About this archive
I am Daniel Rauscher-Peleg, and I am the grand-nephew of the painter Rauscher György (in Western order Gyorgy Rauscher; German-language sources Georg Rauscher; born Dorog, 29 April 1902; died Komárom, 3 October 1930), a painter of the new objectivity (új tárgyiasság / Neue Sachlichkeit) and, in his Berlin years, of art deco society portraiture. This is a digital catalogue raisonné of his work, which I steward and edit. The standard of proof, the source hierarchy, and the editorial roles are set out on /methodology; this page explains who keeps the archive and why.
The family connection
The painter was childless, and so was his younger brother László (1903-1997), who guarded the studio estate until his death and left the remainder to the Komáromi Klapka György Múzeum. The Rauscher name continues only through the youngest brother, my grandfather Ferenc Rauscher (1908-1968): from Ferenc to his son Uri (b. 1947), and from Uri to me.
Ferenc survived the Second World War as a forced labourer, married Vera Kincs in 1946, and emigrated with her and their infant son Uri to Israel in 1949, where he became chief of the firefighters and baggage handlers at Ben Gurion airport.
From 2010 onward my father, Uri, contacted the Klapka György Múzeum and gave it family photographs and photographs of his uncle’s paintings that the Israeli branch had kept; those contributions are recorded in Számadó Emese’s 2019 monograph (/bibliography#szamado-2019, p. 6) and are part of what this archive draws on. I am the principal point of contact for the archive and for any institutional correspondence; my father is reachable through me.
I mention this because it shapes what the archive can add. Alongside the scholarship assembled in Hungary, the family kept its own side of the record, the photographs, documents, and first-hand memory carried through the Holocaust and the 1949 emigration.
The maternal line: Schaar and Kincs
My grandmother, Vera Kincs (Komárom 1921 to Petah Tikva 2018), survived Auschwitz, where she was one of Mengele’s experimental subjects, and later taught English in Israel. She left a written memoir of her mother’s family, the Schaar line of Galánta and Bratislava. She also recorded seven hours of video interview for the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. Together, the memoir and the interview are the only first-person account of that branch I know of.
The family’s German tutor, Dr. Benjamin Szold, married a daughter of the Schaar house, a sister of my great-great-grandfather Dr. Heinrich Schaar; their daughter was Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah. The Schaars were therefore blood relatives of the Szolds: my great-grandmother Schaar Szidónia and Henrietta Szold were first cousins, and they kept up a correspondence across the Atlantic. This is family knowledge, carried in our own records rather than in the published scholarship.
Henrietta urged the family to leave for Palestine. In 1932 my grandmother’s half-brother Miki Kincs travelled there for the first Maccabiah, met Henrietta Szold, and came home with photographs and stories, pressing the family to follow. Their father, Kincs Izidor, would not leave the decorative-ceramics business the family ran in Komárom, and they stayed; he and Schaar Szidónia were murdered at Auschwitz in 1944.
The wider losses of the Schaar and Kincs families, and of the painter’s own parents, are held on the /holocaust-memorial page.
Family tree
A diagram of the direct line, in outline:
- Dr. Rauscher Zsigmond (1865-1944) m. Milch Emma (1882-1944)
- Rauscher György (1902-1930), the painter
- Rauscher László (1903-1997), custodian of the estate, m. Mautner Magdolna (no children)
- Rauscher Ferenc (1908-1968) m. Kincs Vera (1921-2018)
- Uri (Tamás György) Rauscher (b. 1947)
- Daniel Rauscher-Peleg, steward of this archive
- Rafael Rauscher (b. 1953)
- Uri (Tamás György) Rauscher (b. 1947)
Images and rights
The photographs and family material presented here are stewarded by our family; the painter’s works are themselves in the public domain (he died in 1930). How images are credited, licensed, and how to request use is set out on /rights-reproductions. Corrections and additions are always welcome through /corrections.
Acknowledgements
This archive rests on the scholarship of Számadó Emese and the Komáromi Klapka György Múzeum, whose 2019 monograph the archive draws on throughout and whose collection is the largest single holding of Rauscher’s work; see /klapka-muzeum. It also draws on the earlier work of Gálig Zoltán and Dr. Zsembery Dezső, and on the records of the institutions credited on /methodology and throughout the /bibliography. For the questions visitors ask most often, see the /faq.