Biographical dictionary of refugees of nazi fascism in Brazil

By Imprimatur

They were musicians, writers, painters, actors, scientists, mathematicians, architects, doctors, photographers, dancers, businessmen and even circus clowns, police officers and football coaches. All refugees from nazi fascism, who sought salvation from 1933 onwards. They are remembered in 300 illustrated biographies, representing the thousands of fugitives who made or remade their lives and careers in Brazil and contributed so much to Brazilian society. Each trajectory, an epic, from birth and training in the Old World, the terrible dangers and sufferings faced with the arrival of Nazism, the struggles and adventures to escape, obtain visas and embark towards freedom.

The Dictionary of Refugees from Nazi fascism in Brazil reports all this. It is yet another publication by Casa Stefan Zweig, based in Petrópolis and dedicated to the dissemination and study of the work of the great Austrian writer who died here and the role of refugees who, like him, escaped from the totalitarianism.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Imprimatur
• Release date: Apr 27, 2022
• ISBN: 9786559054138

Book preview

Refugees who arrived up to 1945

A

ABRAMOWITSCH, Ruth Eli: see SOREL, Ruth

ADLER, Johann Anton

Policeman

Vienna, 13-08-1889 – The Hague, Netherlands, 08-11-1971

In Brazil from 1941 to 1946

Johann Anton Adler studied criminology in Austria, Italy and France, then served as an officer in the First World War. After the war, he went to work at the department for detecting forged currency at the Austrian National Bank. When the League of Nations sponsored a convention about the detection of counterfeit money, the specialist Adler was sent on loan by the bank to Interpol, which was founded in Vienna in 1923 by the city’s chief of police, Johannes Schober. At that time, it was still called the International Criminal Police Commission. Adler was scientific director of the Austrian Federal Police’s forensic laboratory until 1938, and also founder of and contributor to the magazine Counterfeits and Forgeries, published in several languages.

Arquivo Nacional 1960

In 1938, with the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Adler emigrated to the Netherlands and from there to Brazil with his wife Mathilde Maria Adler, who was 19 years his junior. They travelled on so-called Vatican visas, issued by the Brazilian government to Catholic non-Aryans at the request of Pope Pius XII, travelling in third class aboard the Cabo de Buena Esperanza that docked at Praça Mauá, Rio de Janeiro, on 25th September 1941. Unlike Adler, many of the ship’s passengers were barred from entering and had to travel on to Argentina, where they were transferred to the Cabo de Hornos, although on the return trip some hundred of them were prevented from disembarking. There isn’t much information about Adler’s time in Brazil: between 1941 and 1946, the exiled Austrian is said to have worked for the Brazilian police, and then he returned to Europe.

Back in the Netherlands, he initially became a consultant to the Dutch Ministry of Justice, then in The Hague headed the Interpol agency combating counterfeit currency. He also returned to his post as editor-in-chief of Counterfeits and Forgeries. In 1960, he published a dictionary about criminology, Elsevier’s Fachwörterbuch der Kriminalwissenschaft (Elsevier’s Dictionary of Criminal Science), which was translated into eight languages. Michael Fooner, in a book about Interpol, states that until 1954 Adler was head of the counterfeit money division at the General Secretariat of the United Nations, and that during his long and distinguished career, he created a unique central records system of the world’s money counterfeiting activities, probably the first example of a globally complete record of a particular activity and product. According to Fooner, the General Secretariat continues to operate this records system virtually unaltered.

Sources: Strauss, Herbert A.; Röder, Werner. (Ed.) Biographisches Handbuch der deutschsprachigen Emigration nach 1933 (International Biographical Dictionary of Central European Émigrés 1933-1945). New York: Research Foundation of Jewish Emigration, 1999; Fooner, Michael. Interpol: Issues in World Crime and International Criminal Justice. Nova York: Springer Science and Business Media, 1989.

Kristina Michahelles / IB

ADLER, Siegfried

Industrial businessman

Hintersteinau, Germany, 13-10-1903 –

New York, USA, 13-06-1958

In Brazil from 1936 to 1958

The son of Abraham and Fanny Adler, Jewish smallholder farmers who raised cattle, Siegfried from an early age became involved in the world of business. His first job was as messenger boy at the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. He married Lieselotte Höxter, a student at the University of Berlin, moving to the city and working in the manufacture and printing of textiles, creating and developing the designs sold to weaving mills.

Museu Judaico, São Paulo

In 1933, with the rise of Nazism, Adler and his wife began to face constraints and threats: Lieselotte had to leave the university and he was summoned to appear before the police. With this situation of worsening anti-Semitism, they decided to leave Germany, initially going on foot to the border with Czechoslovakia, and from there travelling to Palestine, where they tried in vain to obtain visas for the USA. But they did manage to emigrate to Brazil, settling in São Paulo— one of the cities that received the highest number of German-speaking refugees — in 1936. In April 1937 they were joined by their niece Alma Adler, the daughter of Siegfried’s half-sister, Frieda.

They were practically penniless upon arrival in the new country. A friend gave Alder a job as bottle top sales representative. On 25th July 1937, thanks to the intermediation of Franklin Gemmel, he was introduced to an Italian, Constantino Tonatti, from whom he bought a bankrupt rag doll workshop located on Rua Santa Clara, underneath a samba school. He bought at reduced cost four machines and also inherited the name Manufaturas de Brinquedos Estrella Ltda [Estrella Toy Manufacture Ltd.]. This was the origin of Fábrica de Brinquedos Estrela [Estrela Toy Factory], which would eventually become such an important Brazilian brand. Opening with 20 employees, the firm innovated toy production and was joined by Carlos Weil, a German friend of Alder’s and former employee of Schuco wooden toy makers, who brought his knowledge of carpentry and joinery to the business. Adler in turn was responsible for launching the company’s first doll, with a cloth body and moulded face.

In 1938, Siegfried and his wife had a son, Mário Arthur Adler. By this time Alma was working as a technician at the firm, and that same year, they helped her family to migrate to Brazil. Through the Brazilian consulate in Frankfurt they requested visas from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for Alma’s sisters Tilly and Elizabeth, and for their parents, Frieda and Moritz. The delay in authorizing the visas, a reflection of the Vargas government’s anti-Semitic stance, resulted in Moritz being arrested during Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass), in November 1938. Sent to the Dachau concentration camp, he was only freed thanks to the intervention of lawyer José Ephim Mindlin, and so managed to disembark in Santos in December 1939. He too began to work at Estrela and the mother and daughters arrived in Brazil the following month. Siegfried also

succeeded in bringing his own mother, Fanny, to Brazil, plus his sister Cecilia, his brother Bernhard and family, as well as his wife’s relatives.

During that time the company, under Adler’s direction, helped numerous Jewish immigrants by giving them jobs. They were generally well educated and in turn contributed to the brand’s success. From 1942 to 1945, Adler protected the German Jewish employees who, as subjects of the Axis were subjected to Brazilian police surveillance. In order to avoid constraints, he had the company supply Jewish workers with a letter of introduction stating that although they were considered stateless, Estrela took full responsibility for them and their papers. On 2nd January 1942, Siegfried became a member of the board of directors of the Congregação Israelita Paulista – CIP (São Paulo Israelite Congregation), serving there until March 1957, and it was he that paid for the building that houses the institution’s synagogue and youth centre.

