Citroen collection in several phases, including the art collection he himself had built up. These works are managed by Museum de Fundatie, and several are part of its permanent exhibition.
Source: Wikipedia.
Paul Citroen grew up in Berlin in a Jewish family. His Dutch father, Hendrik Roelof Citroen (1865–1932), ran a fur business in Berlin. His mother, Ellen Philippi (1872–1945), was of Berlin-Jewish origin. Citroen described the environment in which he grew up as “bourgeois.” There was much attention to art and culture, and his early talent for drawing was encouraged by his parents. Paul attended the Askanisches Gymnasium. At the age of fourteen, he left the Gymnasium for an art school. Two years later, in 1912, he continued his studies at the Studien-Ateliers für Malerei und Plastik, where he received a traditional naturalistic training. He became interested in the avant-garde developing in Berlin and became acquainted with modern movements such as Expressionism, Dadaism, and Cubism.
Because his father was Dutch, Paul was mobilized into the Dutch army during the First World War. Some details of this can be found in the military register of the municipality of Amsterdam. On 29 May 1915, Paul, measuring 1707 millimeters in height, was declared fit for service; however, due to a “varicose vein rupture,” it was advised not to place him in mounted troops. There are reports that he may have been stationed in Alkmaar; however, the register notes an initial placement in December with the infantry in Naarden. By Christmas 1915, he was already granted postponement of initial training and returned to Germany on extended leave. This was prolonged until 1918, and in September of that year he was definitively declared unfit for service (“discharged due to physical defects”).
Meanwhile, in 1917, Citroen had become the representative for the Netherlands of the Berlin expressionist art gallery Der Sturm, run by Herwarth Walden. This brought him into the book trade, and between 1916 and 1918 he continued to visit the Netherlands regularly. After the war, he resumed his artistic training and attended the Hochschule für die Bildenden Künste in Berlin (now the Universität der Künste Berlin) from 1919 to 1921. During this period, he began collecting art, particularly works by painters of Der Blaue Reiter. With his school friend Erwin Blumenfeld—later a world-famous photographer, who married Lena Citroen (a cousin of Paul) in 1921—he had already carried out early photographic experiments. From 1922 to 1924, he completed his studies at the Bauhaus in Weimar. There, his teachers included Johannes Itten and László Moholy-Nagy, as well as Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky, who had joined the Bauhaus after Der Blaue Reiter.
Citroen continued to travel internationally and trade in art and—somewhat under pressure from his father—in furs as well. After brief stays in Switzerland and Paris, he settled permanently in Amsterdam at the end of 1928, where he married Céline (Lien) Bendien in 1929. As a wedding gift, his in-laws gave him his first (9 × 6 cm) camera. In 1930, their only child was born, a daughter whom they named PauLien. In 1936, the family moved from Amsterdam to Wassenaar, where Citroen lived until his death.
The Second World War had a profound impact on Citroen. Because of their Jewish background, the family had to go into hiding and survived with the help of resistance members. On 28 August 1942, Citroen was warned of an imminent arrest. He fled to Maria Helena Friedlaender, who was sheltering more people in hiding in the attic of her house in Wassenaar. Maria was the non-Jewish wife of Henri Friedlaender (a well-known graphic artist), a Jewish childhood friend of Citroen from Berlin. Henri himself was hiding in the garden house in Wassenaar during the war years.
After the Citroen family had been in hiding with the Friedlaenders for over a year, a safer location had to be found in early 1944. Céline and Paulien found shelter at the publishing house “De Driehoek” of Henri Methorst in ’s-Graveland. Paul moved to a hiding place in Laren. During the war, he continued to work; in this period of isolation, this mainly meant creating self-portraits. After D-Day in June 1944, he rejoined his wife and daughter in ’s-Graveland. As far as is known, he was able to remain there until the end of 1944; afterward, possibly separated from his family, he is believed to have stayed at several hiding addresses in the countryside.
