Hermine Moos

Hermine Moos (August 12, 1888 in Frankfurt am Main – August 15, 1928 in Munich) was a doll maker and painter.  She is most known for a commission she worked on from 1918 to 1919; a life-sized fetish doll, commissioned by the painter Oskar Kokoschka, in the likeness of his ex-lover Alma Mahler.

Hermine was the eldest daughter of Jewish parents Max Moos, an engineer,  and Sophie Juliane. Her only sister, Dr. Henriette Moos was born two years later in 1890, and grew up to recieve a PHD in Philosophy. Little is known about Hermine’s level of education, and the family moved around Germany in the early 1910s. In 1913, the family moved to Heidelberg, and Hermine’s name appeared in the local address book under the professional title of “painter”. In 1914, the family of four moved to Munich. In 1915, a painting of Hermine’s depicting the Bavarian King Ludwig III appeared in a war lottery for the Red Cross, which took place at the Munich Glass Palace. In 1917, the family settled into a large apartment in Munich-Schwabing at Kunigundenstrasse 29. Hermine’s most famous work, the doll, was most likely made there. 

In June of 1918, the Hohenzollernhaus, a museum in Berlin, featured small crocheted figurines by Hermine Moos. Shortly afterwards, the Dresden art salon Richter showed off some of her sculptures. It was around that time that she came to meet Oskar Kokoschka, through mutual acquaintances Gerhard Pagel, a neurologist, and Lotte Pritzel, an artist from Munich. Kokoschka at the time was having a hard time coping with the end of his relationship with his former lover, Alma Mahler, and wanted an artificial woman to fill that void.  

In a series of letters to Hermine Moos, Oskar Kokoschka went into detail, clarifying exactly what he was looking for:

“Dear Fraulein Moos! Can the mouth open? And are there teeth and tongue inside too? I would be happy! (…) Don’t fall into stylization with the eyes! If possible, imitate your own for the lid, pupil, eyeball, corner of the eye, thickness etc. Maybe glaze the callus with nail polish. It would be nice if you could also close the eyelids over your eyes. And nowhere do you allow seams in places where you think it hurts me and remind me that the fetish is a wretched bellows!”

Hermine Moos worked from July 1918 to March 1919,  following the detailed instructions given by Oskar Kokoschka in his letters. However, Kokoschka was ultimately unhappy with the finished product. His final surviving letter to the Munich dollmaker was scathing:

“Dear Fraulein Moos, what do we want to do now? I am honestly shocked by your doll, which although I have long been ready to make a certain deduction from my fantasies in favor of reality, contradicts in too many things what I asked of it and what I hoped for from you. The outer shell is a polar bear skin, which would be suitable for imitating a shaggy bedspread bear, but never for the suppleness and softness of a woman’ skin.”

It is difficult to say for certain what the harsh criticism of the then-famous painter meant for the unestablished artist Hermine Moos. She earned more ridicule than fame. Unfortunately, she has not left an impression on art history either. It is likely that she continued to make dolls for the rest of her life, and at the beginning of the 1920s, she helped renovate the costume department of the Bavarian National Museum in Munich. 

Not long after her 40th birthday, Hermine Moos overdosed on veronal and died on the morning of August 15, 1928 in the Munich-Schwabing hospital. Her grave is in the New Israelite Cemetery in Munich. She was preceded in death by her father, Max Moos, in 1924, he was 74 years old, and left behind her mother Sophie, and sister, Henriette. Henriette committed suicide on November 13, 1941, at the age of 51, to avoid deportation to Kaunas. Sophie died when she was 77 years old in 1942 in the extermination camp, Treblinka.  

 

 

 

 

Hermione Moss – Hermine Moos. (2020, November 26). Second Wiki. Retrieved January 25, 2022, from https://second.wiki/wiki/hermine_moos

Stein, S. (2015, February 17). Remembering the Alma Mahler Doll in All Its Creepiness. The Paris Review. Retrieved January 24, 2022, from https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/02/17/my-fair-lady/