Gradually, the factory consolidated itself in the field of toys, initially using cloth and metal as materials. After the war, in step with the country’s progressive industrialization, they started to use mainly plastic, creating cheaper and lighter toys. Adler was directly involved in designing the toys and introduced dolls with eyes that opened and closed, and that walked, and games such as the Brazilian version of Monopoly, the world’s most popular board game. And so, Estrela progressively grew under Adler’s direction from a family operation into a nationwide business, making sophisticated toys, employing thousands, and with offices in various Brazilian states and several countries in the Americas and Europe.

When Siegfried Adler died, he left behind a solid firm. His wife took over as president, and later their son Mário, who also came to preside over the Congregação Israelita Paulista, from 1996 to 2000.

Sources: Carneiro, Maria Luiza Tucci. ADLER, Siegfried. Arqshoah: Holocausto e antissemitismo, São Paulo. Available at: <https://www.arqshoah.com/index.php/sobreviventes-testemunhos/5482-st-93-adler-siegfried>. Visited on: 17th April 2020; Eckl, Marlen. ‘Busquei um refúgio e achei uma pátria…’ – O exílio de fala alemã no Brasil, 1933-1945. In: Bolle, Willi; Kupfer, Eckhard E. Cinco séculos de relações brasileiras e alemãs, vol. 1. São Paulo: Editora Brasileira de Arte e Cultura. Available at: . Visited on: 20th April 2020; Memorial da Imigração Judaica. Mario Adler e família – Alemanha. Memorial da Imigração Judaica, São Paulo, 2017. Available at: . Visited on: 17th April 2020; Pereira, Giancarlo. A história e a saga da fábrica de brinquedos Estrela. Money Times, 14 dez. 2017. Available at: . Visited on: 20th April 2020; Sr. Siegfried Adler, Correio da Manhã, Rio de Janeiro, 25-06-1958, p. 12. Available at: . Visited on: 20th April 2020; Zerocal. História da Estrela. Playmobil – Aqui tem, 21 out. 2014. Available at: . Visited on: 20th April 2020.

Inoã Urbinati / IB

ADLEROVÁ, Charlotta

Graphic artist, painter, art director, drawing artist

Berlin, 1908 – São Paulo, 1989

In Brazil from 1939 to 1989

Charlotta Stangenhaus was born in Berlin, the daughter of the Jewish couple Helena and Isidor Stangenhaus. She studied at the prestigious Kunstgewerbeschule (School of Arts and Crafts) in Berlin-Charlottenburg and was a pupil of professor Assaf Kenan at the Reimann-Schule, an important centre of graphic arts and fashion during Germany’s Weimar Republic. At that time, her painting was still expressionistic and marked by the Bauhaus style, something that would later influence her work as art director in advertising.

Arquivo Nacional | Document issued by the Brazilian consulate general in Prague, 1938

She moved to Czechoslovakia (now the Czech Republic), where she married and took the feminine form of her husband’s name Adler, as was the custom.

With the help of her youngest brother Josef, who was already living in Brazil, in 1939 Charlotta and her mother managed to flee the Nazi persecution, during the short period of the decree signed by Oswaldo Aranha that allowed those with second-degree relations already resident in Brazil to be issued visas. They disembarked at the port of Santos on 14th February 1939, Charlotta with a visa issued in Prague, while the mother was left stateless (she took Polish citizenship later). Charlotta went to live in São Paulo, where from 1952 she studied painting with Waldemar da Costa, and later with the fellow exile Samson Flexor (q.v.) at the Atelier Abstração [Atelier Abstraction] installed at his house. The test for joining the group of young disciples consisted of drawing a guitar using a ruler and set square. It was during this period that Charlotta Adlerová moved towards geometric abstraction.

In Brazil, she was married for a second time, to Hans Wolff, and also worked in advertising, a field in which she was one of the country’s pioneers. In 1965 she had a solo exhibition at the gallery of advertising agents J. W. Thompson, in New York, and between 1957 and 1968 she took part in group shows at the Salão Paulista de Arte Moderna —SPAM [São Paulo Modern Art Salon], at Galeria Prestes Maia, and at the XI Bienal Internacional de São Paulo (São Paulo Art Biennial).

Sources: Costa Leme Corrêa, Dianadaluz and Brumer, Anita: The contribution of German refugees in Brazil in the field of visual arts; https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vereinigte_Staatsschulen_f%C3%BCr_freie_und_angewandte_Kunst#/media/Datei:Berlin-Charlottenburg_Postkarte_043.jpg

Kristina Michahelles / IB

AGACHE, Alfred

Architect, urbanist

Tours, France, 24-02-1875 – Paris, 04-05-1959

In Brazil from 1927 to the mid-1930s, and from 1939 to 1959

Alfred Hubert Donat Agache studied architecture at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, graduating in 1905. Soon afterwards, he studied sociology at the Collège libre des sciences sociales [Free College of Social Sciences], also in the French capital, and took an active part in the Musée social [Social Museum], a private legal entity that united French politicians, academics, businessmen and liberal professionals with a view to debating and proposing solutions for the social problems building up in modern capitalist societies. In 1911 he was one of the founders of the Societé française de Urbanistes [French Society of Urban Planners] and was its general secretary for over two decades. Already in the early 1910s he won a competition of international projects for the construction of Canberra, the new capital of Australia, and drew up plans for the urban redevelopment of Dunkirk, in France, and Casablanca, in Morocco. In 1916, during the First World War, he published the book Comment reconstruir nos cités détruites [How to Rebuild Our Destroyed Cities], in partnership with French architects Jacques Marcel Auburtin and Edouard Redont. Agache sought to confer to urbanism — a term many believe he created — greater scientific rigor and a multidisciplinary perspective, making use of aerial photographic surveys, statistical data and mathematical projections to help think about the urban space as an expanding living organism.

Arquivo Nacional

Agache first came to Brazil in 1927, when he was hired by Rio de Janeiro city hall —Antônio Prado Júnior was mayor at the time — to draw up an urban redevelopment plan for what was then the country’s capital city. What became known as the Plano Agache [Agache Plan] was completed and presented in 1930, becoming Rio de Janeiro’s first urban intervention proposal that had a truly modern character. Maurício de Abreu notes that the plans sought to bring order and beauty to the city, according to criteria of functionality and social stratification of the space. Indeed, it was the first project to explicitly deal with Rio’s shanty towns, identifying them as a social problem and proposing their eradication for reasons of public order, sanitary safety and urban aesthetics. However, Agache recognized that the State first needed to prepare the town’s suburbs in order to receive the population that would be dislodged from these communities, subsidising and coordinating the construction of popular housing.

Aware of the growth of automobile use and the necessity to provide cities with efficient mass transportation systems, Agache proposed creating an interconnected set of arteries for road transport, including expressways. However, his Plan would never be fully implemented, partly due to the high financial investments it required, and to the political-administrative disruption the country endured with the Revolution of 1930, which took place a few months after his presentation. Nevertheless, some of the proposed measures, especially regarding the central part of the city, were put into effect over subsequent decades, such as the urbanization of the whole area affected by the demolition of the entire hill known as Morro de Castelo in the early 1920s, the construction of Praça Paris, and the widening of Avenida Presidente Vargas.

