E.F.V., designer

Die Fledermaus Leidsch Studenten Tooneel Met Fritz Hirsch

Lithograph

[Leiden?]

circa 1920s 

Measures approx.: 21 1/4 x 27 3/8 in.

An extremely rare poster for a performance of Strauss's opera Die Fledermaus by the Leiden Student Theater featuring Jewish director and actor Fritz Hirsch (1888-1942). 

Hirsch emigrated to The Hague in the Netherlands in the 1920s and ran an enormously successful operetta company bearing his name, De Fritz Hirsch Operette. They toured regularly between 1929 and 1933 and were renowned for their jazzy and modern interpretations. In 1932, he took over the management of the Schillertheater in Berlin, but when the Nazis came to power a year later, he was removed from the post because he was a Jew. He fled to the Netherlands but was arrested once the Nazis occupied the country. He was deported to Sachsenhausen, Mauthausen, and Gusen camps in Austria, where he perished on 10 June 1942. His wife and two sons, Hilda, Gerd, and Frak, were deported to Auschwitz, where they perished. 

[World War II, WWII,  FDR, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Adolf Hitler, Allied, Axis, George S. Patton, Air Force] [Anti-semitism, Holocaust] [Propaganda, Posters] [Judaica, Jewish History, Opera, Music History]