Korner, Sofie

Sofie Korner

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16 December 1879 Vienna – after 5 June 1942 Sobibor extermination camp

The painter and graphic artist Sofie Korner was the second eldest of five children of Zacharias Korner, a product trader, scythe manufacturer and patron of the Vienna Urania from Lviv, and his wife Pauline. In the summer of 1901, Sofie Korner lost a leg in a swimming accident in Trieste and was dependent on a prosthetic leg from that point onward. In 1902, the family moved from Ferdinandstrasse to the Nestroyhof at Praterstrasse 34, a center for Jewish culture in Vienna's 2nd district. From 1902 to 1905, Sofie Korner attended the of Arts and Crafts School in Vienna and took courses in painting and drawing.

In 1909 and 1910, she exhibited within the Neukunstgruppe around Egon Schiele and was a member of the Vereinigung Bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs (Austrian Association of Women Artists), which was founded in 1910. Most likely as of 1916, Sofie Korner had a large residential studio with a roof garden at Morzinplatz 6 in Vienna's city center. The extensive presentation of her work at an exhibition of the Association of Swedish Women Artists in Stockholm in 1917 was noteworthy. In 1919, she was a founding member of the Viennese artists' group Bund der Geistig Tätigen and followed Johannes Itten as his student at the newly founded Bauhaus in Weimar. In 1922/1923, she took part in the International Art Exhibition of the Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta, which was organised by the Bauhaus.

In August 1939, the artist lost her tenancy rights as a persecuted Jew and initially moved together with her 90-year-old widowed father to the apartment of her brother Siegfried (called Fritz) Korner, a Viennese patent attorney with a law firm at Stubenbastei 12 in Vienna’s 1st district. Sofie Korner's attempts to emigrate failed - presumably partially due to her disability. In December 1941, Sofie, Siegfried and Zacharias Korner had to move to a collective apartment at Obere Donaustraße 12 in Vienna’s 2nd district. There they developed a friendship with Elsa Stowasser, the mother of the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who reported on the artist's fate after the war. On 5 June 1942, Sofie Korner was deported to Sobibor and murdered. Her brother Siegfried Korner was murdered in Maly Trostinec, her father Zacharias Korner in Theresienstadt. 

At an unknown date between 1939 and 1942, Sofie Korner handed over her oil paintings, watercolours and graphic sheets to “Aryan” friends in Vienna for safekeeping. Only a few charcoal drawings and oil paintings were saved by her three sisters when they emigrated to Australia, the USA and England. Anna Erlach, an acquaintance of the family and an art dealer with several criminal convictions in 1942, including for theft and fraud with forged entry permits, visas and passports, is said to have expropriated Sofie Korner's paintings in 1941 and sold them. Nothing is known about the fate and whereabouts of Sofie Korner's works.

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Archivportal Thüringen, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Beteiligung an der Internationalen Kunstausstellung der Indian Society of Oriental Art in Calcutta (Kalkutta) mit Werken von Meistern und Schülern des Bauhauses 1922/1923. URL: www.archive-in-thueringen.de/de/findbuch/view/bestand/25055/systematik/79056 (11.11.2024).

DÖW, Opferdatenbank des Dokumentationsarchives des österreichischen Widerstandes, Eintrag zu Sofie Korner: URL: www.doew.at (1.9.2024).

Else Hofmann, Jubiläumsausstellung der Vereinigung Bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs. Zwei Jahrhunderte Kunst der Frau, in: Österreichische Kunst. Monatshefte für Bildende Kunst 1 (1930) 8, 18–22.

Stella Kramrisch, Sofie Korner, in: Die Bildenden Künste. Wiener Monatshefte 3 (1920), 104–107.

Landesarchiv Thüringen, Hauptstaatsarchiv Weimar, Staatliches Bauhaus Weimar, Schülerinnen der Sächsischen Hochschule für Bildende Kunst am Staatlichen Bauhaus Weimar. URL: www. staatsarchive.thulb.uni-jena.de (1.9.2024)

Sava Miksic-Lukovec, Herbe Wahrheit, Wien 1983. (Privatbesitz)

Sabine Plakholm-Forsthuber, Künstlerinnen in Österreich, 1897–1938, Wien 1994.

Österreichs vergessene Malerinnen, Eintrag zu Sofie Korner: URL: www.frauenkunst.at (1.9.2024).

Tamara Loitfellner, Zum Frauenausschluss im Künstlerhaus. Annäherung an ein unerforschtes Thema, in: Peter Bogner/Richard Kurdiovsky/Johannes Stoll (Hg.), Das Wiener Künstlerhaus, Wien 2015, 117–125.

Liljevalchs Konsthall, Föreningen Svenska Konstnärinnor, Vereinigung Bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs, Stockholm, Jan.-Feb. 1917.

Tamara Loitfellner, Kunstschaffend – weiblich – jüdisch. Die Rolle jüdischer bildender Künstlerinnen in Österreich vor 1938, in: Andrea Winklbauer/Sabine Fellner (Hg.), Die bessere Hälfte – Jüdische Künstlerinnen bis 1938. Ausstellungskatalog Jüdisches Museum Wien, Wien 2016, 57–67.

Ariane Müller, Sofie Korner, in: Künstlerhaus, Gesellschaft bildender Künstlerinnen und Künstler Österreichs (Hg.), Disposession, Wien 2021, 48–52.

Elizabeth Otto, Sofie Korner – die Pionierin, in: Vergessene Bauhaus-Frauen. Lebensschicksale in den 1930er und 1940er Jahren, Bauhaus-Museum und Klassik-Stiftung Weimar (Hg.), Weimar 2021, 30–33.

Universität für Angewandte Kunst, Kunstsammlung und Archiv, Schülerinnendatenbank. Eintrag zu Sofie Korner: kunstsammlungundarchiv.at/universitaetsarchiv/schueler-innen-datenbank (1.9.2024).

Verkaufsanzeige u. a. "signierte Ölgemälde", Schwindgasse 3/9, in: Neues Wiener Tagblatt, 19. Oktober 1941. URL: anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=nwg&datum=19411019&query=%22schwindgasse+3/9%22&ref=anno-search&seite=11 (12.11.24).

Andrea Winklbauer, Guests or Members? Women Artists in den Circle of Egon Schiele, in: Brandow-Faller/Laura Morowitz (Hg.), Erasures and Eradications in Modern Viennese Art, Architecture and Design, Routledge, USA 2023, 103–116.

Archives

Archiv der Österreichischen Galerie Belvedere Wien, Nachlass Rudolf Schmidt, Eintrag zu Sofie Korner.

Künstlerhaus-Archiv im WStLA, PM Sofie Korner.

OeStA/AdR, E-uReang, VVSt, VA 40.525, Sofie Korner.

WStLA, Historische Meldeunterlagen, Meldeauskunft Sofie Korner.

WStLA, LG für Strafsachen, A11, Vr Strafakten, Vr 972/39, Anna Maria Erlach, Alice Brauner

WStLA, LG für Strafsachen, Volksgericht Wien, VgVr 3115/4, Anna Maria Erlach.