Even before any of his proposals for Rio were actually implemented, the Plano Agache raised its author’s prestige considerably, in Brazil and internationally. Thanks to this, in 1932 Agache published the book Remodélation d’une capitale [The Redevelopment of a Capital], in France. In São Paulo at around the same time, he took part in drawing up urbanism plans which gave rise to the Interlagos neighbourhood, located between the Guarapiranga and Billings reservoirs, and drew up plans for creating the gardens of Parque Farroupilha (also known as Redenção), the largest park in Porto Alegre, completed in 1935. He had previously created for the Portuguese government the Expansion Plans of the Western Region of Lisbon, in 1933.

Agache returned to live in Paris in the mid-1930s, but decided to go back to Brazil in 1939, disturbed by the rise of Nazi-Fascism in Europe. He then began to act as urbanism consultant at the engineering firm Coimbra Bueno, based in Rio de Janeiro. Between 1940 and 1943, he worked on drawing up urbanization plans for Curitiba which, just as before in Rio, were never fully implemented. Among his most important proposals were the opening up of extensive roads, the construction of storm drains and the deployment of an administrative centre.

On 23rd February 1942, as he was driving down through the mountain town of Petrópolis towards Rio, he noticed an unusual commotion in the garden of Stefan Zweig’s house. He stopped to enquire and was thus among the very first to hear of the author’s suicide.

In following years, he created urbanism projects of greater and lesser scope for numerous Brazilian municipalities, such as Goiânia, Vitória, Campos dos Goitacazes (RJ), Cabo Frio (RJ), Araruama (RJ), Petrópolis (RJ) and Araxá (MG).

He returned to Paris shortly before his death, in 1959.

Sources: Abreu, Maurício de A. Evolução urbana do Rio de Janeiro. 2. ed. Rio de Janeiro: IplanRio/Jorge Zahar, 1998; André, Paula. As cidades da cidade. Lisboa na primeira metade do séc. XX: nova Lisboa (1936) e Lisboa nova (1948). Online journal of Centro Interdisciplinar de jan.-ago. 2015, p. 89-111. Available at: <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/320542249_As_cidades_da_cidade_Lisboa_na_primeira_metade_do_sec_XX_nova_Lisboa_1936_e_Lisboa_nova_1948>. Visited on: 18th May 2020; Beloch, Israel (Org.). A rede de amigos de Stefan Zweig: sua última agenda (1940-42). Rio de Janeiro/Petrópolis: Memória Brasil/Casa Stefan Zweig, 2014; Carollo, Bráulio. Alfred Agache em Curitiba e sua visão de Urbanismo. Masters degree dissertation. Porto Alegre: UFRS, 2002; Cavalcanti, Carlos. Dicionário Brasileiro de Artistas Plásticos. Brasília: Instituto Nacional do Livro, 1974; Centro de Arquiteura e urbanismo do Rio de Janeiro. Urban plans of Rio de Janeiro: Plano Agache. Available at: Visited on: 18th May 2020; Pinheiro, Luciana de Araújo. Alfred Agache. Brasil Artes Enciclopédia. Available at: . Visited on: 18th May 2020.

André Faria Couto / IB

AJS, Basza: see LORAN, Berta

ALTBERG, Alexander

Architect

Berlin, 29-06-1908 – Marília, 15-08-2009

In Brazil from 1931 to 2009

The fact that today’s cariocas, the inhabitants of Rio de Janeiro, are able to take pride in Ipanema’s buildings in the Bauhaus style, is thanks to an architect who landed in the city in 1931. By the time he passed away — in the interior of São Paulo — he had reached the ripe old age of 101.

In 2008, aged 100, in Marília, SP | Photo Jörg Trettler

Alexander Altberg was born in Berlin in 1908, the son of Austrian businessman Falk Altberg and the Russian nurse Rachel Altberg, who were both from Jewish families. From an early age, he loved music and drawing. In 1925, at the age of 17, he enrolled in the Bauhaus school in Weimar, where he studied for a year. Pressured by his father to follow a more traditional course, he went to the Academy of Engineering in Oldenburg. He became involved in student politics and felt the simmering anti-Semitism of the late Weimar Republic. In an interview with Hans-Jörg Trettler, of Casa Stefan Zweig, the already centenarian Altberg recalled that, after having felt the breeze of modernity through Bauhaus, he was slow to adapt to the conservative academic system. When the dean at the university, Professor Bast — who already in 1920s was wearing a National Socialist Party badge —, wouldn’t allow him to take the final exams, Altberg’s father intervened, but was told his son didn’t have the maturity to practise this profession. Altberg was set the task of drawing up plans for a hospital, with the express recommendation that he not adopt the principles and aesthetics of the new architecture. Disheartened, he handed in a banal project in six months and received his diploma at the end of 1929.

While at university, he worked as an intern at the prestigious architectural firm of Korn & Weizmann, in Berlin, something that was to influence his future work in Brazil. Arthur Korn was a member of the avant-garde group Der Ring, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Hans Poelzig, Bruno Taut and other names of the transition from Expressionism to Germany’s new architecture.

Alexander Altberg’s father was already living in Lisbon and had commercial ties to Brazil. Foreseeing the difficult political situation in Germany, the Altbergs decided as early as 1930 to emigrate. At that time, it was still possible to ship one’s belongings. The family settled in the then distant and sparsely inhabited neighbourhood of Ipanema. Following initial difficulties in obtaining a visa, Alexander Altberg sailed from the port of Bremen in October 1931 and joined his parents. His first job was at the architectural firm of Arnaldo Gladosch, where he stayed only a month. He was highly active in circulating among Rio de Janeiro’s German and Jewish communities. From 1939 he was part of the Pró-Arte [Pro-Art] group, led by the cultural activist Theodor Heuberger, made up of Brazilian intellectuals and German-speaking exiled Jews. Pró-Arte organized events such as concerts, exhibitions and talks. Altberg became friends with the young Carlos Lacerda and met the painter Guignard; their friendship would be long-lasting. Through Pró-Arte he came into contact with the architect Gregori Warchavchik and artist Lasar Segall. In October 1940, he met the Zweig couple in Rio de Janeiro. He went to fetch Stefan and Lotte at the Hotel Paysandu, in Flamengo, to take them to a fundraising event for refugees of Nazism, at Botafogo Futebol Clube (Botafogo Football Club), organized by the Jewish community.

Not long after he arrived, in 1932, he had the opportunity to put his architectural knowledge into practice when his father bought several plots in Ipanema and Leblon. He designed single-family residences that soon caught the attention of the students at the Escola Nacional de Belas Artes (School of Fine Arts). Altberg became friends with the Italian sculptor Lélio Landucci and together they entered a competition to build a school in Ilhéus, Bahia. They won first prize, but never received a penny of the prize money. The idea of organizing the I Salão de Arquitetura Tropical [Tropical Architecture Salon], inaugurated at the Palace Hotel on 17th April 1933, probably came about at the offices of Costa & Warschavchik, which Altberg visited regularly. With the valuable experience he’d acquired at an exhibition of proletariat architecture in Berlin, Altberg became one of the organizers and designed the catalogue and invitations.

