Dresden I; Lithograph over Monoprint, 70 x 100 cms, Unique, 2013.

Dresden I explores the early life of my mother, Hannalore Isakowitz. She was born in 1915 in Tilsit, a small town on the Memel River in Eastern Prussia, now within Russia. Both her parents came from large, middle class, bourgeois, Jewish families who regarded themselves as entirely assimilated, and proudly German.

In the early 1900’s Tilsit was thriving. With 34,500 inhabitants, it had electric tramways, a direct railway line to the capital city of Königsberg and steamers docking daily. The city was chiefly made up of Germans, living alongside Lithuanians and Jews. However, the Prussian policy of deportation consistently required the Jewish citizens of Tilsit to make critical life decisions: either move on, or fight for their existence in the city. Those, like my grandfather, who were able to remain through bureaucratic exertion and professional influence, came to completely identify themselves with the Imperial Empire, and were active in their community and as soldiers.

My grandfather Erich Max Isakowitz was a Doctor and Dental surgeon, born in Königsberg in 1891. His lengthy academic education and training at the Universities of Königsberg and Munich was interrupted by extensive military service in the Great War, as a surgeon on the Western Front. He was not decorated, but did receive recognition and compensation for his war service. Intelligent, creative and charming, but also a difficult character and inveterate womaniser, his marriage to my grandmother was only saved by convention and the level of adversity they both faced.

My grandmother Sofie Berlowitz was born in 1893 in Eydtkuhnen, about 90 kms southeast of Tilsit. Intelligent, strong willed and well educated, Sofie spoke English and had visited England, a factor that would eventually help the family leave Germany. The daughter of a prosperous businessman, she brought a considerable dowry to the marriage. Eydtkuhnen was the easternmost terminus of the Prussian Eastern Railway, connecting Berlin with the Saint Petersburg – Warsaw Railway in the Russian Empire. To continue their voyage east , all passengers and goods had to change there to a Russian gauge train. The lucrative Berlowitz family businesses included this moving of goods and passengers from one set of trains to another.

This stylish, headstrong couple were married in a Jewish ceremony in Eydtkuhnen on 26th April 1914 and my mother, their only child, was born on 15th July 1915.

By the time of the photographs, Eric was already in military service, one shows him in dress, and the other in field uniform. In 1924, after six or so difficult years based in Tilsit, Erich and Sofie, with their young daughter, always known as Lore, left for Dresden, where they had family. This was to advance Erich’s practice and to escape increasing anti- Semitism, in the wake of growing political change.