Insiders/Outsiders

Fascinating discussion at Charleston Farmhouse as part of the Charleston Festival looking at the cultural contribution to the UK of refugees from Nazi Germany.

The talk was chaired by Monica Bohm-Duchen, who has curated a year’s events on the subject, who began by paying tribute to Judith Kerr, the children’s author, whose death had been announced early that day, and who had come to England just before the Second World War with her parents.  She talked about the book which accompanies the years events for which 22 people had written chapters on different aspects of cultural life including sculpture, design, photography, art  dealers, Picture Post and much more.

Norman Rosenthal, the art historian and curator, then talked about how his parents fled Nazi Germany and the friends they made in England in similar circumstances. He talked about the questions he wished he’d asked them. I loved an image he talked about of how a few years ago the second hand bookshops of Hampstead were full of book sin German as the generation that fled died.

Esther Freud, the novelsist, then spoke about how her father, the artist Lucien Freud, was not nostalgic for the country he had left but wanted to be his own person. She said in fact it was her who became interested in where the family had come from. She spoke about how she learn to ask her father indirect questions to get him to speak about the past as he wouldn’t answer direct ones and that when he did speak he missed out a generation.