Creativity born of displacement

The art of refugees and displaced persons has enriched New Zealand culture for a century but, asks BRENDAN O'FLAHERTY, has their contribution been sufficiently recognised?

Sixty-two years ago, on this day, Britain declared war on Germany. It was the beginning of a period that would uproot millions as Hitler's Nazi regime inexorably marched through Europe.

By the time the Austrians welcomed Hitler in the Anschluss annexation of 1938, artist Tom Kreisler's parents, who had foreseen the implications for themselves and fellow Jews, were already in Barcelona.

Later they left for South America and the far-flung safety of Buenos Aires, Argentina, where Tomas (later Thomas) was born in 1938.

Now based in New Plymouth, Tom Kreisler and his art feature in this week's Auckland University Displacement and Creativity symposium, which, for the first time in New Zealand, links the related strands of exile, art and creativity, particularly with Nazi Germany and the Second World War.

One of the aims of the symposium, says co-organiser and Associate Professor of Art History Leonard Bell, from the University of Auckland, is to make better-known the creative work of refugees who came to New Zealand.

Kreisler's life story is the result of a double linguistic and cultural displacement. Spanish was his first language in Buenos Aires, with German the language of his parents. "I never spoke German at home," he says. "Even though I was quite young I had some kind of phobia about German being a funny language in terms of what had happened [in Europe]. We never spoke about it at home."

When his father died in the early 1950s Kreisler was sent to Christchurch, where his aunt and her husband were living.

After Christchurch Boys High, Kreisler studied at the University of Canterbury, first English and French, later art at Ilam.

Unable to sustain a living from his art he worked as an advertising copywriter and art teacher. Kreisler has rarely exhibited in Auckland, but there are several people in New Zealand who regard his work highly.

Bell believes that Kreisler is one of the most compelling and interesting artists of his generation and he has not received the broader recognition his work warrants.

Using acrylic on canvas, Kreisler draws from the pop art movement of the 50s. His work is characterised with slices of visual irony, mixed with word play, often multi-lingual. Absurdist elements constantly question optical and verbal associations.

A recent silk screening whimsically has a cat miaowing Che! instead of the cat food brand Chef. Che being a Spanish-language nickname for Argentinians, people Kreisler once identified with.

Some of Kreisler's relatives died in the Holocaust. Recent works use a budgie motif to represent these victims. One such piece Cock al Heil, Cock a Teil, uses swastikas as legs for the bird. The words play on Cockatiel. It is based on the bird, a victim, telling a story its teil or tale.

Another work depicts the budgie in a zigzag pattern, systematic destruction to the extreme. Sagen in German means say. The zigzag is speaking: Was sagst du? What are you saying? What is your reference here in the zigzag?

In measured tones difficult to categorise, Kreisler recounts an incident during a visit to Mexico last Christmas.

"Some German tourists started talking to me in the hotel lobby. Instinctively I responded in German. I didn't know I had it in me. My wife Lesley gave me a bit of a kick and said, 'You bastard, I didn't know you could speak German.' I said I didn't know I could either."

As a displaced person Kreisler sees his background as a subset of an artistic whole.

"Painters are often threatened or displaced people who are always looking for other elements in their work," says Kreisler.

"I think that is part of the creative process anyway, that you are constantly reviewing and analysing your own work."

Most refugees from Nazi Germany are now dead and those who reached New Zealand are largely forgotten.

But why is it that those of a creative bent are virtually unknown to the general populace? Doyen of New Zealand composers, Edwin Carr, has a ready response: "We have a Philistine society - people who simply don't care about culture."

German Jewish poet Karl Wolfskehl is a case in point. He arrived in Auckland as a 69-year-old in 1938 and stayed until his death in 1948.

Wolfskehl's simple gravestone in West Auckland's Waikumete Cemetery bears his name in Hebrew and Roman letters, with the Latin inscription Exul Poeta - Poet in Exile.

While largely unacclaimed, Wolfskehl's life in New Zealand provided the inspiration for Carr's second symphony, The Exile.

"I wanted to impress upon New Zealanders that we had such a distinguished man here. He was virtually unknown. It was very sad," says Carr.

The lack of recognition is a complex area, says art historian Bell. Sometimes there was professional resistance to refugees, medicine being the most notable. But there was no uniform response in terms of the arts.



Bell's long-standing interest in refugee art has a strong personal connection. "My wife's parents were refugees from Nazism in Czechoslovakia. The family of my brother's wife were also refugees from Austria."

Some people had very unpleasant experiences, others the opposite, says Bell. Wellington art patron Denis Frederick Adam illustrates the point.

Born in Berlin in 1924, Dietrich Fritz Otto Werner Adam came from a well-heeled German Jewish family.

When his father was put under house arrest on trumped-up charges of smuggling money out of Germany in 1933, Hitler's first year as Chancellor, it was time to think of leaving.

Adam went to England as a refugee from Nazi oppression. Some of the Adam family stayed behind. "An uncle later died in the cattle trucks in the train to Auschwitz. His wife was gassed at the camp."

Adam went to boarding school in Edinburgh, studied at London University and later volunteered for aircrew service with the RAF.

Contact with New Zealanders through the war encouraged him to seek opportunities far from overcrowded and war-torn Britain.

Putting astute business skills to work Adam set up his own insurance brokerage. This year the National Business Review rich list put Adam's personal value at $17 million.

The Adam Foundation was set up in 1976 to house a growing 20th-century art collection. Today it is a vehicle for philanthropy, pumping millions of dollars into support for the arts.



These days Adam is very much a citizen of this country. "In June this year my wife Verna and I visited Berlin. I went there as a New Zealander. There's no sentimental attachment to where I was born."

That latest trip was a happier occasion for Adam than the first post-war encounter with his native land.

"We married in 1953 and honeymooned in Europe. We went to Frankfurt where I got into a terrible argument in a restaurant with some unrepentant bloody Nazi. He said his greatest memory was shaking the hand of the Fuhrer. I was so upset I was not staying another day. I didn't return to Germany for 20 years."

From his Wellington base Adam is a patron of many art forms - music, opera, literature, drama and visual art. The Adam Concert Chamber and Adam Art Gallery at Victoria University keep the name in the public eye.

Sundry patronage includes the biennial cello competition in Christchurch, an annual chamber music summer school in Nelson, sponsorship of the Royal New Zealand Ballet, an annual play-reading season in Wellington and support for the national youth orchestra and youth choir.

He has also commissioned various compositions and financed several young musicians to study abroad. Yet as a major player in the art world Adam is hardly a household name outside of Wellington.

Does he feel suitably recognised? "You don't do it for recognition. The reward comes if, and when, you can help people achieve their potential. That's a very satisfying reward in itself."

* Tom Kreisler's exhibition Private and Confidential opens Monday evening at the Gus Fisher Gallery in the Kenneth Myers Centre, 74 Shortland St. The symposium runs on Tuesday, September 4