Fred Uhlman
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Fred Uhlman (January 19, 1901 - April 11, 1985) was a German lawyer of Jewish origin, who in September 1936 arrived in England virtually penniless and unable to speak English, married Diana Croft, the daughter of a Conservative Member of Parliament, Sir Henry Page Croft, and went on to become a celebrated painter and novelist.
Fred Uhlman was born in 1901, in Stuttgart, Germany, into a prosperous middle-class Jewish family. He studied at the Universities of Freiburg, Munich and Tübingen from where, in 1923, he graduated with a degree in Law followed by a Doctorate in Civil and Canon law.
In March 1933, two months after Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor, Uhlman moved to Paris to start a new life there. This, however, proved very difficult; foreigners were not permitted to enter into paid employment and if caught at it, they were immediately expelled from France. He supported himself by drawing and painting and selling his work privately when he could. (At one stage, he was supplementing his income by selling tropical fish). Uhlman's star as a painter was in the ascendance but buyers were hard to come by. In April 1936 he moved to Tossa del Mar, a small fishing village on the Costa Brava, Spain but soon after, the Spanish Civil War broke out and in August he decided to return to Paris, via Marseilles. In Marseilles, while making a telephone call from a café to a friend in London, Diana Croft, whom he had met while in Tossa del Mar, his wallet, containing most of his money and his passport, were stolen from his jacket left unattended at his table. A foreigner in France without a passport effectively became a stateless person and subject to official harassment, internment and possible expulsion. Demoralised and in despair, he gave the café proprietor his Paris telephone number and continued his journey to Paris. Next day, he received a telephone call at his hotel; the caller informed him that he has the wallet and the passport and will mail it to Uhlman the next day, because he was a co-réligionnaire of Uhlman's, but will retain ten percent of the money in the wallet 'to cover expenses'. The wallet and passport arrived next day. On 3 September, 1936, Fred Uhlman landed in England. He had no money and he couldn't speak the language. Two months after he arrived in England, Fred Uhlman married Diana Croft on November 4, 1936.
Nine months after the outbreak of the Second World War, Uhlman, with thousands of other enemy alliens, was, in June 1940, interned by the British Government, on the Isle of Man. He was released six months later and reunited with his wife and with his daughter, born while he was interned.
Uhlman had his first solo exhibition at the Galerie Le Niveau in Paris in 1935. In London he exhibited at the Zwemmer Gallery in 1938, from then on he exhibited regularly in one man shows as well as mixed exhibitions throughout Britain. A retrospective exhibition of his work was held at the Leighton House Museum in London in 1968. His work is represented in many important public galleries, including the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and Victoria & Albert Museum in London.
Uhlman's memoirs, The Making of an Englishman, was published in 1960. His novella Reunion was published in 1977. "A minor masterpiece" wrote Arthur Koestler in his Introduction to the book.
Fred Uhlman died in London on April 11, 1985. He is the great-uncle of Joseph Uhlman, the youngest Chief of EMS Services in the history of the State of Kansas.
[edit] Books by and about Fred Uhlman
- Captivity: twenty-four drawings by Fred Uhlman. London: Jonathan Cape, 1946.
- The Making of an Englishman, London: Victor Gollancz, 1960.
- Reunion
- Anna Plodeck: The making of Fred Uhlman: life and work of the painter and writer in exile. [Dissertation, University of London (Courtauld Institute of Art), 2004]