There being no good architectural magazine in Brazil, he founded Base: revista de arte, técnica e pensamento [Base: magazine of art, technique and thought] and was its editor, sponsor, graphic designer, illustrator, author, curator and typographer, all at once. Altberg was also ambitious: he wanted to modernize Brazil’s output and contextualize it within international trends, and hoped to give readers an integral vision of architecture as a cultural phenomenon. He made the most of his Pró-Arte contacts and invited several exponents of Brazilian Modernism to contribute critical texts and articles about literature, music, ballet and photography.

Alexandre Altberg became a Brazilian citizen on 28th June 1934. In the 1950s he shifted from architecture towards interior design. He opened a furniture and antiques shop in Botafogo, which continued through to the 1970s. Altberg lived in Rio de Janeiro for seven decades, then in 2001 he moved to Marília, in the interior of São Paulo, his wife Odete’s hometown.

Sources: Interview given to Hans-Jörg Trettler in 2008; Moreira, Pedro. Alexandre Altberg e a Arquitetura Nova no Rio de Janeiro. Arquitextos, São Paulo, n. 58, mar. 2005. Available at: <http://www.vitruvius.com.br/arquitextos/arq058/arq058_00.asp>. Visited on: 19th May 2020.

Kristina Michahelles / IB

ALTERTHUM, Gertrud Siegel: see SIEGEL Alterthum, Gertrud

ANDRIAN-WERBURG, Leopold von

Writer, poet, diplomat

Berlin, 09-05-1875 — Fribourg, Switzerland, 19-11-1951

In Brazil from 1940 to 1945

Andrian-Werburg came from a noble Austrian family, the son of anthropologist and geologist Ferdinand Freiherr von Andrian zu Werburg, and Cäcilie Meyerbeer, who in turn was the daughter of composer Giacomo Meyerbeer. From 1885 to 1887, he attended the Jesuit school in Kalksburg, something that shaped his vision of the world of Christianity. For the next three years, he studied at home. His tutor was the famous Germanist Oskar Walzel. He finished his schooling in Vienna and Merano, in South Tyrol, now part of Italy. At 14 he realized he was homosexual, something he tried his whole life to deny, due to his rigid religious beliefs, among other reasons.

Around 1918 | Vienna City Library

His literary career began early: in 1894, at 19, through the intermediation of Austrian dramatist Hugo von Hofmannsthal, he published his first poems in the prestigious literary magazine Blätter für die Kunst, founded by poet Stefan George. A year later his magnum opus appeared, Der Garten der Erkenntnis [Garden of Perception]. The book was well received in the Jung-Wien (Young Vienna) society of authors that Andrian was part of, along with leading literary names such as Stefan Zweig, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Karl Kraus, Hermann Bahr and Arthur Schnitzler.

In 1899, he received his doctor’s law degree from the University of Vienna, where he also studied literature, philosophy and history. Soon afterwards he embarked on his career at the Foreign Ministry of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, took the diplomat’s exams and was given a post at the Austrian legation in Athens. In 1902 he was sent to Rio de Janeiro and, in 1905, transferred to Buenos Aires. He served at the Austrian embassy in St. Petersburg, was legation secretary in Bucharest, returned to Athens, did another season in Bucharest and returned to Vienna. In 1911, he became head of the consulate general in Warsaw, where he remained until the outbreak of the First World War.

Andrian spent the armed conflict in the diplomatic service, away from the front. At the start of the war, he served in the Foreign Ministry in Vienna and was involved in drawing up intricate scenarios dealing with the Empire’s military objectives. In August 1914, at the Ministry’s request, he made up a detailed and complex programme which foresaw a possible territorial expansion in the northeast, in case of victory against Russia. A second scenario that Andrian drafted charted several possible outcomes, with minimum demands in case of partial or total victory. From August 1915 to 1917, Andrian returned to serving the Austrian monarchy in Warsaw. In October 1915 he notified his government that Kurt Riezler, a man trusted by the German chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, was fuelling the annexation of Poland by Germany, something that resulted in an official complaint to Berlin by the Austrian monarchy. Due to his involvement in strategic matters, in 1917 Andrian was named adviser for Polish affairs, taking part in the peace negotiations of the Treaty of Brest-Litowsk, signed in 1918 with the young Soviet Russia and, from 18th July 1918, he was granted the title Geheimer Rat (Privy Councillor), along with its form of address Your Excellency, elevating him to the pinnacle of the imperial court. He was also given a new post: director-general of the Imperial Theatre.

At his new job, Andrian joined forces with Hugo von Hofmannsthal, composer Richard Strauss, conductor Franz Schalk, painter Alfred Roller and director Max Reinhardt, to collaborate on a great success at the Salzburg Festival. The next year, he withdrew from public life and started to write for newspapers and magazines, as well as maintaining an extensive and varied correspondence. In 1920, he took Liechtenstein citizenship and, in 1923, married the widow Andrée Hélène Wimpffen, whom he had met in 1901. Many years later, the couple adopted a son, Hugo Andrian-Belcredi.

In his writings, Andrian defended morals, Christianity, religiosity and a conservative Austria. His 1937 essay Österreich im Prisma der Idee. Katechismus der Führenden [Austria in the prism of ideas. Catechism of the elite], was destroyed and banned by the Gestapo, following Germany’s annexation of Austria. Placed on the blacklist, Andrian realized that it was time to emigrate. He went to Nice, in the South of France, then without his wife crossed the Iberian Peninsula and arrived in Brazil in June 1940, a country he already knew, having served in Rio de Janeiro. There he published, in late 1940 and early 1941, part of his political-literary memoirs, in the Correio da Manhã newspaper. According to his biographer Walter Perl, the years Andrian spent in Brazil were solitary ones. Although he was solemnly received by the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters), he lived most of the time as a recluse in the mountain town of Petrópolis, near Rio. He did stay in touch with other exiles, such as the French writer Georges Bernanos (q.v.) and the German philosopher and politician Hermann Mathias Görgen (q.v.), both of whom were of the same Catholic-conservative persuasion. The Austrian researcher Ursula Prutsch corroborates this notion that Andrian lived in isolation and was barely able to survive by doing a little translation work, and suggests that he also had dealings with Anton Retschek (q.v.), leader of the Austrian legitimist movement that defended the Habsburg dynasty’s right to the throne, as well as with intellectuals Paulo Rónai (q.v.) and Otto Maria Carpeaux (q.v.).

With the end of the war, the former Austrian diplomat returned in December 1945 to Nice, where, following the death of his wife, he remarried in 1946, to Scotswoman Margaret-Eadi Ramsay. In 1950 and 1951 Andrian undertook his last trip, to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and South Africa. He died in Fribourg, Switzerland, at the age of 76. His archives are held by the Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marburg (German Literature Archive Marburg).

