A monument returns

Nida, May 29 2022. In Nida on the Curonian Spit, a monument commemorating an earlier memorial was inaugurated. The Nidden artists’ colony was located here until the 1930s. Foreign painters and literary figures, as well as students and teachers from the Königsberg Art Academy, came to find artistic creativity in the peace and quiet of nature. In 1925 a monument was created by Ernst Mollenhauer for three artists who died in the First World War. Zu ihnen gehörte der sehr erfolgreiche Dichter der Nehrung und Sohn einer jüdischen Familie aus Königsberg, Walther Heymann. This monument, which also commemorated a Jew, was destroyed by followers of the National Socialist ideology in 1938 or as late as 1939. In 2022, on the hill in front of the Kastytis cottage in Nida, a signboard in the shape of the old monument and three carved wooden benches for the two painters and the poet were solemnly presented.

The Mayor of the Spit Darius Jasaitis and the Chairman of the Jewish Community of Klaipeda Felix Puzemskis
Picture: Aivaras Motuzas
ca. 1927 for the artists Ernst Bischoff-Culm, Hans Beppo-Borschke and Walther Heymann
Writer Walther Heymann 1882-1915
Parents Heymann from Koenigsberg
Walther’s parents from Königsberg, Johanna and the grain merchant Richard Heymann
The boys of the Heymann family: Kurt (left), Walther (top), Hans (right), Werner (bottom)
The brother Werner wrote very famous melodies for songs in sound films. In 2020 there was a concert in Kaliningrad.
Nida 2022, picture: Aivaras Motuzas