Fritz Eichenberg

and Dorothy Day

Fritz Eichenberg (1901-1990) was a German-born artist widely recognized as one of the modern masters of wood engraving. Born into a Jewish family in Cologne, Fritz became a vocal critic of Hitler and the Nazi’s before, and after, coming to America in 1933. He gained fame as an illustrator of literary classics by interpreting many different styles of writing by authors including Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Charlotte and Emily Brönte; his works appearing in many classics including Crime and Punishment, Wuthering Heights, and Gulliver’s Travels.

His works have been exhibited in many places, including The Art Institute of Chicago; the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts; and The National Academy of Design and The Society of American Graphic Artists, both in New York.

The 110-page book pictured above (Orbis Books, 1992) includes biographical information of the Quaker artist and features his interpretations of the corporal works of mercy. My personal favorite is “Christ of the Breadlines.”

Living in New York, he became acquainted with Dorothy Day, co-founder of the Catholic Worker newspaper and movement. He recalled:

I met Dorothy Day in 1949, the year I had finished The Brothers Karamazov. How grateful I am to fate which put me next to her at a Quaker Conference on ‘Religion and Publishing.’ Of course, I knew of her and her paper: a penny sheet of Christian radicalism, circulation close to one hundred thousand.

One couldn’t help loving Dorothy. Her laughter was something I like to provoke. Her love of art, music, literature was passionate, a love that lifted her out of the day-to-day sacrificial and self-ordained vocation of living with the poor, the rejected, the lacerated, the untouchables.

So much has been written about Dorothy, but nothing reflects her presence better than her autobiography for which she asked me to do some engravings. That she loved my work is one of the great rewards I received in my long career as an artist.

Among Eichenberg’s illustration for Day’s autobiography, The Long Loneliness (Harper & Row, 1952), is the piece below, which he titled the same.

The staunch anti-war activists remained friends until Dorothy’s death at 83 in 1980. Fritz Eichenberg died on November 30, 1990, at the age of 89. May he rest in peace.