David Ludwig Bloch
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David Ludwig Bloch | |
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.jpg) Shanghai identity card photo, dated 1944 | |
| Born | March 25, 1910 Floß, Bavaria, Germany |
| Died | September 12, 2002 (aged 92) Barrytown, New York, U.S. |
| Alma mater | State Academy of Applied Arts, Munich |
| Spouse | Lilly Cheng Disiu |
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David Ludwig Bloch (March 25, 1910 – September 16, 2002) was a German-Jewish American lithographer and painter.
During Kristallnacht, Bloch was arrested and sent to the Dachau concentration camp for four weeks. Despite the fact that he was deaf, he was released from the camp and was able to escape to Shanghai in 1940. After immigrating to the United States in 1949, his artwork focused on the horrors of the Holocaust.
David Ludwig Bloch was born March 25, 1910, in Floss, Bavaria, where his middle-class family had lived for many generations.[1] His parents, Simon and Selma Ansbacher Bloch, both died before Bloch had turned two years old.[2] He was raised by his grandmother, with the help of a nanny.[3]
Bloch was deafened by meningitis when he was one year old.[3] At age five, he was enrolled in a school for the deaf in Munich, Die Konigliche Bayrische aubstummen Anstalt, graduating in 1923.[1] He then attended a school for the deaf in Jena, where he undertook an apprenticeship as a china decorator at a porcelain factory in Planken Hammer.[3][1] From 1927 to 1930, Bloch attended the Technical School of the Porcelain Industry in Selb.[2] After graduating, he worked as a pattern painter at the Bauscher Brothers porcelain factory in Weiden, but became unemployed in October 1932 due to a lack of orders at the factory.[2]
With the help of a scholarship, Bloch became a student at the State Academy of Applied Arts in Munich in 1934, where he studied under graphic designer Fritz Helmuth Ehmcke.[2] His training was focused on woodcuts as well as drawing and watercolors.[2] He interrupted his studies in 1936 to earn money as a graphic designer and poster painter at the department store Sallinger in Straubing; in October 1938, the department store was "Aryanized", and Bloch was fired.[2] He returned to his studies in November 1938, but after a short time back at the academy he was banned from further studies because he was Jewish.[2]
