Leopold Krakauer was born in Vienna, where he trained as an architect. He made aliyah in 1924. While he earned his living as an architect, building several prominent buildings in the internationalist style, he was also a gifted draftsman and produced a body of sober drawings of the Jerusalem landscape, especially thistles and olive trees, with gnarled trunks often suggesting human bodies in torment.
On the shores of the Sea of Galilee
Lies a palace of great majesty.
There God’s garden is planted,
But not a single tree sways.
Silence; no wave is heard,
Above, every flying bird
Is still and…
Frontispiece of Anshel of Kraków’s Merkeves ha-mishne (The Second Chariot), a Hebrew-Yiddish dictionary of biblical words. The earliest Yiddish book printed in Poland, it was published in 1534 in…
On the front is a lily, commonly found on Yehud coins. On the back is a bird that most ornithologists consider to be a falcon; there is no consensus on its symbolism. With wings spread, this falcon…