Herman Wald – His Life and Work

To rectify the lamentable fact that Herman Wald has been virtually forgotten in the wider art historical context, the South African Jewish Museum in Cape Town is currently hosting a remarkable retrospective exhibition of his work. This exhibition raises the possibility of a serious and engaged reassessment of Wald’s world and enables viewers to appreciate Wald for themselves.

Wald was born in 1906 in the city of Cluj, or Kolozvàr (in Yiddish: Kloiznburg) in what was then, and is again, Rumania. He was one of eight children of Rabbi Jacob Meir Wald (1866-1928),² who was descended from seven generations of Rabbis and served as Dayan, and later as Rosh Beth Din, in the Rabbinical Court in Cluj³. His mother, Pearl, was the daughter of Rabbi Moshe Shmuel Glasner (1856-1924), Rabbi of Cluj from 1877 to 1923 and who established the Mizrachi movement there.

Herman was a precociously talented child, intensely musical and very creative. From his early childhood he loved life, and was brought up in an environment of intense Jewish learning. However, he was different from his brothers and sisters, for he was impulsive and impetuous. Besides his strictly devout upbringing and the fact that the Orthodox community had a wellestablished religious school, Herman also received a secular education at the local state school, proof of his father’s open-mindedness. In this school Herman learned to read, write and speak Hungarian. Growing up, he developed a magnificent baritone voice, which he exercised enthusiastically during Jewish festivals. His father had him trained for choral singing and wanted him to become a cantor⁴.

Herman’s greatest passion, however, was to carve, to shape and to form, inspired as he was by the towering contours of the Carpathian Mountains and the Transylvanian Alps around him. In the eyes of his worried father, this urge strayed dangerously close to a contravention of the Second Commandment, “Thou shalt not make unto thee a graven image”.⁵ The struggle continued until Herman presented him with a portrait head of Theodore Herzl, which had such an impact on him that he at last consented to his son pursuing his artistic vocation.

Wald won a scholarship to the National Academy in Budapest, where he underwent thorough basic training for one year. His main subject was sculpture, under the tutelage of the well-known Zsigmond Kisfaludi Strobl (18841974).

When Wald was twenty-one years old, his father died, shortly after violent antisemitic attacks carried out by the Iron Guard, a Christian fascist movement which simultaneously targeted the Transylvanian cities of Brasov, Oradea and Cluj in December 1927.Jewish shops were plundered, synagogues invaded, religious books burned and Jews violently assaulted. Rabbi Wald, the Rosh Beth Din, would have been an obvious target and, although it cannot be conclusively proven, the circumstances point to his having died as a result of the violence. The date of his death is recorded in the register of the deceased of the Cluj congregation as 5 January 1928, a few days after the pogrom.

Wald never spoke about this to his family in South Africa,⁶ but the shock of those events left deep scars in his psyche. His awareness of the threats posed by antisemitism resulted in such personal insecurity in the face of it that he frequently uprooted himself and moved to other, safer, countries.

After the Cluj pogrom, Wald left Budapest and moved to Vienna, where he registered for one semester at the School of Applied Arts (Kunstgewerbeschule), and worked in the studio of the prominent monumental sculptor Anton Hanak (1875-1934). Mounting antisemitism, in part caused by the collapse of the global stock market, saw his moving on Berlin, Germany, to further his studies.⁷ There, he worked in the studio of the sculptor Totila Albert (1892-1967), a poet and mystic born in Chile. Due to his childhood trauma of the separation of his parents, Albert sought to unite the forces of love between man and woman and to transmit them through a portrayal of the universal principle of love. He rendered his love-themes in swirling, organic configurations which seem to defy the force of gravity. This had a liberating impact on Wald, who also absorbed Albert’s technical virtuosity and craftsmanship.

In 1933, in the context of the rise of Hitler and the commencement of a wave of antisemitic violence, Wald moved to Paris. There he absorbed the international modern art movement, especially cubism. However, he did not settle there and at the end of the year left for London, joining his sister, Yolande, and brother, Marcus. The latter then held a rabbinical position while completing his Ph.D. degree, and he later immigrated to South Africa, serving the congregations of Kimberley and later East London. In London, Wald was influenced by the work of the British school, Henry Moore and Frank Dobson, and especially by the great Jewish sculptor Jacob Epstein (1880-1959). He managed to obtain a post as a teacher of sculpture at the Working Men’s College in Camden, North London.

In 1937 Wald, anticipating the catastrophe that was approaching European Jewry, left London after four fruitful years and followed his brother, Rabbi Dr Marcus Wald, to South Africa. Rabbi Wald, who then held a pulpit in the East London Hebrew congregation, had obtained permission for him to come to South Africa, which was not easy in the anti-immigrant climate then prevailing⁸. Wald arrived in November of that year, bringing with him a number of sculptures. He settled in Johannesburg, where he established a studio in Smit Street, Joubert Park, and started to work, teach and participate in exhibitions. He later described South Africa as “God’s virgin country and unspoiled civilization….” with “a very talented urge for culture”. He hopefully postulated that “the culture that was the twilight of European decay is now becoming the daylight of South African awakening”⁹.

Wald now faced the challenge of establishing himself as a professional sculptor. His exhibitions were successful, he sold his work and he received positive reviews in the press, yet something was lacking in his official reception. He was a prolific sculptor and a representative of the modern movement in Europe with many years of artistic training. He created more than 400 outstanding works of sculpture and in his Biblical and love themes, was a kindred spirit of Marc Chagall (1887-1985), whom he greatly admired. Despite this, none of his works are represented in the collections of the official South African art museums and his name scarcely appears in any of the prominent handbooks of South African artists.

In September 1939, the Second World War broke out. Of this, Wald wrote: “1939 was the Doomsday of Heaven. The devil tore up the agreement between good and evil.”¹⁰ As a Jew, he felt that he had to become involved, even though his age did not allow him to be active in combat. As he later wrote, “It is every democratic person’s first duty to fight war to his utmost power”¹¹ In 1940, he joined the South African Defence Force. First, he was assigned to the Medical Corps and later was transferred to the Engineers Camouflage Unit, holding the rank of Sergeant. During his free time, his creativity found an outlet in recording his reminiscences of his formative years in Europe in a personal unpublished memoir entitled “Carved Thoughts”.¹² They reveal his keen judgment of political situations.

In 1942, Wald married Vera Rosenbaum, whom he had met through his brother. In her boundless loyalty, she became his anchor and his muse. They had three children, Michael Jeffrey, Pamela and Louis. Discharged from the army in 1944, Wald returned to Johannesburg, where he began working in a studio in Parktown North. Later, he opened a studio in Pritchard Street, where he established the Beaux Arts Gallery and in which he presented several of his own solo exhibitions.