The Work of Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag: Artist, Writer, Educator
9 Oct 2026, 10:00 am to 5:00 pm BST
Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Room 261, Second Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU
This workshop is open to all who are interested (no registration fee payable), however, advance online booking is essential.
Margarete Berger-Hamerschlag was an Austrian-born painter, graphic artist, costume and set designer, writer and pedagogue. Born in Vienna in 1902 into a secular Jewish family, she was accepted into Franz Čižek’s art class for children. A pioneer in the field, Čižek’s credo was to enable free artistic expression. Berger-Hamerschlag then attended the Kunstgewerbeschule [School of Applied Art] and took classes in stage and costume design, and printing techniques. She quickly established herself as an artist, illustrator and journalist, and lived with her husband, the architect Josef Berger, in the newly established artists’ colony Rosenhügel. They were committed socialists and she produced series of socio-critical wood cuts, a technique in which she excelled.
When the Austrofascist regime was established in 1934, the couple emigrated first to Palestine and then to London, where their son, Raymond, was born in 1937. The Berger-Hamerschlags were an active part of a network of émigrés. Despite encountering many difficulties, she exhibited her work in London galleries and group exhibitions, and earned money as a portraitist and art tutor. In 1948 Berger-Hamerschlag began working as an art teacher for the London County Council’s youth clubs in Paddington and Kilburn, particularly deprived areas at the time, and Victor Gollancz published her account of this experience in 1955 as Journey into a Fog. The book was a huge success and brought financial security. Unfortunately she only survived this turn of events by a few years, dying from cancer at just 56 years of age.
Her son, Raymond Berger, passed the boxes with his mother’s writings and miscellaneous artwork to the Institute, where they are housed as part of the Germanic Archives at Senate House, have been catalogued and made accessible to the public. This workshop will present and contextualise the manifold aspects of this remarkable artist, encompassing her graphics and drawings, autobiographical writings, her youth centre and art education work, her experiences in Palestine and London exile.
Programme [PDF, 4.8.2026]
Workshop Organisers: Andrea Capovilla (Ingeborg Bachmann Centre, Institute of Languages, Cultures and Societies) and Anna-Dorothea Ludewig (Moses Mendelssohn Center, Potsdam)
