Aesthetic Empathy in Teaching Art to Children: The Work of Friedl Dicker-Brandeis in Terezin

Abstract

This article examines the teaching approach of art educator Friedl Dicker-Brandeis as a historical antecedent to the art therapy profession. Dicker-Brandeis's philosophy and her specific methods of teaching art to children in the Terezin concentration camp in Czechoslovakia between 1942 and 1944 are described. The influence of the Bauhaus philosophy and teachers such as Itten, Klee, and Kandinsky can be traced through Dicker-Brandeis's pedagogy, with an aesthetic grounded in empathy. Aesthetic empathy was the doctrine that informed Dicker-Brandeis's art education and later, in the Terezin concentration camp, her art teaching. This legacy is part of the history of art therapy and may contribute to shaping future theory and practice.