The Exhibition of German Jewish Artists’ Work: Painting – Sculpture – Architecture was organised in 1934 by Carl Braunschweig (later Charles Brunswick) at the Parsons Galleries in Oxford Street, the exhibition space of the paint manufacturing business Thos. Parsons and Sons (Summers 2019). The exhibition featured works by German Jewish artists whose voices were suppressed in Nazi Germany, their work no longer shown and the artists themselves  persecuted. A review in The Guardian said: “[T]o-day opened in the Parsons Galleries in Oxford Street an unusual art exhibition with tragic associations - an exhibition of the work of German-Jewish artists who are either living in exile or in a Germany where they are not allowed to show their work in public and where press notices of their work are forbidden.” (Private Wire 1934)
The selection of 220 works by 86 artists was made in cooperation with the Centralverein deutscher Staatsbürger jüdischen Glaubens in Berlin (Aronowitz/Isaac 2019, 130). On display were paintings, graphic art and sculpture, but also interior design sketches by Margot Wittkower. The exhibition featured a relatively large number of works by women artists: 27 of the participating artists were women. This could indicate the high proportion of Jewish women artists in Germany.

The exhibition catalogue pointed out the difficult situation of the exhibited artists, who were either suffering from restrictions or the complete shutting down of their work in Germany, or who had already emigrated. Among the latter was Erna Auerbach, who had fled to London in October 1933 and was represented in the exhibition by two paintings and two watercolours. Benno Elkan, who showed two sculptures, had also come to London in 1933. One of the participants of the exhibition is the sculptor Heinz Rosenberg-Fleck, who came to London in 1934, and changed his name later to Henry Rox. He became known as a photographer and children’s book author. His book Tommy Apple and His Adventures in Banana-Land (1935), with a text by James Laver, works with photographs of humanised fruit scenes.
Other exhibited artists, however, were to emigrate in the following years: Lotte Laserstein went to Stockholm, Eugen Spiro fled to New York via Paris, Gretchen Wohlwill emigrated to Lisbon. Some of the artists exhibited, such as Yankel (Jankel) Adler, Martin Bloch, Ludwig Meidner, Adèle Reifenberg and Julius Rosenbaum, emigrated to London only in the 1930s and 1940s and belonged to the circle of artists who exhibited regularly at the Ben Uri Gallery. The double exhibition of Ludwig and Else Meidner in 1949 is worth mentioning here.  

Carl Braunschweig (1886–1963), actually a banker, ran the Wiesbaden Kunsthaus Aktuaryus from the 1920s, dealing in Flemish and Dutch masters and French landscapes, then expanded his business to include modern art (Summers 2019). After 1933, Braunschweig was expropriated and his Kunsthaus Aktuaryus was forcibly “Aryanised”; in 1934, he emigrated to London, where he quickly began organising the Exhibition of German Jewish Artists’ Work upon his arrival. In this way, Braunschweig drew attention to the exclusion and persecution practices of National Socialism just one year after the party’s assumption of power. At the same time, the Exhibition of German Jewish Artists’ Work offered many artists a presence in the British capital for the first time. The idea behind the sales exhibition was also to bring these works into museums, if possible through purchases and endowments, and thus to help the artists gain visibility. The Guardian says: “All the pictures, which are moderately priced, are for sale, though it is hoped that generous benefactors will be forthcoming to present some of the more important ones to museums in England and Palestine.” (Private Wire 1934)
After its first stop in London, the exhibition was to be shown in other English cities: “After a short period in London, it was learned to-day, the exhibition will make a tour of the country, beginning with Manchester.” (ibid.)

Some of the artists in the Exhibition of German Jewish Artists’ Work were represented four years later in the 20th Century German Art exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, which was organised in reaction to the National Socialist Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art) exhibition. The catalogue for 20th Century German Art lists works by Max Liebermann and Benno Elkan, both of whom had been in the show organised by Carl Braunschweig in 1934.  Liebermann and Elkin appear in the first section of the 20th Century German Art exhibition catalogue, which features many (mostly male) prominent names such as Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, Max Ernst and Franz Marc. In a second section, as an addendum, as it were, further participants are then listed under the heading “Artists now working in England”, including Erna Auerbach, Martin Bloch, Hans Feibusch – in other words, some of the artists from the Exhibition of German Jewish Artists’ Work. It would be worthwhile to read the two exhibitions as snapshots of an art history in motion within a horizon of persecution and exile. Whereas the 1934 show captured a situation in transition – many of the exhibitors were not yet in exile, had not yet perished – defamation and expulsion were already advanced by 1938. In their own way, both exhibitions contributed to the visibility and perception of German (and Austrian) art under pressure in London in the 1930s.