Milein Cosman: In the studio with Hans
Milein Cosman: Father
Milein Cosman: With husband Hans in Piccadilly on the way to a journalist's club
Milein Cosman: As a baby
Milein Cosman: Portrait of her husband Hans Keller
Milein Cosman: 2005
Milein Cosman: Wedding to Hans
Milein Cosman: Looking at a sculpture by Bernhard Sopher in the Hofgarten
Milein Cosman: Aged 4
Milein Cosman: With fellow Slade art student Biddy Swan on the lawn outside the Ashmolean Museum
Milein Cosman: March 2005
Milein Cosman: Drawing footballers
Milein Cosman: In her room in Düsseldorf
Milein Cosman: In Italy with her friend Anneliese Schwartz
Milein Cosman: In Campbelltown
Milein Cosman: Walking by Rhine with her father. "I loved those walks we used to do and I loved to walk there in rain and sunshine. I remember when I was very, very young child, seeing the Rhine frozen over with enormous ice blocks. It was very exciting. Later on of course I went there on a bicycle with my friends and we had a tremendous time by the river, where indeed when we walked along we often saw circus people practicing, wonderful. I had a great liking for little allotments which were of course on the country side of the riverbank, and it was wonderful to see all the cabbages and sunflowers and little gardens."
Milein Cosman: Outside her studio in Oxford at the back of the Ashmolean
Milein Cosman: Drawing Peter Ustinov, Edinburgh Festival, 1949
Milein Cosman
Milein Cosman was born in Gotha 1921
Born: 1921
Place of Birth: Gotha
Arrived in Britain: 01/07/1939
Interview Number: 96 (S)
Experiences: Educational Visa
Interview Summary
Milein Cosman was born in Gotha 1921. She grew up in Dusseldorf, where she received her early education. She did not know that she was Jewish until she wanted to join the Bund Deutscher Maedel. When her parents realised that it was becoming difficult to be a Jewish pupil in Germany they sent her to a Boarding School in Geneva, Switzerland, first to the Odenwaldschule and then to the International School. She visited her brother in the UK in the summer of 1938 and came to Britain in 1939 to study at the Slade School of Art, which, during the war, was housed in Oxford. Her mother ran a boarding house near Oxford. In 1947 she started to work for the Radio Times where she met and later married the writer and broadcaster Hans Keller and they settled in Hampstead, London. In 1949 Milein was commissioned to draw members of the new German parliament. Milein Cosman has become a well known artist. Her drawings, etchings, and paintings have been exhibited all over the world.
Place of Birth
Goethe said: ‘To a wise man, all ports are havens.’ And I think I agree with that. Even if one isn’t wise, one may look at life in that way and perhaps that’s the best way to survive the vicissitudes which undoubtedly every life has. And I think it’s wonderful to be alive.
How do you account, how can you say what is your home? Everything is so mixed up with your very innards and I’ve never been psychoanalysed. I don’t know what would come out but what I feel is very much a duality. I suppose I’m divided - why not?
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