Cradled in one hand, the cat peers up past a rugged terrain of bodice and beads into Fridel’s aging, pain-illuminated face. Fridel looks hurt, presents her wrist as if the cat has scratched her, but there isn’t any scratch at all.
Fridel Battenburg, Frankfurt, 1920: Max Beckmann’s well-known portrait of the woman who hasn’t been scratched, a study in the ambiguities of suffering. Like all portraits it is also to some degree a self-portrait, especially in that Beckmann adored Fridel and often saw himself in her. Over and over her gentle, haggard face appears in his paintings and drawings; we wish we knew more about their friendship. We do know this: that whenever his life burned down to precarious embers, he turned to her; that she was a dedicated and much-admired musician; and that he called her “the Cat” on account of her odd blend of fondness and detachment.
Fridel Battenburg has left a description of the young Max Beckmann as he was in 1906, the year of his marriage to Minna Tube. In a recently published letter she told of the visit she received in Frankfurt from the newlyweds, who were then on their honeymoon. Beautiful blonde Minna, with her all-seeing eyes and strong expressive hands, was an apparition; her laugh seemed to beat time. “We were standing together on the bridge over the carp pond at the Frankfurt Zoo when Beckmann said, ‘The poor carp, they look at me so hungrily . . .