Sources: Eichmanns, Gabi. Leopold von Andrian-Werburg: Biography. Vienna 1900, Seattle, Washington. Available at: <https://depts.washington.edu/vienna/literature/andrian/Biography.htm> Visited on: 19th May 2020; Leopold Andrian. In: Wikipedia. Available at: . Visited on: 19th May 2020; Prutsch, Ursula; Zeyringer, Klaus (Org.). Leopold von Andrian (1875–1951). Korrespondenzen, Notizen, Essays, Berichte. Köln: Böhlau, 2003; Prutsch, Ursula; Zeyringer, Klaus. Die Welten des Paul Frischauer: ein literarischer Abenteurer im historischen Kontext: Wien, London, Rio, New York, Wien. Wien: Bohlau Verlag, 1997; Young Vienna. In: Wikipedia. Available at: . Visited on: 19th May 2020.

Kristina Michahelles / Julian Seidenbusch / IB

ANTIPOFF, Daniel Iretzky

Psychologist, educator, agronomist

Petrograd, now St. Petersburg, Russia, 31-03-1919 – Belo Horizonte, 11-01-2005

In Brazil from 1938 to 2005

Daniel Iretzky Antipoff was the son of psychologist Helena Antipoff and journalist and writer Viktor Iretzky, both Russian. When Daniel was one year old, his father was arrested in Petrograd by the Cheka secret police, a predecessor of the KGB, for defending freedom of speech. Two years later, he was deported to Germany, along with hundreds of Russian intellectuals that Lenin considered enemies of the Revolution.

In 1924, Daniel and his mother got permission to leave Russia and join Viktor in Berlin. However, Helena didn’t adapt to life in Germany. She separated from Viktor in 1926 and took Daniel to Geneva, Switzerland, to work at the Rousseau Institute, devoted to pedagogy and experimental psychology research, as assistant to Edouard Claparède, the institute’s founder and a seminal figure in the transformation of education in the 20th century.

In Geneva, Daniel studied at the Maison des Petits, an experimental school linked to the Rousseau Institute. The education he received there, based on freedom, respect and one’s incentives to act, deeply marked Antipoff’s development and personality.

In 1929, Helena was invited by the government of Minas Gerais State to lecture psychology at the recently-formed Escola de Aperfeiçoamento de Professores [School for Teacher Development] in Belo Horizonte. Helena’s uncertain legal status in Switzerland contributed to her decision to accept the invitation, initially for two years.

Daniel didn’t travel with his mother to Brazil. In the care of Marguerite Souberyran, a pedagogue colleague of Helena’s in Geneva, he attended boarding school at the École de Beauvallon in Dieulefit, in the South of France, which Marguerite had recently founded. He also lived with his maternal grandmother, Sofia Constantinova, who since 1909 had been living in France.

In a book about Helena Antipoff, Regina Helena de Freitas Campos recounts that her subject travelled to France in 1937 to take part in the First International Congress of Psychology. Seeing the imminent outbreak of a new world war (…) she convinced her son to emigrate to Brazil. At that time Daniel, who was living with his grandmother in Paris (…), was considered a refugee in France, he and his mother having lost their right to Soviet citizenship when they left the Soviet Union (…). Daniel left France in [October] 1938, just a few months before the outbreak of the Second World War.

Daniel himself, in a book about his mother, wrote: In 1938, sensing the imminent danger, she manages to convince her 19 year-old son to leave for Brazil. Reluctant at first, he gradually understands the difficulties he’d face in the event of an international conflict, with his stateless condition, rejected by the Soviet government and being considered an alien.

In Brazil, he enrolled in the agronomy course at the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (Federal University of Viçosa), Minas Gerais state. After he graduated, he worked in Contagem, in the same state, and at the same time studied at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Universidade de Minas Gerais (University of Minas Gerais), in Belo Horizonte, the recent founding of which Helena Antipoff had been involved in.

In 1944, he married Ottília Lisboa Braga, a children’s psychology teacher. The couple then moved to Patos de Minas, also in Minas Gerais, where Ottília started to lecture in psychology at the Escola Normal Oficial state school. At that time, psychology didn’t yet have a higher education course in Brazil, being taught at universities within the pedagogy and philosophy courses.

In the 1950s, continuing to drift away from agronomy, Daniel devoted himself to developing psychological research and tests for various applications. During this period, he applied for naturalization. He organized the Gabinete de Orientação Profissional [Vocational Guidance Department] at Senac-MG, and was one of the founders of the Serviço de Orientação e Seleção Profissional – Sosp [Professional Orientation and Selection Service] that was being created by psychologist Emilio Mira y Lopez, as well as working for Detran-MG (Department of Traffic) to develop criteria for its psycho-technical driving tests.

In 1956, he was one of the students of the post-graduate course in learning psychology, given by the Swiss psychologist André Rey at the Instituto Superior de Educação Rural – ISER [Higher Institute of Rural Education]. The arrival of Rey, a colleague of Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva, was encouraged by Helena Antipoff, who was also a founder of ISER. From this course, and encouraged by Rey himself, came the idea for the foundation of the Sociedade Mineira de Psicologia [Psychology Society of Minas Gerais], inaugurated in 1957, of which Daniel was Secretary-General.

After a short period in 1963 at the Instituto Tecnológico da Aeronáutica – ITA (Aeronautics Institute of Technology), where he worked as resident psychologist and was head of the Student Division, he returned to Belo Horizonte as director of Senac-MG’s evening classes.

In 1970, he did a post-graduate degree in the education of exceptional children, in Denver, USA, and then devoted himself to researching and developing educational programmes for children considered gifted, a segment that to date had been given little attention in Brazil. In 1973, he founded, together with his mother and wife, the Associação Milton Campos para o Desenvolvimento das Vocações - ADAV [Milton Campos Vocational Development Association], a rural institution located in Ibirité, aimed at the education and development of talents not only in intellectual fields, but in the arts, sport and creativity.

Upon Helena Antipoff’s death in 1974, Daniel became president of the organization. In 1975 he launched the book Helena Antipoff, sua vida, sua obra [Helena Antipoff, her life, her work], the standard work about his mother’s life and ideas, published by José Olympio.

In 1978 he and Ottília founded the Escola Educ — Centro de Educação Criadora [Educ School – Creative Education Centre], located in the town of Nova Lima, Minas Gerais. It united various pedagogical theories and practices that Helena Antipoff had introduced in Brazil, such as the Escola Nova [New School] and constructivism, and created an original, humanist and ecological pedagogical approach for children with different aptitudes and abilities.

From the 1980s, when he founded the Centro de Documentação e Pesquisa Helena Antipoff [Helena Antipoff Centre for Documentation and Research], with headquarters at the Psychology Department of UFMG (Federal University of Minas Gerais) and in Ibirité, until his death in 2005, Daniel worked tirelessly to publicize, preserve and expand the work begun by his mother. He also wrote various key books in the fields of psychology and education, among them Excepcionais e talentosos, os escolhidos [Exceptional and talented, the chosen], Jogos e lazeres, indicadores da personalidade [Games and leisure, indications of personality] and Bem dotados e o seu potencial, até hoje ignorado [The gifted and their potential, ignored to this day].

