Elisabeth (Künstlername: Elisabeth Springer) Weiss, geb. Springer

My great-aunt Elisabeth (Lisl) Springer was born in Munich on March 2, 1904, the daughter of the businessman David Springer and Dorline Springer, née Maier. She and her older sister Anna (Anny) grew up in the house at Rosental 19 (now Sendlinger Strasse 3). Lisl studied mural painting and ceramics at the Städtische Malschule (Municipal Painting School) on Westenriederstrasse and gained certification as a kindergarten teacher at the Städtische Kindergartenseminar (Municipal Kindergarten Seminar). She took private lessons and passed the German Stage Association’s acting examination in 1931. In the late 1920s and 1930s Lisl was a member of the progressive artists’ association “Die Juryfreien” (“The Juryless”) and the Munich chapter of the Jüdischer Kulturbund (Jewish Cultural Association) of Bavaria.
After the Nazi accession to power, Lisl had few opportunities to perform on stage or exhibit her works. From 1935 to 1937 she was the youngest member of the Münchner Marionettentheater im Jüdischen Kulturbund (Puppet Theater of Jewish Artists in Munich). In 1936 she exhibited sculptures, playing cards and masks in the “Reichsausstellung jüdischer Künstler” (“Reich Exhibition of Jewish Artists”) at the Jüdisches Museum (Jewish Museum) of Berlin. The following year she left Munich to become a resident member of the acting ensemble of the Jüdischer Kulturbund of Hamburg. In 1939, after the ensemble’s dissolution, she returned to Munich, where she had to perform forced labor in the Opacher printing company. The same year she married the writer Joseph Weiss, possibly in connection with her efforts to emigrate. The couple divorced again in 1941. Otherwise Lisl remained single. After the war, her sister Anny learned from a reliable source that Lisl was lesbian. She herself had never told her family.
In 1939, Lisl was forced to move from Rosental 19 to a so-called “Judenwohnung” (“Jews’ apartment”) at Landwehrstrasse 44. On July 7, 1941 she received an entry permit for the United States but the German authorities prevented her from leaving the country. On November 20, 1941, Elisabeth Springer and her former husband Joseph Weiss were among the approximately 1,000 Jewish men, women, and children deported from Munich to Kaunas, Lithuania and shot to death on November 25, 1941. Lisl’s artistic work has come down to us in a small terracotta head, a watercolor painting, and a drawing of a boy with horses. An unfinished mural and several sculptures are known only from photographs.
Lisl’s sister Anny Rosenthal, née Springer had managed to flee to the U.S. with her husband and two sons in 1936. The family settled in Chicago. Despite her efforts to make the best of her new life, Anny never overcame the loss of her mother Dorline and her sister Lisl. She suffered from nightmares and depression and in 1968, shortly before her seventieth birthday, committed suicide—a late victim of the Holocaust.(Text and translation: Judith Rosenthal; editor: C. Fritsche)