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Biographical/Historical Information

Death masks are casts taken of a person's face following their death. Casts were often made from wax, clay, or plaster and were primarily used to remember the dead. The process has roots in Egyptian mummification and Mycenean Greek traditions. After the middle ages, death masks were made of prominent figures to be saved for display. Later, casts were taken of unknown corpses for future identification. Death masks were eventually replaced by photography.

Ernst Toller was born in Samotschin in 1893. He studied law in Grenoble and volunteered for World War I, but was relieved from his duties because of medical reasons in 1917. He continued his studies in Munich and became friends with Kurt Eisner. After Eisner's death in 1919, Toller became the head of the Unabhängigen Sozialdemokratischen Partei Deutschlands (USPD) in Bavaria. In July he was arrested for treason and sentenced to five years in prison. During his imprisonment he wrote several plays and moved to Berlin after his release in 1924. In 1933, he moved to Switzerland and later emigrated to England and the US. Toller committed suicide on May 22, 1939 in New York.

Florence Hesketh Wertham was an artist and sculptor who had some success in the 1940s. Hesketh was born around 1903 in Portland, ME and graduated from Wellesley College in 1923. She had three shows in the early 1940s at the Feragil Gallery in New York and a show at the Seattle Museum of Art in 1943. Hesketh's art is in the collections of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Atlanta Museum of Art and the Addison Gallery of American Art at Andover, Mass. Hesketh was married to Dr. Frederic Wertham, an internationally known psychiatrist and author who had founded the Lafargue Clinic in Harlem, and who was also known for his work connecting reading comic books with a rise in violent inclinations in children. Sometime in the 1950s, Hesketh and Dr. Wertham moved from their home in Manhattan to a farm in Kempton, PA. Hesketh's involvement in the art world seems to have lessened after their move to rural Pennsylvania. She died in Kempton in 1987.

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Citation

Hesketh, Florence: Death mask of Ernst Toller, Leo Baeck Institute, 2001.52.