During the period in hiding, Citroen’s intensive contact with other artists and his friends had almost completely disappeared. From this wartime period date several subdued self-portraits and family portraits, especially charcoal drawings. This lesser-known body of work reflects Citroen’s state of mind: personal and restrained in tone. Only after the war was he able to actively resume his preferred genre, portrait painting.
Paul Citroen’s father had died in 1932, before Hitler’s rise to power. His mother perished in Bergen-Belsen shortly before the end of the war. Paul’s sister Ilse and her husband were murdered in Auschwitz.
The self-portrait occupies a central place in Citroen’s oeuvre. Nevertheless, Metropolis (1923)—a photo collage about “the big city”—is one of his best-known early works. It bears the hallmarks of Bauhaus and Dadaism. The work inspired the German director Fritz Lang in making his film classic Metropolis (1927). Citroen later said that the idea for Metropolis came to him after seeing a postcard made by his friend Erwin Blumenfeld, composed of cut-out images of houses. Metropolis is preserved in the print room of Leiden University Library, which also holds Citroen’s negative archive, donated in 1986 by his widow Christi Frisch.
Before his career as a painter, Citroen had developed into a highly accomplished photographer. While he initially focused on amateur family photography, between 1930 and 1935 he devoted himself to professional portrait photography. The art of portraiture, which he would practice throughout his life, thus began for him in photography. At the end of 1924, his Bauhaus friend Otto Umbehr familiarized him further with this “new medium.” By applying it as an art form, Citroen rode the wave of New Photography.
However, his breakthrough only came in 1929, when his Berlin friend Marianne Breslauer—briefly a student of Man Ray—invited him to Paris. As early as 1928, at the age of eighteen, she had made an iconic photograph of him. He was fascinated by her, and she may have inspired him to pursue nude photography, a genre he practiced extensively for a time. It was also Breslauer who introduced him to Werner Rohde, an artist-photographer from Bremen temporarily living in Paris. Citroen became close friends with him, and they engaged in in-depth discussions about László Moholy-Nagy’s Bauhaus book Malerei Fotografie Film (1925). In Citroen’s view, photography limited (his) possibilities for artistic expression, and technical knowledge of photography was never a priority for him.
Although Citroen’s photographs clearly show influences from his Bauhaus years and his affinity with Blumenfeld, they run counter to the trends of the time through their looser style and occasional use of blur. Citroen followed his feeling and intuition, paying close attention to the posture and facial expression of his models. In photography, however, he missed the physical relationship with the material. For Citroen, as a “people person,” drawing and painting were ways to come closer to someone. Many well-known artists who appeared before his camera later posed for a painting or drawing by his hand.
Encouraged by the artists around him, Citroen conceived the idea of compiling a book on contemporary Dutch painting. In 1931, the publisher De Spieghel in Amsterdam released Palet: A Book Devoted to Contemporary Dutch Painting. In addition to portraits of the artists by Citroen, it included reproductions of their works, as well as their own written contributions in prose or poetry—thus offering a broad palette.
Citroen photographed, among others, the sculptors John Rädecker and Hildo Krop, the painters Else Berg and Carel Willink, the architect Gerrit Rietveld, and the performers Chaja Goldstein and Estella Reed. Of the latter two, series of portraits exist that move from photograph to drawing to oil painting. This progression also illustrates Citroen’s artistic development and working method.
Something similar applies to his contacts with the writer and cabaret artist Erika Mann, the eldest daughter of Thomas Mann. In 1934, Citroen became acquainted with the Mann family and met Thomas Mann for the first time. In 1935, Erika Mann asked Citroen to make a portrait drawing of her as a surprise for her father’s 60th birthday. Citroen created this portrait partly based on photographs he had taken of her. Reportedly, Thomas Mann was very pleased with it. In later years (1939, 1947, and 1955), Citroen also made three portraits of him during his stays in Noordwijk aan Zee. Various internationally renowned colleagues from the expressionist movement were portrayed by Citroen, including Max Ernst, Otto Dix, Oskar Kokoschka, and Marc Chagall.
