Dirt on Flat Surfaces: René Halkett 1900 – 1983

Artist René Halkett wasn’t what he seemed. In 1936 he escaped to Britain with his fourth wife Hilde, and he wanted to be reborn. A master of many languages, he could conjugate ‘Renaître’. But his Weimar birthright named him Albrecht Georg Friedrich Freiherr Von Fritsch. Born to be a baron, all he ever wanted was to paint.

René featured in last year’s ‘Refugees at Dartington’ online conference. But there’s more to reveal. Multiple turning points from his picaresque life were confided 50 years ago to the (then) BBC journalist Ian Fell, who is giving this talk. Hours of recordings & papers survive.

Yes, he’d trained in the Prussian Cadet Corps and served on the Western Front, but with WW1 done he kicked over the baronial traces. He joined the Bauhaus, danced at Loheland, made avant-garde theatre, and expressed his ‘idiotic urge to put coloured dirt on flat surfaces’.

Once in British sanctuary, Dartington empowered René’s coloured dirt, and promoted his seminal book, The Dear Monster. He joined Dartington’s Chekhov Theatre Studio, overlapped with Kurt Jooss, and then – as with so many – life about-turned into the Pioneer Corps. He escaped into Sefton Delmer’s darkness, broadcasting covert propaganda to Germany.

Ultimately (post-war) he joined fellow ‘enemy aliens’ in the BBC’s German Service. But not before he’d ‘re-educated’ Germany with British movies, documented at Nuremberg, and discovered his POW General cousin in Wales. Halkett’s ‘Brief aus Cornwall’ 1970’s broadcasts enticed German Service listeners into his Cornish village home. There he died in 1984, having left us countless more ironic tales of a life incessantly reborn.

Booking details here