The aristocrat Dr. Hans Guggenheim

TA: Hans, did you know that I published your sketch of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz drawn during the commemoration of the Rebbe�s 10th Yehrtzeit in Boston? There is a link to the Project Guggenheim in that post as well.
HG: Yes, I saw it.
HG: Let�s starts with the background, the families we were bourn into, the country we were bourn into, the mind that were born into. I am going to begin by telling you a little bit about my families. My mother side comes from Warsaw in Poland. A cousin just wrote a book about family in Poland, very prominent aristocratic family of Polish Jews. My great-great-grandfather was Itzshe Oscher Kleinmann of Warsaw who married Maria Halpern of St. Petersburg. He was in the salt business. His children married into some of the well known Jewish Families in Europe. The other part of my family are Guggenheims. The family from South of Germany, close to Switzerland. So both of my grandfathers Kleinmann and Guggenheim had factories in Berlin in the 20s. The factories were on the same street Ritter Strase. So sooner or later their children, my parents got married.
TA: Is that the same as the "American" Guggenheim family?
HG: There is only one Guggenheim family but we were fairly removed. I knew Peggy Guggenheim well and we were friends.



HG: I grew up in Berlin, beautiful apartment, chauffeur, etc. until Hitler came and the whole thing collapsed. My mother then sent three telegrams asking for help: one to Poland, one to relatives in South Africa and one to London. In London was her cousin who was a former undersecretary of the Stock Exchange in Berlin. When Hitler came to power he was asked to resign and he moved to London. He received my mothers� telegram and took me and my sister to a boarding school in London.



HG: We were in the school till the war broke out between England and Germany. Ironically I and my sister were classified as "Enemy Alien" by the British and interned on an island. My uncle got me out and we were put on a boat to Guatemala. Our boat was attacked by a German submarine but we reached Guatemala. My parents also got a visa to Guatemala in 1939. I began to paint there and had a very successful exhibition of my paintings in 1940, so I though of myself as artist and I was going to become a famous artist. After the war I came to the States.



TA: You house is a "Guggenheim museum" there is this amazing photograph from 1865, your great-great-grandfather Itzshe Oscher Kleinmann in a top hat surrounded by the family. There is a note that says �sitting on the ground are parents of Andre Sitroen. Is that the automobile family? I didn�t know they were Jewish?



HG: Yes they were a Dutch Jewish family that settled in Paris. My great-great-grandfather was so wealthy that he offered a hundred thousand (?) gold rubles dowry to his daughters who married outside of Poland. That is how I became related to the big Jewish European families. [TA: after the interview I found this about Andre Citroen the founder of the Citroen Automotive: Andre Citroen was born in Paris on the 5th of February 1878, the fifth child of a middle class prosperous Jewish family whose origins were from the outskirts of Amsterdam. There they had traded in 'exotic fruit' from which they took the name Limoenman. Andre's grandfather however became a jeweler and changed his name to the more up-market Citroen, the Dutch for Lemon.]
TA: Hans, what is this water color portrait next to the family pictures?



HG: This water color is a portrait of Roman Vishniac. Roman is my second cousin and he grew up in Moscow, like you. He became famous for his photographs of the chassidic Jews before the war. I painted Roman in 1949 in New York.



TA: Fascinating, Hans. In the next part of the interview we will talk about and show your work.