With his Bauhaus training as a foundation, Citroen painted abstract compositions in the 1920s and 1930s and experimented with color and form. This was especially influenced by his teacher Johannes Itten. Kandinsky also contributed through his teachings on analysis and synthesis, particularly in exercises involving theoretical and emotional contrasts in color and materials. Building on the work of his teachers and following the Bauhaus example, Citroen co-founded the Nieuwe Kunstschool in Amsterdam in 1933 together with Charles Roelofsz. Despite financial difficulties, the school managed to continue until 1943, when German raids made further operation impossible.
Partly due to financial constraints in Amsterdam, Citroen also began teaching in 1937 at the Royal Academy of Art (KABK) in The Hague. Apart from interruptions during the war, he remained there until 1960. Among his students were Co Westerik, Hermanus Berserik, Kees Bol, and Jan Wolkers; Citroen’s influence is particularly visible in the work of Berserik. There was close contact and mutual influence among the teachers at the KABK, including Willem Schrofer, Rein Draijer, and Willem Jacob Rozendaal. They opposed the popular CoBrA movement and instead drew their more figurative inspiration from the Barbizon School and the Hague School. Together with other artist groups from The Hague region—such as Verve and the Posthoorn Group—they formed a collective movement known as the New Hague School.
Citroen owes his public recognition primarily to his paintings. His work moves between modernism, expressionism, and portraiture. He is regarded as a bridge between the German avant-garde (Bauhaus) and Dutch artistic practice. His (self-)portraits—drawings and paintings in oil or watercolor—form the most important part of his oeuvre. His self-portraits reveal an introspective approach, often reflected in black-and-white tones (drawing and photography). By contrast, his painted portraits are expressive, also through their distinctive use of color. In some portraits, Citroen used intensified skin tones (yellow, blue, purple) to convey an inner emotional state. He created more than 7,000 portraits—described as “psychologically powerful”—in oil, drawing, and photography, depicting friends, writers, and visual artists. His oil portrait of Menno ter Braak (1939) is an example of his New Objectivity style, with sharp contours, while the eyes convey strong emotion. Nearly twenty years later, he was commissioned to create an official portrait (drawing) of Princess Beatrix. In addition to portraits, Citroen also painted landscapes and figures, often in a loose, lyrical style.
The work of Paul Citroen is included in major collections: Museum de Fundatie (Zwolle), the Rijksmuseum, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, the Jewish Historical Museum, the Kunstmuseum in The Hague, and also in major museums in New York—see the list below.
In 1948, Citroen sold an important work by Carlo Carrà (Funeral of the Anarchist Galli, 1911) to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. This helped to establish his reputation more firmly in the art world and the art trade.
From 1975 onwards, the province of Overijssel acquired the largest part of the Citroen collection in several phases, including the art collection he himself had built up. These works are managed by Museum de Fundatie, and several are part of its permanent exhibition.
Source: Wikipedia.
Paulieneke & Paul Citroen.
Portret Paulieneke.
December 1942
Jaap van Duijn was appointed by the Germans as one of the gardeners in Auschwitz. During Christmas in December 1942, he was granted leave and immediately sought contact with the Jewish Council in Amsterdam. He told them about the atrocities he had witnessed, including torture and the gas chambers, but nothing was done with his information.
Jaap lived until 1982, but he never got over his frustration that he had been unable to do anything. After twenty minutes, the Jewish Council dismissed him with the message: “You will hear from us.”
Jaap van Duijn was appointed by the Germans as one of the gardeners in Auschwitz. During Christmas in December 1942, he was granted leave and immediately sought contact with the Jewish Council in Amsterdam. He told them about the atrocities he had witnessed, including torture and the gas chambers, but nothing was done with his information.
