4 days ago
Hannah Wurzburger obituary
My mother, Hannah Wurzburger, who has died aged 91, was an artist, printmaker and weaver who escaped Nazi Germany as a child on one of the last Kindertransport trains.
Born in Berlin to assimilated Jewish parents, Edith (nee Herrmann) and Max Gibianski, a violinist and teacher, Hannah arrived in the UK in September 1939, aged five. Her brother, Manfred, had died of measles as an infant. Both her parents, as well as aunts and uncles, would be killed by the Nazis.
Hannah stayed first in an abusive children's home, but completed her education at Stoatley Rough boarding school in Haslemere, Surrey, where she thrived. The school famously became a haven for hundreds of Jewish refugee children.
From 1950 until 1954, Hannah studied painting at Farnham School of Art, known for its vibrant artistic community, then attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London. She completed her studies despite suffering a mental breakdown due to childhood traumas.
After graduating, Hannah taught art in secondary schools in Nottingham and London, worked on a kibbutz in Israel and, through a fellow German-Jewish refugee, Daniel Wurzburger, met his brother Walter, a musician and composer, who had settled in London. Hannah and Walter married in 1966 and their twin daughters, Ruth and Madeleine, were born in 1967. The marriage was extremely happy, despite a 20-year age gap.
During the 70s and 80s, Hannah continued teaching, raised her daughters and produced many designs for etchings and linocuts; one of them, Cockerel, is held in the V&A Prints & Drawings Collection. She enthusiastically supported the Kingston Philharmonia, Kingston's local orchestra, founded by Walter in 1974.
An exhibition of her paintings was held at Kingston Museum in 1994. Hannah's still lifes, portraits and landscapes became increasingly abstract; she cited Cézanne: 'Treat nature by means of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone'.
After Walter's death in 1995, she rediscovered textiles, joining a weaving group and producing many exciting pieces (exhibited at the Rose theatre, Kingston, in 2019). Her loose, experimental approach employed muted colours and yarn-layering to build up surface texture.
Hannah later contributed to the Association of Jewish Refugees' Refugee Voices project as a Holocaust survivor.
Throughout her life, my mother lacked confidence in herself and her creative talent. However, Hannah was a survivor, overcoming great odds to become artist, mother, teacher and create a loving and artistic home environment. She will be remembered as warm-hearted, eccentric and non-conformist with a great sense of fun.
She is survived by her daughters, Ruth and me, and two grandchildren, Elan and Yael.
