Valentin Gerhard Braun-Dusemond (born Gerhard Braun; 1919–1998), was a German painter and art dealer. He lived and worked in several countries, including Kenya and Malta, and his work embraced both Abstract Expressionist and Impressionist styles.
Early life and influences
Braun-Dusemond was born to in Cologne, Germany, where his father, Dr Siegfried Braun, was a school teacher in a Jewish School. He escaped from Nazi Germany to Kenya in 1939. Leaving Africa in 1963, he settled in Malta and took on the name of Dusemond. This was the name of the small village on the Mosel from which his father's family came. Mond was the maiden name of his mother, who came from Werl in Westphalia.
It was Braun-Dusemond's encounters with the German Expressionist, Ludwig Meidner which first inspired him to become a painter. Meidner had come to Braun-Dusemond's hometown of Cologne, in 1935, to take up a position as drawing master at the Jewish school, Javneh. Meidner's enthusiastic response to the young man's sketches and drawings encouraged him to develop his talent.
Dr Braun's thesis was on the art theorist and critic, Konrad Fiedler (1841–1895) who, in his Kunstwissenschaft, created the theory of pure form, rejecting the concepts of Beauty and Art. Since Fiedler believed that Works of Art are not created by feeling, he disregarded the importance of emotion in their appreciation. Braun-Dusemond's instinctive disagreement with such theories made him particularly receptive to the influences of German Expressionism with its emphasis on the supreme importance of the artist's personal feelings.
Life and work
Escape from Nazi Germany
In 1939 Braun-Dusemond escaped the Gestapo and fled to Kenya, where thanks to his earlier training in Silesia at the Groß Breesen Jewish Farm School for Prospective Emigrants (Judische Auswandererlehrgut), he was permitted to emigrate. His emigration was facilitated by the Plough Settlements Association of London which, following the Evian conference in 1938, had opened up East Africa to settlement by sixty Jewish farmers. Within months of his arrival in Kenya, Braun-Dusemond was interned as an enemy alien in the British internment camps of Nakuru, Nairobi and Kabete. Here he was converted to Christianity by his fellow inmates – the Italian Consolata Missionaries - in September 1940 and adopted the name of Valentin since he was born on St. Valentine's day.
Internment Art
Although beset by the humiliations of being a captive of the very people from whom he had sought salvation, Braun-Dusemond, was not too debilitated by his experience in the camps. Released from the fear of Nazi persecution and worries about money, he was able to draw and paint freely. He channeled the emotions caused by his condition into the production of a series of drawings and sketches. His artistic response to captivity was expressed in three ways – the realistic and abstract caricature of the camp population (clowns and masks abound in this strange human circus), the portrayal of the dream world beyond the prison gates (Africa in a burst of colour) and the Christianisation of his circumstances – Christ as captor and captive.
Following his release, in 1942, he enlisted in the British army as soon as former enemy aliens were free to do so. He joined the ranks of the Pioneer Corps and later became a non-commissioned officer in Allied counter-intelligence in Italy and Austria. He was one of the few enemy aliens to keep his German passport throughout his military service. The Reich Citizenship Law of November 1941 which had stripped him of his nationality only made him more determined not to yield it - 'To give up my German passport would have been to give in to Hitler. Hitler said I was not a German, but I proved him wrong.'
Kenya (1946-1963) After the war Braun-Dusemond returned to Nairobi to set himself up as a painter, resisting all attempts by the German government to enrol him in their newly re-established foreign service. Painting whenever he could, he surmounted the obstacles caused by his lack of qualifications and his nationality and managed to earn a living by working as a journalist (writing for Der Spiegel and Reuters), cowboy, translator and cinema manager. In 1950 he became a founder member of the Nairobi Puppet Theatre. He painted the scenery for theatre performances at the Donovan Maule Theatre. Although Braun-Dusemond produced many colourful realistic paintings of his surroundings, his artistic inclinations were always focused on the abstract.