Jaap lived until 1982, but he never got over his frustration that he had been unable to do anything. After twenty minutes, the Jewish Council dismissed him with the message: “You will hear from us.”
The Whistleblower of Auschwitz
As a gardener near the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Jaap van Duijn witnessed many horrors. He was the first to attempt to warn Jews in the Netherlands. In vain.
René Zwaap, May 3, 2000 – published in issue no. 18
Jaap van Duijn, who died in 1982, never received any decoration. On the contrary, after the war the cookware salesman was rather seen as a potential enemy of the state. He was an active member of the PSP, was frequently present at pacifist meetings in Arnhem, and constantly wrote letters to the editor about the Vietnam War. Moreover, his preference for vacation destinations in Eastern Europe already made him a suspicious individual. The neighbors had several times been visited by gentlemen from the BVD who wanted to know more about the behavior of their unusual neighbor. And yet, if anyone deserved an award, it was him.
Van Duijn was in fact the first eyewitness to the mass murder in Auschwitz to attempt to warn Jews in the Netherlands. His account is summarized by Dr. L. de Jong in The Kingdom of the Netherlands During the Second World War in a single paragraph. In December 1942, the 22-year-old Dutch gardener Jaap van Duijn, working at the IG Farben factories in the vicinity of Auschwitz in Poland, returned to the Netherlands on leave. Since the summer of 1940, he had been employed by a German company that sent him in September 1942 to Monowitz, near Auschwitz. There he was tasked with planting greenery around the offices and barracks of IG Farben (a large synthetic rubber factory). A few other Dutch workers were also employed there. They all knew what was happening in Auschwitz I and II. “They smelled the sickly, sweet odor of the crematoria,” writes De Jong. Moreover, they were in contact with Dutch prisoners who had been put to work on the construction of the IG Farben factory. De Jong writes: “Those prisoners said that the Jewish Council had to be alerted. That seemed risky. After consulting with a colleague, Van Duijn decided that, as a single man, he should undertake the venture.”
When Van Duijn returned to the Netherlands at the end of 1942 together with his colleague J. de Snoo, he warned the four Jews hiding at his parents’ home in Hengelo. On their advice, he traveled to the Jewish Council in Amsterdam. There he was given half an hour to speak about the gas chambers and the crematoria. “They were shocked, they were stunned,” writes De Jong, who spoke with Van Duijn once in October 1970. “Were they convinced of the truth of what this 22-year-old, completely unknown young man from Hengelo told them? Certainly not: Van Duijn was not taken to Asscher or Cohen. On the return journey, Van Duijn told De Snoo that he had not been received very warmly by the Jewish Council; they had listened to him, but there had been doubt as to whether he might be a provocateur. He was disappointed by it.” Here De Jong’s account ends.
The story of Van Duijn, however, does not end there. He returned to Auschwitz—on the explicit ???? of his father, a man who must have ruled his family with a heavy hand. The son of Jaap van Duijn, also named Jaap, recalls: “My father was inconsolable after his visit to the Jewish Council. At that time, Dutch police officers in their street were once again taking Jewish people away. My grandfather’s house was a kind of transit shelter for people in hiding. Sometimes there were as many as six. My uncle Frans said: ‘We were glad those Jews were there, because then we didn’t get beaten as much by the old man.’ That uncle, four years younger than my father, was sent to Auschwitz with him in 1943. That was my grandfather’s decision. He had to keep my father company in that hell. Otherwise there might have been a house search at home, with all the consequences that would bring.”
The two brothers from Hengelo remained in Auschwitz, in the immediate vicinity of the extermination camps, until the end of the war and witnessed many horrors. Van Duijn Jr. recounts: “At the IG Farben factories, they saw how Jewish forced laborers fought each other just to get hold of a shovel so they could work. They saw with their own eyes how the Kapos of Auschwitz smashed the skulls of their prisoners. My uncle told me how the IG Farben factory was protected against bombing raids. Before air attacks, some people would ride around on bicycles, turning taps on barrels placed around the factories. This caused a chemical reaction and produced a white smoke resembling wool. It blocked the view of the English aircraft.” Jaap van Duijn Sr. remained in Poland until after the liberation of Auschwitz by Russian troops on January 27, 1945.
