Valeska Heinemann

Galka Emmy Scheyer encouraged her friend of adolescent times, Valeska Heinemann, to express her emotions in painting. Valeska, who lived in Los Angeles from 1938 onward, then produced a couple of paintings in memory of her childhood in Brunswick. She had grown up there among her family in a street called „Poststrasse“ (Post Office street). The painting „Sleeping little Town in Germany“ shows fifteen somewhat curve-shaped people softly sleeping. In the background an urban landscape composed of straight streets, right-angled houses and gabled roofs. Amongst the buildings a gothic church, probably St. Martin. One House on the corner shows a radiant heart, the star of David with the tablet of the ten commandments above – attributes of the jewish congregation or synagogue that had been opened in Brunswick in 1875. Further in the distance, there is a market place with a fountain; it could be either Altstadtmarkt (old town market) or „Kohlmarkt“ (coal market) – not in their correct position, but the way Valeska recalled her peaceful hometown in the presence of Galka in the middle of the second World War.

Valeska Heinemann, Sleeping Town in Germany, 1943
Private collection, Germany