Ljuba Monastirskaja
 | This article may require copy editing for grammar, style, cohesion, tone, or spelling. (May 2024) |
Ljuba Monastirskaja | |
|---|---|
 Ljuba Monastirskaja circa 1926 | |
| Born | 25 September 1906 |
| Died | 30 November 1941 (aged 35) |
Ljuba Monastirskaja, (25 September 1906 – 30 November 1941) was a Latvian textile artist. She was a victim of the Rumbula massacre in 1941.
Biography[edit]
She was born into an secular Jewish family. Her father was a merchant who had moved to Riga from Chernihiv, Russian Empire (today Ukraine) to escape the new wave of progroms.[1]
Her upbringing in Riga during the later parts of 1910s was affected by events like World War I.[2] As a teenager, Monastirskaja studied at the Jewish secular school in Riga, where she graduated in 1924.[1] Approximately two years later, in October 1926, she began studies at the Bauhaus School of Art, Design and Architecture in Dessau, where she had teachers such as Josef Albers, Gunta Stölzl, Marcel Breuer and Georg Muche.[3]
Like most other female students at Bauhaus, she was placed at the textile factory. There she could develop her skills with textiles and industrial weaving techniques adapted for mass production and a more modern way, mostly inspired by constructivism.[2]
Ljuba Monastirskaja can be seen in a well known photograph which shows female students standing on the stairwell inside the Bauhaus building, she can be seen standing besides Gunta Stölzl and Otti Berger.[4] After her years of studie she started working for two well known textile producers firstly in Mössingen and then Sagan. Her ambition was to continue to live and work in Germany, but the nazi power rise in 1933 would hinder that, she was later arrested and deported to Latvia.[5]
A short time after returning to Latvia, she married architect Natan Kirsh in 1934, who also had a Jewish upbringing.[5] After political unrest in Latvia she had trouble establishing herself and her career as textile producer, as she belonged to an minority who became marginalised by the regime in Latvia as Russian speaking and a Jew, her education in Germany was also a reason.[1]
In 1941, after the nazi invasion of Latvia a persecution of Latvian Jews started, Monastirskaja was placed along with over 40,000 Jews in a specially made ghetto. Her husband had earlier been moved to Biķernieki.[6]
Death[edit]
On 30 November 1941, she along with 12,000 others were moved from the ghetto to Rumbula to a forest ten kilometres south of Riga where she was forced down into a mass grave and shot dead during the Rumbula massacre. This massacre was done by the nazis Einsatzgruppe A.[6]
After Monastirskaja had been moved to the ghetto in Riga and killed in Rumbula, most of her belongings and artistic works were destroyed or lost. This was part of Nazi Germany extermination of culture, books, and arts, and memories of the people who made it.[7]
References[edit]
- ^ a b c Onckule, Zane (2023). "(Ne)būt pie stellēm: Bauhaus, "dārgās niecības" un gal Ļuba" (in Latvian). Arterritory. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
- ^ a b Angrick, Andrej; Klein, Peter (2009). The "Final Solution" in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941–1944. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-84545-608-5
- ^ "Ljuba Kirsh". Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
- ^ "Die Weberinnen auf der Bauhaustreppe, Gunta Stölzl, Meister der Weberei, mit ihren Studierenden" (in German). Kunst Archive. Retrieved 23 May 2024.
- ^ a b Pourchier-Plasseraud, Suzanne (2015). "The Authoritarian Regime (1934–1940)". Arts and a Nation: The Role of Visual Arts and Artists in the Making of the Latvian Identity, 1905–1940. Leiden: Brill Rodopi. ISSN 1570-7121.
- ^ a b Angrick, Andrej; Klein, Peter (2009). The "Final Solution" in Riga: Exploitation and Annihilation, 1941–1944. New York: Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-84545-608-5.
- ^ Rydell, Anders (2013). Plundrarna – Hur nazisterna stal Europas konstskatter. Stockholm: Ordfront. pp. 8–29.
External links[edit]
Media related to Ljuba Monastirskaja at Wikimedia Commons
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