His brother Frans had already moved westward in the wake of the retreating German army. Jaap, however, stayed behind to support his pregnant wife. On April 3, 1945, he married a young Polish woman from Auschwitz. Their firstborn child would die shortly after birth. Once back in the Netherlands, happiness again largely eluded him. Van Duijn Jr. says: “There was a lot of tension at home, mainly due to cultural differences. Ashtrays would fly across the room. The biggest mistake my grandmother made when her son returned from Poland after the war was giving him a goodnight kiss in the bedroom. My mother never forgave her for that. A mother kissing her son in the presence of his wife in the bedroom—that simply didn’t exist in her Polish village.”
Van Duijn remembers his father mainly as a hypochondriac, a nervous and insecure man. “To me, my father was like a big child. Realizing that about your own father at the age of eight is very depressing. I still see him sitting on a peeling wooden kitchen chair beneath the Delft-blue hand coffee grinder, crying because his car wouldn’t start again, while he still had to sell his earthenware pots at the market. He would then be admitted to an institution. After a few months—after receiving about ten electric shock treatments—he escaped and fled to his mother. Once he recovered, he resumed his commission trade in pottery and visited almost every flower shop and nursery in the country. Sometimes he would pick me up from school and say there was something going on in the family. Then I would spend the whole day driving around with him. During my secondary school years, we grew completely apart. He joined the PSP, immersed himself in the Vietnam War, and wrote one letter to the editor after another. I went to sea with the Holland-America Line and wanted nothing to do with communism.”
At home, the former IG Farben gardener never spoke about his wartime experiences. He did not even own the book by Dr. L. de Jong in which his actions of December 1942 were described. Only after his death did Van Duijn Jr. discover what his father had done during the war. He also found the diaries his father had kept in Auschwitz, his archive of clippings about the German extermination camps, and his letters to Dr. L. de Jong of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, as well as to the editors of various broadcasters and newspapers, repeatedly and unsuccessfully requesting to speak about his experiences.
With De Jong—whom he met only once—Van Duijn Sr. corresponded about the question of why the Allies had not bombed the extermination camps. “That matter has not yet been clarified,” De Jong wrote to him on October 6, 1967. “But with the bombing technology available at the time, it was practically impossible to hit small targets such as the gas chambers from high altitude, and the Americans therefore had to assume that in a heavy bombing most bombs would fall inside the camp. Perhaps that would still have been better.”
Jaap van Duijn died of cancer in a hospital in Bulgaria, where he had fallen ill during a vacation. Van Duijn Jr. recalls:
“My father died of the disease he had always been terrified of. He was tied to his bed because he kept scratching at his surgical wound and begging for water he was not allowed to drink. My mother was allowed to say goodbye to him in a basement, where she found him among about 25 other bodies that had already undergone autopsy. Compared to the rest, he was still relatively intact, but he had been cut open from neck to abdomen. From a distance of about ten meters, she said her final farewell to him.
Only long after his death, my mother casually asked me if I wanted the diaries my father had written—otherwise they would be thrown into the stove. By reading them, along with what De Jong wrote about my father, I finally began to understand him. I read about the terrible bombings around Auschwitz, in which only the extermination camps were spared, about the killings, about the death of his first child. I now feel it is a great loss that I was not present when he died. Perhaps he would have shared his secrets with me then. Why he never did so earlier remains a mystery to me. Perhaps I myself kept my head buried in the sand too much. Now, in the year 2000, he has opened my eyes, and I am incredibly proud of him. At least he tried to do something.”
Would Franz Ledermann have known this, as he worked for the Jewish Counsel in Amsterdam.
