Arthur Paunzen

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Arthur Paunzen (born 4 February 1890, died ?9 August 1940) was born in fin de siecle Vienna where he studied with Ludwig Koch. He also studied in France Academie Julian under Jean Pierre Laurens and traveled Italy studying art and architecture which was very common for his time.

Paunzen created a number of works that make bold symbolic attempts to convey music as images. For instance depicting Beethoven’s Eroica (Third) Symphony as nude horse backed trumpeters in the sky surrounded by clouds flanked by a “stony faced” trumpeter who might very well be death. Also, his series based on Gustav Mahler's song cycle, the "Song of the Earth” or the etchings he created for Raskolnikov.

Many of his pieces were collected by the British Museum, the Stockholm Engraving Collection and the Albertina Museum in Vienna.

In 1938, as Hitler rose to power, Paunzen moved to Great Britain.

[edit] Later life and death

Arthur Paunzen died on the 9th August 1940, in a central internment camp, Douglas, Isle of Man. (In a panic measure, the British authorities interned all German and Austrian citizens in the country, including all those who were Jews fleeing Nazi oppression, in May 1940.) His death is described by his friend and fellow-internee, the composer Hans Gál, in his internment diary ^[1]. He died of severe bronchial pneumonia, exacerbated, according to Gál's account, by neglect on the part of the authorities.