Heinz Schwerin
Bauhaus toys for PalestineDesignerAfter finishing high school and completing an apprenticeship as a carpenter, Heinz Schwerin started studying at the Dessau Bauhaus school in summer 1931. He spent two semesters at the workshop for buildings and extensions and was also active as a student representative.
Ricarda Schwerin
A non-Jewish atheist in PalestinePhotographerAt the age of 18, Ricarda Meltzer took up her studies at the Bauhaus in Dessau in the summer semester of 1930 with the goal of becoming a photographer. After finishing the preliminary course, she continued her education in the photo class of Walter Peterhans, among others.
Kurt Schwitters
Painter, WriterUntil autumn 1936, the painter Kurt Schwitters had tried to reassure himself, but in those November days in Amsterdam he seriously considered fleeing abroad, or at least considered a lengthy absence. In his hometown of Hanover, leftist artists were increasingly being spied on and arrested by the Gestapo.
Anna Seghers
WriterThe student of art history at Heidelberg soon became aware that her calling was in fact writing. After receiving her doctorate with a work on Rembrandt she published under the name Seghers in the Frankfurter Zeitung.
Wilhelm Speyer
WriterIn the days of the Weimar Republic, Wilhelm Speyer was a popular author whose works sold exceptionally well, were translated into several languages and in some cases made into films. "His humanism, his openness to foreign influences, his rejection of nationalism and German jingoism [set] the basic tone for his texts.
Steffie Spira
Actress, Theater directorSteffie Spira came from a German-Austrian theatre family. Her father was the actor Fritz Jacob Spira, her mother Lotte Spira-Andresen, stage and film actor.
Saša Stanišić
The coincidence of originsWriter, Hörspielautor“I was born on 7 March 1978 in Višegrad on the river Drina. In the days before I was born, it had been raining non-stop.
Leonard Steckel
Actor, Theater directorBefore 1933, Leonard Steckel was a successful actor in contemporary plays performing alongside well-known colleagues like Helene Weigel or Alexander Granach. He was one of the most important actors on the avant-garde stage of Piscator.
Margarete Steffin
WriterMargarete Steffin went on a convalescence trip in Agra, Switzerland in the spring of 1933, and was never to see Germany again. In the elegant villa where she put on theatre shows with the other patients, she wrote stories and poems about her years as an adolescent in the working-class milieu of the 1920s; friends brought these writings to the Berlin resistance movement.
Fred Stein
PhotographerFred Stein came from an intellectual family, his father a rabbi and his mother a teacher of religion. He was already politically active against the emerging fascism in Germany as a youth. After finishing his law studies, in 1933 the Nazis prevented him from finishing his thesis.
