Beschreibung:

Archive of family postcards sent to Helen Lilien (née Magnus), the wife of Ephraim Moses Lilien. Different places, early 20th century to 1940s. German and some Hebrew. The archive includes numerous postcards written by E.M. Lilien to his wife, some written before they were married, including important postcards sent during his first visit to Palestine in 1906, and from various places during his service in the Austrian Army in World War I. Ephraim Moses Lilien (1874-1925) - painter, photographer and master etcher, a founder of Bezalel, the greatest Zionist illustrator of the early 20th century and a close friend of Theodor Herzl. In 1905, while living in Berlin, Lilien hosted Prof. Boris Schatz who was to make castings of some of his works. While there, Lilien arranged for Schatz to meet Dr. Franz Oppenheimer and Otto Warburg, who gladly took up Schatz's initiative to found an art school in Jerusalem. In the same year Lilien began a correspondence with Helen Magnus (the two had met in 1903), his future wife, then a student of graphic arts at the Berlin art academy. In January 1906 Lilien first arrived in Palestine, together with Schatz, with the intention of laying the foundations of the Bezalel art school (indeed, the school began operations about two months later, in a building in Jerusalem's Ethiopian quarter). Yet, seven months later, in autumn of the same year (October 1906), Lilien returned to Berlin and married Helen Magnus. In 1915 - during World War I - Lilien volunteered to join the Austrian Army (despite being 41 years old at the time) and was sent to the Eastern European frontier. During the war he served as a military photographer, and in 1917-1918 was even sent to Palestine and its environs (in his postcards he mentions, among other things, visits to Izmir and to Aleppo). After the war Lilien returned to Berlin. The collection includes: 1-11. Eleven postcards sent by E.M. Lilien to Helen Magnus in the first half of 1906, during his first visit to Palestine. This group of postcards is the most interesting. It includes enthusiastic travel impressions by Lilien about Palestine and its sites, as well as postcards bearing letters or signatures of various persons accompanying Lilien or meeting him during his visit. For example, in a postcard from June 1906 Lilien wrote: "In about one hour I will bathe in the Jordan River. Then, after I immerse myself in the water, I will be like Madam [Hemda] Ben-Yehuda: a territorialist!" At the bottom of the postcard he added: "5 hours later - I have immersed myself both in the Jordan River and in the Dead Sea, and still I am not a territorialist!" (Hemda Ben-Yehuda added the greeting "To next year in Jericho" on the postcard, which also bears the stamp of the Jordan Hotel in Jericho); on another postcard sent by Lilien in Passover 1906 from Rishon LeTzion, David Yudilovitz (a Bilu member, author and educator) added a greeting of his own, "From the land of the forefathers, many blessings", alongside the inscription "Greetings and Kisses from Hemda Ben-Yehuda"; on a third postcard, sent through Ramle in April 1906, Ben-Yehuda wrote, "Greetings from a woman who loves Mister Lilien very much"; three other postcards bear the signature of Prof. Boris Schatz (one of them with the stamp of the Russian Post Service in Jerusalem), and another postcard, the most unique one, showing the Tomb of Absalom, to which Lilien added a drawing of three ink flags: a flag with a Star of David (at the top of the tomb), a flag with the inscription "Bezalel" (for the founding of which Lilien arrived in Palestine with Boris Schatz , and another flag with the inscription "Haschkafa" (the name of the newspaper that Eliezer Ben-Yehuda edited). At the bottom of the postcard are the signatures of Lilien, Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, Hemda Ben-Yehuda and Boris Schatz 12. A postcard sent by Hemda Ben-Yehuda to Helen Magnus in September 1906 - a Real-photo postcard, showing E.M. Lilien painting, with Jerusalem's Old City in t