Sources: Antipoff, Daniel. Helena Antipoff, sua vida, sua obra. Rio de Janeiro: José Olympio Editora, 1975; Antipoff, Cecília Andrade. Escola Educ – Centro de Educação Criadora: Uma Proposta pedagógica humanista e ecológica no contexto das transformações da educação contemporânea. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2017; Campos, Regina Helena de Freitas. Helena Antipoff. Recife: Fundação Joaquim Nabuco/Editora Massangana, 2010.

Ileana Pradilla / IB

ARANY, Oscar

Cellist, sheet music shop owner

Szeged, Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Hungary, 22-12-1906 —

Rio de Janeiro, 19-07-1992

In Brazil from 1938 to 1992

The first trick that the well-to-do Jewish family from the interior of Hungary pulled off, in order to distract the Nazis in the difficult times preceding the outbreak of the Second World War, was to change the name. Fried, a typical Jewish name, was replaced by Arany, meaning gold in Hungarian. Because of the persecutions, many Jews changed to more neutral surnames that didn’t attract so much attention. Oscar Arany’s son, Daniel, recalls that his grandfather was a prosperous jeweller and imagines that this must have been the reason for the change. He says that his father and uncle Jorge never attended school, both had tutors at home, as well as a faithful St. Bernard dog, and grew up with silver spoons in their mouths. However, then the parents separated, and the mother took the children to live in Vienna.

Oscar Arany in his shop in the centre of Rio de Janeiro | Family archive, by courtesy of Lilia and Daniel Arany

Oscar Arany studied music, became skilled at the cello and was always following world events in the newspapers. In 1930, three years before Hitler’s rise to the Reich Chancellery, he feared the worst and announced he was moving to France. His grandmother asked how he intended getting to Paris, and he answered with youthful bravado: by motorbike, just following the road signs. He lived in Paris for eight years, working for the British news agency Keystone.

Soon after his arrival in Paris he was joined by his brother Jorge, and they began sharing a small apartment. Oscar seems to have incorporated his family’s sense of survival that was on display when they changed their name, and kept a close eye out for news of the imminent conflict in Europe. On the morning of 12th March 1938, he emerged from the apartment building and at the newspaper stand opposite learned of Hitler’s annexation of Austria. He ran back up the stairs to wake his brother, shouting. Jorge didn’t pay much attention, grumbling that the war wouldn’t start for another year, and went back to sleep. And he wasn’t far wrong. The Second World War began in September 1939, with the invasion of Poland.

But the annexation of Austria triggered a warning light within the restless Oscar Arany. He started to look for alternative ways of moving somewhere and made preparations to receive his brother with his wife and their small daughter. One of the possibilities was Brazil, but he heard that the quota of visas had run out. All the same, he went to see the consul personally, and was delighted to be presented with a jeitinho brasileiro, the Brazilian way of getting around problems: he was offered a pass for Assunción, with the advice that he’d have to disembark in Rio de Janeiro on the way, but wouldn’t ‘necessarily’ need to continue all the way to Paraguay: he could just stay on. Oscar followed this advice, and as soon as he arrived, got work as a cellist in the Orquestra de Câmara de Niterói [Niterói Chamber Orchestra], then moved on to the Orquestra Sinfônica Brasileira (Brazilian Symphony Orchestra), when it was founded, on 17th August 1940, under the direction of another Hungarian exile, Szenkar (q.v.). He noticed that it was hard to find classical sheet music in good condition, saw a window of opportunity, but kept this idea under his belt for a while.

In 1947, he met the Finnish woman who would be his wife for the rest of his life, Vieno Tikkinen. They met in Penedo, the interior of Rio de Janeiro state, where he had gone with another exile friend, Emeric Marcier (q.v.). Three days after being introduced, Oscar asked for the young woman’s hand in marriage. She herself recounted this story to their children with some amusement, saying how appalled she’d been at the suitor’s audacity. Neither spoke much of each other’s language, so the exchange proceeded in his clumsy Portuguese, while Vieno, shocked by his boldness, let the Hungarian stumble on on his own. Oscar let some time pass, apologised, and before long raised the matter again, this time getting what he wanted.

After they married, he went ahead with his plans to open a sheet music shop, on the seventh floor of the Edifício Nilomex building, on Avenida Nilo Peçanha, in the centre of Rio de Janeiro. For over 40 years, Músicas Oscar Arany was a meeting point for the crème de la crème of classical music in Brazil, as well as being popular among Bossa Nova musicians with a classical background.

Sources: TV series Exiles (Telenews, 2016), interview with Daniel Arany, Casa Stefan Zweig.

Leonardo Dourado / IB

ARCADE, Bruno

Businessman, writer, journalist

Vienna, 1904 – Rio de Janeiro, 1972

In Brazil from 1940 to 1972

Information about this anti-Fascist Austrian is sparse. In the preface to the 1942 book Und nach Hitler: was dann? [And After Hitler: Then What?], published in Rio de Janeiro together with his friend Miecio Askanasy (q.v.), the fellow exile mentions that the origins of Austrian Bruno Kreitner’s pseudonym Arcade derive from main character in Anatole France’s La Révolte des anges (The Revolt of the Angels), who emigrates because of his opposition to Nazism. Arcade lived in Vienna until 1937, just before the German annexation, and it was there that he published Wissen um ein Kulturgesetz [Ideas for a Cultural Law], which Thomas Mann received with interest. Arcade faced an arduous route of exile, first through Switzerland, then to Belgium, France and finally to South America, via Portugal.

Arquivo Nacional, 1942

He spent three years in Colombia before moving on to Brazil, where he got in touch with Miecio Askanasy, a publisher from Vienna who had started a gallery and shop selling antiques and books in Rio de Janeiro. Like many other exiles, Arcade tried several means of survival. He wrote articles for Brazilian newspapers — a few years ago, a manuscript of his was auctioned in Rio de Janeiro —, worked in his friend’s shop, and gave talks, among them on 18th November 1941 at the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa - ABI (Brazilian Press Association), in Rio de Janeiro. This was on the occasion of the centenary of Francisco de Orellana’s journey to the Amazon, and Arcade used the opportunity to talk his adventures during a river journey between Bogotá and Belém. Galeria Askanasy [Askanasy Gallery] on Rua Senador Dantas was one of the first in Rio de Janeiro to specialize in modern art and, in 1945, hosted an important exhibition devoted to the art the Nazis called Entartete Kunst (Degenerate Art). During this exhibition, a painting by Wilhelm Wöller (q.v.) was vandalized by Fascist supporters. After selling books door-to-door, Arcade and Askanasy decided to open a bookshop. In 1946, the name Bruno Kreitner appeared as the senior partner with 68% of the capital of Livraria Askanasy Ltda., located on the 5th floor of a building on Avenida Presidente Wilson, in Rio de Janeiro.

