FELIX FRANKFURTER
Felix Frankfurter signs a 11x12¼ charcoal portrait of himself in blue ink.
Printed Portrait signed: "With appreciation/Felix Frankfurter." Charcoal reproduction, 11x12¼ overall, image 11x11 (one surface), matted. Signed on image. Vienna-born Jewish jurist Frankfurter (1882-1965) had served as an assistant to New York lawyer Henry L. Stimson from 1906-1909 and to Secretary of War Stimson (1911-1913). He taught at Harvard Law School from 1914 until 1939, when he was appointed Associate Justice of the Supreme Court by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In this letter, he is likely referring to remarks he made regarding food aid to Germany or Russia, both of whom persecuted Polish Jews before and during World War I. After the war, future President Herbert Hoover was sent by President Woodrow Wilson to co-ordinate efforts to feed Europe's starving. The American Relief Administration fed over 300 million people in 21 countries in Europe and the Middle East until it was officially dissolved on June 30, 1919. Considerable controversy arose when Hoover wanted to extend aid to Germany, and it was months before food was sent there. In 1919, Russia also asked for aid in the wake of a severe famine that left thousands starving. The Polish Jews, who had first experienced persecution in Poland in 1399, had suffered considerably under the Russians. They were placed in ghettos, deprived of their livelihoods and faced deportation and even death. Lamentably, Poland's Jews were to suffer even more catastrophically in WW II. Mounted to a board. Glue remnants at lower blank border and at edges, but matting eliminates these visually.