As a gardener near the extermination camps of Auschwitz, Jaap van Duijn witnessed many horrors. He was the first to attempt to warn Jews in the Netherlands. In vain.
René Zwaap, May 3, 2000 – published in issue no. 18
Jaap van Duijn, who died in 1982, never received any decoration. On the contrary, after the war the cookware salesman was rather seen as a potential enemy of the state. He was an active member of the PSP, was frequently present at pacifist meetings in Arnhem, and constantly wrote letters to the editor about the Vietnam War. Moreover, his preference for vacation destinations in Eastern Europe already made him a suspicious individual. The neighbors had several times been visited by gentlemen from the BVD who wanted to know more about the behavior of their unusual neighbor. And yet, if anyone deserved an award, it was him.
Van Duijn was in fact the first eyewitness to the mass murder in Auschwitz to attempt to warn Jews in the Netherlands. His account is summarized by Dr. L. de Jong in The Kingdom of the Netherlands During the Second World War in a single paragraph. In December 1942, the 22-year-old Dutch gardener Jaap van Duijn, working at the IG Farben factories in the vicinity of Auschwitz in Poland, returned to the Netherlands on leave. Since the summer of 1940, he had been employed by a German company that sent him in September 1942 to Monowitz, near Auschwitz. There he was tasked with planting greenery around the offices and barracks of IG Farben (a large synthetic rubber factory). A few other Dutch workers were also employed there. They all knew what was happening in Auschwitz I and II. “They smelled the sickly, sweet odor of the crematoria,” writes De Jong. Moreover, they were in contact with Dutch prisoners who had been put to work on the construction of the IG Farben factory. De Jong writes: “Those prisoners said that the Jewish Council had to be alerted. That seemed risky. After consulting with a colleague, Van Duijn decided that, as a single man, he should undertake the venture.”
When Van Duijn returned to the Netherlands at the end of 1942 together with his colleague J. de Snoo, he warned the four Jews hiding at his parents’ home in Hengelo. On their advice, he traveled to the Jewish Council in Amsterdam. There he was given half an hour to speak about the gas chambers and the crematoria. “They were shocked, they were stunned,” writes De Jong, who spoke with Van Duijn once in October 1970. “Were they convinced of the truth of what this 22-year-old, completely unknown young man from Hengelo told them? Certainly not: Van Duijn was not taken to Asscher or Cohen. On the return journey, Van Duijn told De Snoo that he had not been received very warmly by the Jewish Council; they had listened to him, but there had been doubt as to whether he might be a provocateur. He was disappointed by it.” Here De Jong’s account ends.
The story of Van Duijn, however, does not end there. He returned to Auschwitz—on the explicit ???? of his father, a man who must have ruled his family with a heavy hand. The son of Jaap van Duijn, also named Jaap, recalls: “My father was inconsolable after his visit to the Jewish Council. At that time, Dutch police officers in their street were once again taking Jewish people away. My grandfather’s house was a kind of transit shelter for people in hiding. Sometimes there were as many as six. My uncle Frans said: ‘We were glad those Jews were there, because then we didn’t get beaten as much by the old man.’ That uncle, four years younger than my father, was sent to Auschwitz with him in 1943. That was my grandfather’s decision. He had to keep my father company in that hell. Otherwise there might have been a house search at home, with all the consequences that would bring.”
The two brothers from Hengelo remained in Auschwitz, in the immediate vicinity of the extermination camps, until the end of the war and witnessed many horrors. Van Duijn Jr. recounts: “At the IG Farben factories, they saw how Jewish forced laborers fought each other just to get hold of a shovel so they could work. They saw with their own eyes how the Kapos of Auschwitz smashed the skulls of their prisoners. My uncle told me how the IG Farben factory was protected against bombing raids. Before air attacks, some people would ride around on bicycles, turning taps on barrels placed around the factories. This caused a chemical reaction and produced a white smoke resembling wool. It blocked the view of the English aircraft.” Jaap van Duijn Sr. remained in Poland until after the liberation of Auschwitz by Russian troops on January 27, 1945.
