A very sad predicament for his cats too. I am not sure that it means attic but I will see if I can find out. Your translation seems correct – i.e.: a studio in the mountains, perhaps where he was working or a place one must assume he knew I guess. The Nazis really were awful to no end – my father’s father (my gf) was jewish and they had to escape france during the war in a small gas (not petrol) powered car. They got through spain and on a boat to america. My grandfather was an inventor of sorts and owned a company with many patents including the self sealing fuel tank which prevented planes going down when shot in the fuel tank. When they arrived on Ellis island the Americans told him to hand over his patents and whatever of his company he could or else they would send him and my dad and grandmother back to europe to be killed by the Nazis. So Dunlop took all his rights to his patents and inventions and they lived. He went back after the war and rebuilt his business. Having your life’s work be it in the form of hundereds of paintings just taken from you is enough to make person fall totally apart I have no doubt of that. Plus for an artist it really is his paintngs as objects that he worked so hard on all his life. I am not suprised he killed himself. I’m sure his cats were the only reason he had left to live at that point. The germans wanted all the art they could get their hands on. It was part of their conquest – to take it or destroy it if it could not be taken. Luckily Hitler didnt manage to blow up every last beautiful building or monumnet in paris. He tried – because he couldnt take the Arch de Triomphe home so he wanted it destroyed instead. To be honest I am glad the whole of Berlin got flattened – every last damn little bit. And then the rest of europe rebuilt germany and now germany has all the money. How bout that. We have a financial war now and this time Germany is winning I suppose. Unless your in Switzerland – maybe. Sorry to go on. But I honestly think the Germans did not approve of his art. Hitler wanted traditional art wit beauty and landscapes and impressionism if anything. He hated abstract art and even but on 2 exhibitions before the war – one for his stuff he likes – beatiful german landscapes with arien people walking around and another with picasso and cubism and all the stuff he hated and he even called it an exhibition of bad art thinking the people would see the difference and agree – but in the end everybody preferred it and the exhibition he was promoting got few visitors which drove him a bit nuts – not that he wasnt already. Im sorry I dont have any names for you of these events. The point is I know that this chaps art will have probably been either used for money or destroyed as ‘bad’ art – not proper beautiful realistic bla bla bla art that Hitler promoted in his Nazi ideaology. Dont forget Hitler was himself a failed artist.
So poor Kirchner must have felt total despair especially being in Austria. Perhaps being a purveyor of bad art put his life in greater danger.
I just wonder what happened to his little cats after he died. Did they die out on the streets? What happened to them…. If it really was in the mountains then I wonder if they were taken in or fed by a neighbour or villager in the same place living nearby. If it was the city then I wonder how the average person was towards a stray cat in those days and times. So many questions.
My grandfather lost everything except his son andhis wife – and he escaped although it was the country he escaped to that took everything from him. But still. He had a reason to live. Lucky for me 🙂