‘But the main thing is I had the knowledge’: Gertrude Langer, cultural translation and the emerging art sector in post-war Queensland (Australia)

The rise of National Socialism in Germany and the subsequent Nazi takeover in Austria caused an outflow of know-how and talent. The sophisticated academic discipline of art history in both countries was particularly affected. Nazi persecution produced large numbers of involuntary ‘cultural translators’ who fled to other countries and whose decisions and actions determined whether and how knowledge was produced, received, negotiated, transferred and translated.22. Simone Laessig, ‘The History of Knowledge and the Expansion of the Historical Research Agenda’, Bulletin of the GHI 59 (2016): 36, 45. View all notes Coming from a milieu where art history was ‘more highly developed’,33. Peter Burke, ‘Translatio Studii: The Contribution of Exiles to the Establishment of Sociology and Art History in Britain, 1933–1960’, Arbor Clencia, Pensamiento y Cultura 739 (2009): 903. View all notes refugee-scholars passed on new standards of scholarship. Their escapes led to a relocation of knowledge, philosophies and cultural practices that triggered substantial changes in the global art world. Studies have already shown the impact of German and Austrian refugee art historians on the British art world.44. A. Béchard-Léauté, ‘The Contribution of Emigre Art Historians to the Art world after 1933’ (PhD-thesis, Cambridge University, 1999); Peter Lasko, ‘The Impact of German Speaking Refugees on the Fine Arts’, in Second Chance: Two Centuries of German Speaking Jews in the United Kingdom, ed. Werner E. Mosse (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1991), 255–74; Shulamith Behr, Arts in Exile in Britain, 1933–1945: Politics and Cultural Identity (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2005); Johannes Feichtinger, ‘The Significance of Austrian Émigré Art Historians For English Art Scholarship’, in Intellectual Migration and Cultural Transformation: Refugees from National Socialism in the English-Speaking World, ed. Edward Timms and John Hughes (Vienna: Springer, 2003), 51–70. View all notes Refugee art historians, however, fled to many more countries, consequently leaving their footprints on a much wider geographic area. A small but important number also relocated to Australia.