3rd Sunday Lecture: Visualizing the Past-John Less’ Depictions of His Holocaust Refuge in Shanghai

The San Diego Chinese Historical Museum is partnering with the SDSU Chinese Cultural Center to bring monthly remote educational programming to our community via this series of talks and discussions.  This series offers unique insights into Chinese history, Chinese culture, American history and lifeways of Chinese Americans, with a particular focus on objects represented in the Museum’s permanent collection. 

Born in Berlin, John Hans Less (1923 – 2011) fled as a 16-year-old together with his family to Shanghai in September 1940 to escape the Nazis. His uprooting and struggle to survive the precarious conditions he encountered as a stateless refugee, including confinement by the Japanese to the Hongkew Ghetto, deeply affected both his life and art. Notwithstanding the contribution he was able to make from his merger earnings as a commercial artist and support from Jewish aid organizations, the family’s future remained tenuous. He refused, however, to resign himself to the situation and forsake his wider artistic ambitions. From the visual record he kept of his experience, mostly in the form of rough sketches, he created a series of watercolors and oil paintings decades after immigrating to the USA in 1947. The works relating to his Holocaust refuge in Shanghai are more than reflections on a traumatized youth or flight from Nazi persecution; in them, he experimented with various styles and deconstructed stereotypical European perceptions of Asian culture. Thus, they also form part of a much bigger story about European-Asian encounters and European fascination with an “exotic” Orient.

Dr. Steven Less, is a retired senior research fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg (Germany) and son of the artist, graphic designer and “Shanghailander“ John H. Less.

Hannah-Lea Wasserfuhr is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Center for Jewish Studies in Heidelberg, Germany.

Bob Stein (our moderator) is an experienced museum docent, who graduated from the SDMA Docent Training Program in 2016.  He retired from a career as a cardiologist and staff member at Palomar Hospital, where he served in many different leadership roles.  He joined the SDCHM as a member of our Board of Directors in 2020 and is serving as interim Director.

Our discussants for this program will be Rachel Stern and Ester Benjamin Shifren.  Rachel is the Director and CEO of the Fritz Ascher Society in New York.  Ester is an author who was born in China to a family that had flourished in Shanghai for 5 generations. 

Please register to attend@https://SDSU.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMuc-mprj4jHdDBFpnkoX0-yPkLHTyOlQ8X