Arcade also had several dealings with Stefan Zweig (q.v.), including a project to organize a manual of German exile literature, as well as a work about Spanish and French literature. There are no surviving records of these projects. His entry in Stefan Zweig’s last agenda gives just a Rio de Janeiro telephone number. In the biography Morte no paraíso, a tragédia de Stefan Zweig [Death in Paradise, the Tragedy of Stefan Zweig] Alberto Dines mentions that Arcade was a recent acquaintance and that Zweig chose him to work on the Emigration Annual, because of his business acumen and because he moved in Rio’s artistic circles, was a friend of another refugee, Miecio (Miecislaw) Askanasy, who owned an art gallery. According to researcher Izabela Kestler, the book Und Nach Hitler: was dann? is a pseudo-philosophical essay about the current intellectual crisis, in which the authors cited Nietzsche as a solution.

Sources: Berthold, Werner; Eckart, Brita. Deutsches Exilarchiv 1933-1945: Katalog der Bücher und Broschüren. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1989; Correio da manhã, Rio de Janeiro, 14-11-1941; Dines, Alberto. Morte no paraíso, a tragédia de Stefan Zweig. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2012. 4ª ed. ampliada; Kern, Daniela. Hanna Levy e a exposição de arte condenada pelo III Reich (1945). Anais da 25ª reunião da Anpap (Associação Nacional dos Pesquisadores de Artes Plásticas). Porto Alegre, 2016.

Kristina Michahelles / IB

ARNAU, Frank

Writer, journalist

Vienna, 09-03-1894 — Munich, Germany, 11-02-1976

In Brazil from 1939 to 1955

Born Heinrich Karl Schmitt, at the age of 36 he officially changed his name to Frank Arnau, after publishing eleven books under this pseudonym. Because of the activities of his father, Charles Schmitt, a successful administrator of luxury hotels such as the Beau-Rivage in Geneva and the Baur au Lac in Zurich, the family moved around a lot, and Frank was mainly educated by private tutors. He left home early and went to work first as a sailor and then at the bar of the famous Pera Palace Hotel in Constantinople, now Istanbul, belonging to the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits, where writers such as Agatha Christie and Ernest Hemingway used to stay.

Arnau with his third wife Henrietta and dog Pünktchen [Little Dot], 1960s

Private collection of Hans-Christian Napp

He married for the first time in 1912, aged 18, and started to work as a writer and journalist, reporting on crime and law for the Viennese newspaper Deutsches Volksblatt [German People’s Paper]. He lived in Hungary and Switzerland. In 1919 he was made a German citizen. He was very eclectic and worked simultaneously as a journalist, consultant for major companies – he mediated a farm machinery business deal in England – and writer. In January 1920, his comedy Exzellenz [Excellence] premiered at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus [German Playhouse] in Hamburg and went on to play in Vienna and other cities. He loved detective novels.

In 1930 he requested his name be changed from Schmitt to Arnau. He opposed the new Nazi regime that came to power in 1933, and from 1934 began a long exile, fleeing first to Holland and then living in Spain for three years. He also lived in France, Holland and Switzerland, before reaching Brazil. During all this time, he remained actively engaged in the anti-Nazi struggle through his newspaper articles. His principal literary work from that period, the novel Die braune Pest [The Brown Plague] came out in 1934, in 84 instalments in the newspaper Volksstimme [People’s Voice], the organ of the Social Democratic Party of the Saar region.

That year, he was expelled from the country and his assets confiscated. Because of the articles he’d published in exile in French and German newspapers, about Germany’s rearmament and the preparations for war, Arnau was under Gestapo surveillance and had received death threats.

As he himself states in his autobiography, he arrived in Brazil on 28th March 1939, with the assistance of the Vargas government. He was registered as a journalist by Lourival Fontes, head of the Departamento de Imprensa e Propaganda – DIP [Department of Press and Propaganda], although the law didn’t actually allow foreigners such an accreditation. He published articles for the pro-government newspaper A Noite [The Night] and worked as an adviser on various other publications. The maps he drew of the war scenarios and the German retreat were of great importance to the Brazilian press.

His main source of income was the consulting work he did for the British and, from 1942, American embassies, something which led to suspicions he might be a British or German spy, or even a double agent. This is why he is considered one of the most controversial figures in the history of the exiles. In his autobiography he recounts several episodes from his work collaborating with the British Foreign Office.

After the war, he travelled to Germany four times as special correspondent for the newspaper O Globo. His skill with languages — German, Spanish, French and Portuguese — and his capacity to adapt to the Brazilian mentality, as well as his competence as a writer, greatly benefited his work as a journalist in the new country.

He published seven detective novels in Brazil, among them À sombra do Corcovado [In the Shadow of Corcovado] and Máscara com fitas de prata [The Silver-Striped Mask]. After the war, he founded the printers Artes Gráficas Arnau, which printed stamps for the Brazilian postal service, including a series for the fourth centenary of Bahia, and also worked as consultant for German industries in Brazil —Mercedes Benz, among others. He was invited to write for Stern magazine by Henri Nannen, its renowned editor-in-chief, and in 1955 he returned to Germany. In the book Der verchromte Urwald [The Chrome Jungle], he dealt with the time he had spent in Brazil, in literary form. According to Der Spiegel magazine, the book is one of the best examples of reportage about the country. He continued his career as a controversial journalist, accusing the German president Heinrich Lübke of having lied when he stated he’d had nothing to do with the concentration camps. One of his greatest literary successes was the 1959 book Kunst der Fälscher — Fälscher der Kunst (The Art of the Faker — 3,000 Years of Deception), translated into 12 languages. He also wrote the first international work about the new Brazilian capital: Brasilia: Phantasie und Wirklichkeit [Brasília: Fantasy and Reality], published in Munich in 1960.

Arnau was also a famous philatelist. The Bund Deutscher Philatisten (German Association of Philatelists) attributes much of the popularization of this hobby to him. In 1968, he received the title of doctor honoris causa from Humboldt-Universität (Humboldt University), then in East Berlin. He was also honoured by the police forces of Malaysia and Australia. In 1970, Frank Arnau moved to Switzerland. In 1975 he fell ill and died of a stroke at the age of 81.

According to Father Paulus Gordan (q.v.), Arnau was a glamorous figure, the protagonist of his own thriller.

Sources: Arnau, Frank. Gelebt, geliebt, gehasst. Ein Leben im 20. Jahrhundert. München: Desch, 1972; Frank Arnau. In: Wikipedia. Available at: <https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Arnau>. Visited on: 19th May 2020; Kestler, Izabela. Frank Arnau. In: Exílio e literatura: escritores de fala alemã durante a época do nazismo. São Paulo: EdUSP, 2003, p.67-72; Jesinghaus, Adrian. Der Autor Frank Arnau und "Die braune Pest" In: Exil, 1/2020.

Kristina Michahelles / IB

ASCARELLI, Tullio

Jurist, professor

Rome, 06-10-1903 – Rome, 20-11-1959

In Brazil from 1940 to 1946

We’ve hired a tutor to teach Tullio to read and write in order to study for the 1st year. But if by the end of the year he’s up to 2nd year standards, he can do that at home too and then join the 3rd year. (...) He speaks German satisfactorily and learns without any difficulty. This diary entry for 22nd December 1908 by Elena Pontecorvo, the five-year-old’s mother, gives an idea of the great importance his parents placed on their children’s studies. The father, Attilio Ascarelli, was a well-known coroner with Sephardic roots in Italy going back to the 16th century.

