Charlotte Salomon Quotes

Keep this safe, it is my whole life.

Daberlohn writes: 'The creation of Adam is God's final act which He hurls from His heights into the depths. It is not the same God Who creates eve. This is the tragedy of the king who must hand over his dominion to his son…

And now something strange happened to our Charlotte. While busy painting, as she always was, she fell asleep in the midday sun. And when she awoke, the finished portrait of her once so ardently beloved Daberlohn [ = Alfred Wolfsohn ] lay before her. However, she tore the sheet into a hundred thousand shreds.. ..she sought for an explanation.. .Then her glace fell on one of her old paintings representing Death and the Maiden. And suddenly she knew...

The following pictures are those which to the author seem the strangest. Without doubt they have their origin in Michelangelo Rome series of the main section that was sung with the loudest and most penetrating voice of this entire opus. ('Creation of Adam, by Michelangelo')

..And with dream awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew she had to vanish for a while from the human surface and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths.
And from that came
Life or Theater???

'Life? or Theater?' - A Play with Music - C.S.

I became my mother, my grandmother. I learned to travel all their paths and became all of them.. .I knew I had a mission, and no power on earth could stop me.

Charlotte: 'I have some more [paintings she recently made] to show you'.
Daberlohn: Well, let's meet this evening... ..
Isn't it absurd to address each other so formally? You're such a baby – here, let me hold your hand.. ..Real painter's hands'.
Charlotte: 'To me they're just ugly'.. ..'You would be a wonderful subject for a portrait -'
Daberlohn (to himself) : 'Little girl, if you only knew what one has to go through to be able to paint'.

...his book, Orpheus, or the Way to a Death Mask, of which he had said that he regretted not having written it as a poem.
And with dream-awakened eyes she saw all the beauty around her, saw the sea, felt the sun, and knew: she had to vanish for a while from the human plane and make every sacrifice in order to create her world anew out of the depths.

Daberlohn: 'One must first go into oneself to be able to go out of oneself. One means of going out of oneself is, for me, the movie, man's machine for producing himself'.

..even happens that each character has to sing a different text, resulting in a chorus. The varied nature of the paintings should be attributed less to the author than to the varies nature of the characters to be portrayed. The author [= Charlotte Salomon] has tried.. ..to go completely out of herself to allow the characters to sing or speak in their own voices. In order to achieve this, many artistic values had to be renounced, but I hope that.. ..this will be forgiven. - The author, St. Jean, August 1940/42

'The tri-coloured play with music begins' (in Deutsch: Das Drei Farben Singespiel beginnt..)
the cast is as follows
Dr. and MRS. Knarre, a married couple
Franziska and Charlotte, their daughters
Dr. Kahn, a physician
Charlotte Kahn, his daughter
Paulinka Bimbam, a singer
Dr. Singsong, a versatile person
Professor Klingklang, a famous conductor
An Art teacher
Professor and Students at an art academy
and Chorus..
..The action takes places during the years 1913 to 1940 in Germany, later in Nice, France

The creation of the following paintings is to be imagined as follows: A person is sitting beside the sea. She is painting. A tune suddenly enters her mind. As she starts to hum it, she notices that the tune exactly matches what she is trying to commit to paper. A texts forms in her head, and she starts to sing the tune, with her own words, over and over again in a loud voice until the painting seems complete. Frequently, several texts take shape, and the result is a duet, or it..

My life began when my grandmother decided to take hers, when I found out that my mother's whole family did the same thing [told bij het grandfather c. 1941], when I found out that I am the only one surviving, and when I felt the same inclination deep inside of me, craving for despair and death.

And from that came:
Life or Theatre?