Bruno Schulz

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Bruno Schulz (1892-1942). Carriage Driver (Self-Portrait), Drohobycz, 1941/42

Fresco secco

Collection of the Yad Vashem Art Museum, Jerusalem
Loan of the Drohobychyna Museum, Ukraine

1892	Born in Drohobycz, Galicia to a secular Jewish family, the brother of Hania and Izydor. The family of his mother, Henrietta, owns a sawmill and trades in lumber; his father, Jakub, runs a fabric shop in the market square.
1902	Starts secondary schooling. Excels in Polish and drawing.
1910	Begins architecture studies at the Polytechnic in Lwów. Due to ill health, his father closes his shop.
1911	Cardiopulmonary disease forces him to leave the Polytechnic and return home.
1913	Resumes architecture studies in Lwów.
1914	Returns to Drohobycz at the outbreak of World War I.
1915	His father dies at the age of 69. His childhood home and father’s shop are burnt down in the war.
1917	Spends several months in Vienna where he attends lectures and visits museums and galleries.
1918	Returns to Drohobycz. Joins Kalleia (Beautiful Things), a group of young Jewish lovers of literature and art. Starts a period of intense reading in Polish and German, and paints.
1920-1922	Works secretly on The Book of Idolatry, a portfolio of some 20 prints and a hand-illustrated title page.
1922	March - Participates in a group exhibition in Warsaw. June - Participates in a group exhibition in Lwów.
1923	Participates in a group exhibition of Jewish artists in Vilna.
1924	Begins teaching drawing classes at the high school he himself attended.
1928	An exhibition of his work in the resort town of Truskawiec incurs accusations of pornography, and he is suspended from teaching for two months.
1929	Awarded tenure. Teaches drawing and handicrafts.
1930	A hall in the Spring Salon in Lwów is devoted to his work. He also participates in a group exhibition of 17 Jewish artists in Krakow. While in Zakopane he befriends Yiddish author and art historian Debora Vogel from Lwów. The lively correspondence which develops between them forms the basis of his first collection of stories, The Cinnamon Shops (Sklepy Cynamonowe).
1931	His mother, with whom he has been living all these years, dies. Schulz designs a gravestone for his parents.
1933	In the spring he begins a romantic relationship with Józefina Szelinńska, a Catholic of Jewish extraction who teaches Polish. Schulz meets the writer Zofia Nałkowska, who encourages him to publish his stories.
1934	The Cinnamon Shops is published in Warsaw and receives laudatory reviews. Schulz publishes several short stories in Polish periodicals.
1935	His brother Izydor, an oil engineer, who supported the whole family, dies of a heart attack. Schulz becomes the sole support of his widowed sister, Hania, and her son Zygmunt. He becomes engaged to Józefina Szelińska. Schulz participates in a group exhibition of the Union of Artists in Lwów.
1936	In Warsaw, he meets the literary figure Romana Halpern; they become friends and conduct an extensive correspondence. Schulz formally leaves the Jewish community in order to marry Józefina. He continues to publish short stories in various periodicals, some accompanied by his own illustrations.
1937	Schulz breaks off his engagement. He completes his book in German, The Return Home (Die Heimkehr), which has since been lost. Sanatorium Under the Sign of the Hourglass (Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą), a collection of short stories, is published in Warsaw.
1938	August - Schulz travels to Paris in an unsuccessful attempt to gain international recognition. November - he is awarded the Golden Laurel prize by the Polish Academy of Literature.
1939	Following the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact, Drohobycz is annexed to the Soviet Union. Schulz is prevented from publishing his writings, since they do not conform with the tenets of socialist realism.
1940	Forms a friendship with Anna Płockier, a young artist who fled from Warsaw. September - at the order of the local government, he creates a large oil painting on the theme, “Liberation of the Western Ukraine”. He is interrogated for using banned national colors. Participates in an exhibition of the Lwów Artists’ Union.
1941	June 30 - Drohobycz is occupied by the Germans; Jews are immediately seized for forced labor and executed. November - Anna Płockier and her fiancé Marek are shot to death.
1941-1942	Through the Judenrat’s intervention, Schulz is assigned to cataloguing confiscated books. SS Hauptscharführer Felix Landau, in charge of Jewish forced labor in Drohobycz, and who plays an active role in the extermination of Drohobycz’s Jews, takes Schulz under his protection in exchange for his coerced employment as a painter. Schulz is ordered to paint murals on the walls of Landau’s children’s nursery, the riding school (Reitschule), and the casino.
1942	In Aktions in March and August, Jews are deported to the Bełżec death camp. September - The Drohobycz ghetto is established and 10,000 Jews from the region are confined there. In an effort to save his writings and artworks, Schulz deposits them with friends outside the ghetto. Following his appeals for help to friends in Warsaw, he is sent false papers and his escape is planned for 19 November. On that same day, “Black Thursday”, on his way to receive his bread ration, Schulz is shot to death by SS Oberscharführer Karl Günter, apparently in a tit-for-tat feud between SS officials. According to witnesses, Schulz's body is buried in the Jewish cemetery.