Dorothy Anker Memoir - University of Illinois Springfield

Dorothy Anker
A. Charcoal, ja.
Q. Or pea and tnk drawings.
A. Ja. Actually we had a teacher who was very encouraging and he told
me that I could draw ~~hich I had thought at school I never could because
I felt very untalented in the competitive drawing and painting lessons
at school before.
(2, Did you also have to have a knowledge of anatomy?
A, Oh, yes.
Q. T would think that would be imporrant.
A. Because for the retouching we were very much trained that we should
know the basic bone structure of the face, We had to learn how
different the cheeks are drawn out, like eyebrows had a sort of a line
and the noscs had a certain lFne and there are certain rules about it:
because 1 mean first of course you start out wlth a simple spotting in
the negative. Of course we learned to retouch human faces i n that
course. That never was one of my strongest points.
Q. It sounds like a very thorough school. *at kind of schooling had
you had before you went to Berlin? You say you had graduated from what
we in English call the Lyceum. But before that when did you start
school, at what age?
A. I started school before I was quite six years old. And this
happened to be not in Koenigsberg but that happened to be in the Black
Forest in St. Blasien.
How did you happen to be there?
A. That goes qulte way back. Then I was born and only one year old
when the First World War broke out and we in Koenigsberg, we were afraid
of the Russians, that they would overrun Koenigsberg. And every day my
grandparents liked to take the whole family to Leipzfg. And my father,
then I was about not quite three years old, he got T,B. and was very
sick and had to go into a sanitarium in this St, Blasien. And after a
short while, then he got better. And an aunt of mine brought the two of
us, my brother and me, and brought us over to St. Blaaien where in the
meanwhile my mother hail rented an apartment. And in thfs apartment we
lived for two and a half years until my father was well enough to be
with us after, I think, after a half a year he could be released from
the sanitarium and only had to go hack ever ao often for checkups. But
he still was in the good fresh air of the surrounding . . ,
(1. Just to digress a minute. What happened to the huslness during the
war after your father had had to leave?
A. I mean the business was in Koenigsberg completely down. And ~ny
father in Leipzig had probably only traded like an agent in this line of
business.
Dorothy Anker Memoir -- Archives, University of Illinois at Springfield