Gerty Simon

Born Gertrud Cohn[1] in Bremen to a well-to-do Jewish family with her father being a lawyer, she practiced in Berlin and later in London.

[2] She was a German-Jewish photographer who captured many important political and artistic figures in Weimar Berlin, including Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya, Käthe Kollwitz, Max Liebermann and Albert Einstein.

Simon followed, while her husband remained in Berlin, unable to continue as a lawyer and judge, but finding work as a notary.

[2] Simon rapidly re-established her studio in Chelsea, and portrayed many significant individuals there, such as Sir Kenneth Clark, Dame Peggy Ashcroft and Aneurin Bevan.

Their son died in 2015[2] and donated his mother's collection of works to the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in Bloomsbury, London.