Hendrik Werkman - Fathers and Sons from the Hasidic Legends

Print of the lithograph I2/5/20 of Fathers and Sons from The Chassidic Legends. Dimensions 51 x 33 cm and including the frame 67 x 44 cm. In early 1941, HN Werkman read Martin Buber's *Die Legende des Baalschem*, a collection of stories about the eighteenth-century Polish Jewish teacher Yisroel ben Eliezer, nicknamed the Baal Shem Tov. Werkman was deeply impressed. In a short time, using stencils, printing ink, and other materials from his printing studio, he created twenty compositions inspired by these wondrous stories. In this way, he overcame the artistic block he had felt since the beginning of the German occupation. In 1942 and 1943, Werkman printed editions of these prints, divided into two series of ten, which he called Suites. They were published by the clandestine publisher De Blauwe Schuit, for which Werkman produced a total of forty publications between 1941 and 1944. The texts in this series of forty publications, which included the Chassidic legends, usually did not relate directly to the war situation, but did allude to it. With Geuzen songs and psalms, but also modern stories and poetry, the publishers wanted to encourage their audience. They succeeded, partly thanks to the colorful illustrations by Werkman. Werkman was arrested by the Sicherheitsdienst in the spring of 1945. The liberation of Groningen on April 15 came too late for him. On April 10, 1945, he was executed in Bakkeveen along with nine others.