MALVA
SCHALEK
Prague - Vienna
- Theresienstadt - Auschwitz
5.
Biographical Sketch
Family History and Youth
Malva Schalek was born in Prague, in 1882, the youngest of four
children. Both her mother Balduina and
her father Gustav came from Jewish-Bohemian families.
Malva
spent her childhood in a stately building in the center of Prague, which also
housed the family bookstore. The
bookstore served as one of the most important intellectual meeting places of the
city. It had grown from the Wohl
bookstore, which had been founded in the Jewish Ghetto before 1848. Joseph Schalek, Malva's grandfather, had
married Judith Wohl and took over the trade, passing it on to Malva´s father,
Gustav. The family music store and a
furniture store, Möbel-Schalek, were taken over by Gustav`s brother and
brother-in law respectively.
Joseph
and Gustav were closely involved the Czech national movement. The bookstore served as an intellectual
center for the related literary and political circles until Gustav died
suddenly in 1889. His widow Balduine
carried on and held a sort of literary salon until she remarried. After her marriage to Dr Schnitzer, a young
doctor, the family moved to Hohenelbe (Vrchlabi) in northern Bohemia, where
Malva and the younger siblings completed their schooling.
After
completing three years of higher schooling for girls, Malva was sent to Munich
where she attended the “Frauenakademie” for a year. She then moved to Vienna where the extended family provided her
with a studio and influential contacts.
Her uncle Joseph (Peppi) Simon, banker for Katherina Schratt (the
mistress of Emperor Franz Joseph) and brother-in-law of Johann Strauss Jr., was
proud of his niece. He gave her an atelier
at the top of the Theater an der Wien, which he owned, and introduced her to
Viennese society. Photos of society
evenings, for example one with Johann Strauß Jr., and Johannes Brahms and
correspondence between Strauß and Joseph (von) Simon help to document this
period. Summers were spent in Aussig
and Leitmeritz, as well as in Bad Ischl, where Malva´s uncle and Johann Strauß
owned a house together.
Malva become rather well known as a painter
in Vienna and in Prague. She
specialized in portraits - many of upper middle class Jewish families – and of
well-known actors (Max Pallenberg). She
also painted interiors, among others an oil painting of the boudoir of
Katherina Schratt.
Flight
from Vienna (March 1938)
Malva fled Vienna at the Anschluss, leaving
her works in her studio. Taking her
aged aunt Emma Richter (mother of the Socialist leader, Oswald Richter, who had
already been murdered by the Nazis) she fled to Leitmeritz, in Czechoslovakia,
where her brother Robert was a judge.
She was then expelled to Prague after the Nazi takeover of the
Sudetenland and finally forced into the concentration camp Theresienstadt in
1942. We have a last letter with her
testament.
Her art
and her resistance have been documented by contemporary eyewitnesses. Despite |ill health, she was able to work as
an artist, and secretly draw scenes of the life she saw around her. These charcoal drawings and watercolors – we
have 100-140 - remain her sober testament.
They
were hidden and preserved until the liberation of Theresienstadt on May 8, 1945
Malva
Schalek remained true to her principles and the art she left us is a
demonstration of her resistance.
According to an eyewitness account, she refused to paint a portrait of a
collaborator in May 1944, and was subsequently deported to Auschwitz. The date of her death is recorded as March
24, 1945.