Biography

1913	Charlotte Grunwald, the artist's aunt, commits suicide.
1915	Charlotte's parents meet for the first time, while her mother is serving as a nurse, her father as a surgeon, during World War I.
1916	Marriage of Charlotte's parents.
16 April 1917	Charlotte Salomon, the only child of Albert Salomon and Fränze Grunwald, is born in Berlin.
1926	Charlotte's mother commits suicide; Charlotte is told her mother died of influenza.
1927	Charlotte becomes a pupil at the Fürstin-Bismarck-Gymnasium, Charlottenburg.
September 1930	Albert Salomon marries the singer Paula Lindberg.
January 1933	The Nazis come to power. Albert Salomon loses his professorship and his right to practise as a doctor; Paula Salomon-Lindberg is no longer allowed to perform in public. As a result, the former takes a position as surgeon at the Jewish hospital, while the latter becomes active in the Kulturbund Deutscher Juden (later Jüdischer Kulturbund).
September 1933	Charlotte leaves school.
1933-1934	Charlotte's maternal grandparents emigrate to Rome, and in 1934 settle in Villefranche on the French Riviera.
1935-1936	Charlotte starts attending the Vereinigte Staatsschulen für Freie und Angewandte Kunst in the autumn of 1935, at first on approval, and from 7 February 1936, unconditionally.
1937	Alfred Wolfsohn is sent to Paula by the artist's aid organization Künstlerhilfe.
summer 1938	Summer: Charlotte's enrolment at art school is annulled.
November 1938	Pogrom known as Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Shortly after, Albert Salomon is arrested and temporarily interned in Sachsenhausen concentration camp, near Berlin.
January 1939	Charlotte joins her grandparents in Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice.
March 1939	Albert and Paula leave Berlin for Amsterdam.
September 1939	World War II begins
spring 1940	Early in the year Charlotte leaves Villefranche with her grandparents and moves to Nice. March: Grandmother commits suicide.
June-September 1940	In June the south of France is cleared of foreign immigrants. Charlotte and her grandfather are interned in the French-run-Camp Gurs in the Pyrenees. The Franco-German Armistice is signed; among other things, it stipulates that all German nationals in France be handed over to the Germans. Germany occupies the north of France. On June 10 Italy enters the war on the German side. In July the puppet Vichy-regime is established under Pétain in southern France. After their release form Gurs, Charlotte and her grandfather return to Nice. Some time thereafter, she starts work on Life? or Theatre?, which she will complete in mid-1942.
October 1941	Ottilie Moore, an American in whose property in Villefranche Charlotte and her grandparents were living and to whom Life? or Theatre? is dedicated, returns to America. Late in the year, Charlotte leaves Nice for St. Jean-Cap-Ferrat, where she stays at the Pension La Belle Aurore.
1942	Autumn: The French Mediterranean coast is occupied by Italian troops; the Italian Secret Police cooperate closely with the Gestapo. Late in the year, Charlotte returns to her grandfather in Nice.
Febbruary 1943	Charlotte's grandfather dies and she returns to Villefranche.
17 June 1943	Charlotte marries Alexander Nagler, an Austrian-Jewish refugee who had been Ottilie Moore's lover.
8 September 1943	After Italy concludes a separate armistice with the Allies, German troops occupy the French coast.
21 (24?) Sept. 1943	Charlotte and her husband are picked up by the Gestapo and taken, via the Gestapo headquarters at the Hotel Excelsior in Nice, to the transit camp of Drancy, near Paris.
7 October 1943	Charlotte and Alexander Nagler are deported from Drancy.
10 October 1943	Charlotte and Alexander arrive in Auschwitz. Charlotte, four months pregnant, is probably killed on arrival; Nagler survives until 1 January 1944.
1946	Ottilie Moore returns to Villefranche; Dr. Moridis, the physician to whom Charlotte had entrusted Life? or Theatre?, hands the work over to her.
1947	Charlotte's parents travel to Villefranche. Ottilie Moore presents them with Life? or Theatre?
1961	First exhibition of Life? or Theatre?, at the Fodor Museum Amsterdam.
1963	Publication of the first book on Charlotte Salomon.
1971	Life? or Theatre? is donated by Albert en Paula Salomon to the Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, where it is still housed.