His brother Frans had already moved westward in the wake of the retreating German army. Jaap, however, stayed behind to support his pregnant wife. On April 3, 1945, he married a young Polish woman from Auschwitz. Their firstborn child would die shortly after birth. Once back in the Netherlands, happiness again largely eluded him. Van Duijn Jr. says: “There was a lot of tension at home, mainly due to cultural differences. Ashtrays would fly across the room. The biggest mistake my grandmother made when her son returned from Poland after the war was giving him a goodnight kiss in the bedroom. My mother never forgave her for that. A mother kissing her son in the presence of his wife in the bedroom—that simply didn’t exist in her Polish village.”
Van Duijn remembers his father mainly as a hypochondriac, a nervous and insecure man. “To me, my father was like a big child. Realizing that about your own father at the age of eight is very depressing. I still see him sitting on a peeling wooden kitchen chair beneath the Delft-blue hand coffee grinder, crying because his car wouldn’t start again, while he still had to sell his earthenware pots at the market. He would then be admitted to an institution. After a few months—after receiving about ten electric shock treatments—he escaped and fled to his mother. Once he recovered, he resumed his commission trade in pottery and visited almost every flower shop and nursery in the country. Sometimes he would pick me up from school and say there was something going on in the family. Then I would spend the whole day driving around with him. During my secondary school years, we grew completely apart. He joined the PSP, immersed himself in the Vietnam War, and wrote one letter to the editor after another. I went to sea with the Holland-America Line and wanted nothing to do with communism.”
At home, the former IG Farben gardener never spoke about his wartime experiences. He did not even own the book by Dr. L. de Jong in which his actions of December 1942 were described. Only after his death did Van Duijn Jr. discover what his father had done during the war. He also found the diaries his father had kept in Auschwitz, his archive of clippings about the German extermination camps, and his letters to Dr. L. de Jong of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, as well as to the editors of various broadcasters and newspapers, repeatedly and unsuccessfully requesting to speak about his experiences.
With De Jong—whom he met only once—Van Duijn Sr. corresponded about the question of why the Allies had not bombed the extermination camps. “That matter has not yet been clarified,” De Jong wrote to him on October 6, 1967. “But with the bombing technology available at the time, it was practically impossible to hit small targets such as the gas chambers from high altitude, and the Americans therefore had to assume that in a heavy bombing most bombs would fall inside the camp. Perhaps that would still have been better.”
Jaap van Duijn died of cancer in a hospital in Bulgaria, where he had fallen ill during a vacation. Van Duijn Jr. recalls:
“My father died of the disease he had always been terrified of. He was tied to his bed because he kept scratching at his surgical wound and begging for water he was not allowed to drink. My mother was allowed to say goodbye to him in a basement, where she found him among about 25 other bodies that had already undergone autopsy. Compared to the rest, he was still relatively intact, but he had been cut open from neck to abdomen. From a distance of about ten meters, she said her final farewell to him.
Only long after his death, my mother casually asked me if I wanted the diaries my father had written—otherwise they would be thrown into the stove. By reading them, along with what De Jong wrote about my father, I finally began to understand him. I read about the terrible bombings around Auschwitz, in which only the extermination camps were spared, about the killings, about the death of his first child. I now feel it is a great loss that I was not present when he died. Perhaps he would have shared his secrets with me then. Why he never did so earlier remains a mystery to me. Perhaps I myself kept my head buried in the sand too much. Now, in the year 2000, he has opened my eyes, and I am incredibly proud of him. At least he tried to do something.”
Would Franz Ledermann have known this, as he worked for the Jewish Counsel in Amsterdam.
WEGGUM.COM
De Jekerschool, Amsterdam
Het Joods Lyceum, Amsterdam.