 |
|
Kahlo's adaptation of a genealogical chart as the basis for her 1936 family tree relates to her father's German-Jewish identity and may be fully understood only if we take into account the political developments of that year. In September 1935, the Nazi government established the Nuremberg laws, which prohibited intermarriage and promoted "racial purity." | |
||
| Courtesy of the Yad Vashem Photo Archive (click images for more) |
    |
||
|
One method of proving or disproving "racial purity" was the delineation of genealogical charts. Such charts, which usually traced back three generations, became a prominent tool in Nazi Germany. By 1936, Nazi-oriented manuals on how to conduct genealogical research were distributed in the German School of Mexico City. Many of the school's teachers joined the Nazi Party and encouraged their students to chart their family trees. Kahlo was distressed by these developments. Since her father had studied at Nuremberg University and she herself had attended the German School as a child, she felt a sense of personal betrayal as well. Kahlo adapted the very device that was used by the Nazis to prove "racial purity" in order to stress the opposite – her interracial origins. This may be seen as a subversive statement that reflects her identification with her Jewish roots. INQUISITION In the mid-1940s, the atrocities of the Holocaust became known. Kahlo was deeply concerned about the news from Europe and about the fate of her German-Jewish relatives. In a text she composed a few years later, she explicitly linked the Inquisition with Nazism, describing them as times of extreme human cruelty and darkness. |
|
|
|
Kahlo's first references to the Inquisition may be found in several drawings, including Fantasía, and diary entries from 1944. That year she also purchased Alfonso Toro's book about the Mexican Inquisition and its Jewish victims. In 1945, devices from the Inquisition torture chamber appeared in Kahlo's oil painting Without Hope. In My Grandparents, My Parents, and I, Kahlo's allusion to Nazi genealogical charts reflected the artist's identification with her "impure" Jewish roots. In Without Hope, Kahlo's choice to portray herself persecuted by the Inquisition was probably motivated by similar intentions. By imaging herself as a victim of the Inquisition in 1945, Kahlo may have been exposing her "covert" Jewish identity. |
|
||
Copyright © 2003 The Jewish Museum