1950s | Photographer unknown

As well as a facility for languages, Tullio displayed an interest in politics at school. In 1919, at only 16, he finished secondary school and joined the University of Rome to study law. He graduated in July 1923, before he’d even turned 20. His graduation thesis pointed towards a speciality for which he later became famous in the field of Law and Economics: Le società a responsabilità limitata e la loro introduzione in Italia [Limited Responsibility Society and its Introduction in Italy]. In 1924 the recent graduate became a professor of Commercial Law at the University of Ferrara. He was so young that the provosts, not knowing him yet, would often bar him from entering the professors’ room, wrote his wife much later, the contralto Marcella Ziffer Ascarelli (1906–1965).

Tullio Ascarelli quickly went on to forge a successful career. In 1925, he became a lecturer in commercial law and, the following year, passed a contest to become full professor. In 1927, he went to Germany with a grant from the Humboldt Foundation. On his return, he accumulated a series of prestigious teaching posts at universities: Catania, in 1929; Parma, in 1932; Padua, in 1933; and Bologna, one of the oldest in the world, in 1935. In addition to his teaching, he kept up his vigorous political activities in the struggle against Fascism. He was an active member of the journal Non Mollare [Don’t Give Up] and was also engaged in the Giustizia e Libertà [Justice and Freedom] movement.

Italy had been implementing some anti-Semitic policies since 1930, but it was on 6th October 1938, with the directive based on the Manifesto della razza (Manifesto of Race) and the laws that came into force in November and December the same year, that Mussolini’s iron fist began to be felt. There were orders to immediately exclude Jews from public office, military service, banking and educational institutions. They also banned admission to all cultural and research institutions, such as public libraries and state archives. From that date onwards, it was forbidden to publish Jewish authors, and works already published were banned from academia.

In late 1938, Tullio Ascarelli went into exile, fleeing initially to England. In 1939, he was reunited in Paris with Marcella and their children Gianni, Franca and Piero, aged 8, 5 and 2. In France, he returned to his studies and received a doctorate in Law from the University of Paris, on 6th June 1940. He still needed an aggrégation in French Law, the title that would allow him to practice his profession in that country. He also renewed his contacts with his Italian anti-Fascist colleagues. Then came the German invasion of France. Paris fell on 14th June. Hordes fled south and a provisional government was set up in Vichy, following an agreement with the Nazis. The Ascarelli family were among these fugitives. On 24th August 1940, the Brazilian consulate in Marseille granted their visas for Brazil. However, they still had to undertake a dangerous escape through Spain and Portugal, where they managed to board to the vessel Angola. They landed in Santos on 6th November the same year.

Thanks to his fame, Ascarelli was hired upon arrival by the Faculty of Law at USP (University of São Paulo). He also set up a law office in the city and established deep ties to Brazil. An important part of his oeuvre of over 500 works was produced in the country that took him in, among them books, articles, treatises and writings about politics, economics and the law. His contributions to the science of law cover almost every field, such as commercial, civil, constitutional, administrative, labour and shipping law. The company tax laws that govern Brazil to this day were inspired by Ascarelli and his writings.

In 1946 he returned to Italy to help heal the wounds the war had opened up in his own country, but returned often to Brazil. He recovered his professorships. In 1953, he accepted an invitation from the University of Rome. As well as Law, he was always engaged with culture and became one of the founders of the Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo – MAM (São Paulo Museum of Modern Art). On 14th November 1959 he was submitted to a surgery in Rome. Six days later, he died from post-operative complications. He was only 56.

Sources: Lopez, Carol Coffield. ASCARELLI, Tullio. Arqshoah: Holocausto e antissemitismo, São Paulo. Available at: <https://www.arqshoah.com/index.php/busca-geral/aei-100-ascarelli-tullio>. Visited on: 26th May 2020; Richter, Mario Stella. Tullio Ascarelli studente. Rivista delle società, Milano, 2009, p. 1237-80; Rodotà, Stefano. Ascarelli, Tullio. In: Dizionario Biografico degli italiani, v. 4. Roma: 1962. Available at: . Visited on: 24th Feb. 2020; Jansen, Letácio. Tullio Ascarelli. Letácio Jansen. Available at: . Visited on: 26th May 2020; Casa Stefan Zweig. Canto dos exilados: Ascarelli, Tullio. Casa Stefan Zweig, Petrópolis. Available at: . Visited on: 26th May 2020.

Leonardo Dourado / IB

ASKANASY, Miecio

Writer, bookseller, gallery owner, director, ballet company impresario

Lemberg, Galicia, Austro-Hungarian Empire, now Lviv, Ukraine, 19-01-1911 – Rio de Janeiro, 16-04-1981

In Brazil from 1939 to 1981

Born in Galicia, Mieczyslaw Weiss, better known by his pseudonym Miecio Askanasy, grew up in Austria. He was the son of industrialist Juliusz Weiss and Antonia Regina Weiss. As a writer in Vienna, he was persecuted by the Gestapo for his intellectual militancy against Nazi Fascism, in particular in the journal Trade and Traffic, which he published in English in the Austrian capital. In 1939, he fled to Italy. In the port of Genoa he embarked on the vessel Principessa Maria, bound for Brazil, arriving in Rio de Janeiro as a temporary immigrant on 5th July 1939. Brazilian immigration authorities registered him as a Polish merchant; religion Catholic.

Late 1950s

To begin with, he worked in Rio selling second-hand books from door to door, mainly to other immigrants from the Jewish community. In late 1942 he published the book of essays Und nach Hitler: was dann? [And After Hitler: Then What?], co-written with his friend and fellow refugee, the Austrian writer Bruno Arcade (q.v.). The Brazilian version had a preface by the prestigious journalist Ernst Feder (q.v.). In the book, the authors sought to refute Marxism and reclaim the figure of Nietzsche, tackling the Jewish question and the future world order, following the longed-for defeat of Nazism.

During this period, Arcade and Askanasy also gave several talks to the Associação Brasileira de Imprensa – ABI (Brazilian Press Association), about current political and social issues.

In August 1944, he inaugurated Galeria Askanasy [Askanasy Gallery] at Rua Senador Dantas 55, in the centre of Rio de Janeiro, one of the city’s first spaces dedicated to modern art, with exhibitions by the Portuguese painter Maria Helena Vieira da Silva, Iberê Camargo, Antônio Bandeira and Carlos Scliar, among others. The gallery also sold rare books.

In April 1945, right at the end of the Second World War, Askanasy and Arcade, with help from Feder, organized the exhibition Art Condemned by the Third Reich, with original works and graphic art by 39 European artists, among them Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Oskar Kokoschka, Willy Baumeister, Käthe Kollwitz and Lasar Segall. The catalogue text was written by the German historian Hanna Levy (q.v.). During the exhibition, pro-Nazi demonstrators damaged the painting Namoro sentimental [Sentimental Affair], by Wilhelm Wöller (q.v.).

In 1948, Askanasy transferred his gallery, now dealing mainly in photographs, books and Brasiliana, in other words, maps, prints, books and documents about Brazil, to Rua da Quitanda 65, in the same district.

During this period, he began to frequent the Candomblé religious centre run by popular Bahian pai de santo [father of saints]