Object #78

Arnold Schönberg
Self-Portrait
March 17, 1933
Pen and ink on writing paper
Catalogue raisonné 44

Belmont Music Publishers, Pacific Palisades

On March 18, 1933 a meeting was held in the Prussian Academy of the Arts in Berlin focusing on the impending legal regulations governing the “Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” These specified that Jewish teaching staff was to be removed from the Academy. Owing to recent events in Germany, Schönberg must have been fully aware of the political direction of this fateful Academy meeting. The day before, he drew a Self-Portrait (the original date has been corrected from March 18 to March 17, 1933). That day, Berlin media reported both on the symbolic directive issued by Josef Goebbels to remove Bruno Walter – who was Jewish – as conductor of the philharmonic concerts, and also on the decision to convert the Kroll Opera – where Schönberg’s works were performed – into the provisional Reichstag building for the National Socialist authorities. Changes to the members of staff in the Prussian Ministry of Culture were a consequence of an “act of cleansing” in “Judaized Prussian higher education” (Vossische Zeitung, March 17, 1933). The drawing serves as a snapshot in time by the artist. It was created “at a moment of great depression,” Schönberg wrote to Roberto Gerhard on March 18, 1933 in a description of his precarious situation.

Vossische Zeitung, Evening edition, March 17 1933, p. 2