Judith Rhrmoser: Stammbaumblüten

There are so many forms of female nonexistence.

“Father’s have sons and grandsons and so the lineage goes, with the name passed on; the tree branches, and the longer it goes on the more people are missing: sisters, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, great- grandmothers, a vast population made to disappear on paper and in history.”

My mother recently gave me this painting of my grandmother.
I nicknamed it “the Furrier’s Wife”, because I believe that’s what the Painter (Piget) must’ve called the commission.
And because this elegant woman, wrapped in status symbols, seems to disappear behind them. She existed,
a jewel in her husband’s crown, a good wife and mother, grandmother, and organizer of a widely scattered family.

“Every woman who appears wrestles with the forces that would have her disappear.”

It’s a great pleasure to have “my grandmother” back in the second district where I live and she was born. It’s a great pleasure to present her in O.T., because women have catching up to do in learning how to tell their story.

“The ability to tell your own story, in words or images, is already a victory, already a revolt.”

My grandmother, Jeanette Kuppermann, born in Taborstrasse 9 in 1924, along with her brother, were the only ones of their family to escape the Nazis alive. She met my grandfather Henry Fischer in Cuba. After spending their honeymoon in Vienna, they decided that they hated everything germanspeaking and settled in Milan, Italy, where my mother was born, who then got married to an austrian, and reconciled the family with “deutsch”.