Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies

The Robert Weil Family Foundation is fully supporting ‘Standing together’ in the struggle for peace, equality, and social justice.

Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies. This important message was put on display on our Pagoda House in central Tel Aviv where it was hanging for one years time. ‘Standing Together’ is the grassroots people’s movement in Israel. They organize Jews and Arabs, locally and nationally, around campaigns for peace, equality, and social justice, in order to strengthen Israeli society. Standing Together is uniting thousands of people in a campaign in Israel stating ‘Jews and Arabs refuse to be enemies’. The Robert Weil Family foundation is a proud supporter of ‘Standing Together’.

Standing together

Linnea Lindquist, headmaster of Hammarkullsskolan in Gothenburg, have been granted a scholarship by The Robert Weil Family Foundation and Mats Arnhög. This will enable her to focus for the three coming months up untill Swedish elections in September 2022 on the distribution of the results of her research about finansing models of the Swedish schools.

Rektor Linnea

Since 1938, the Municipal Board of Stockholm has awarded the St. Erik’s Medal to Stockholmers who, through their activities or efforts, are considered to deserve such an award from the city.

Decisions on who will be awarded the medal are made by the municipal board. This years laurates are Maja Hagerman, historian and journalist, Hans Ulfvebrandt, priest and dean in Stockholm but also Robert Weil. We are proud to announce the motivation:

Robert Weil, patron, philanthropist and financier. Robert Weil is a modern patron and philanthropist who through the Robert Weil Family Foundation, for many years has supported young narrators, dancers and designers. The foundation, which bears his name, also works to counter anti-Semitism and promote understanding and constructive dialogue between Jews and Muslims, thus creating social sustainability and community for the future.

The Robert Weil Family Foundation is happy to announce a new step taken in the long term relation with Israeli Batsheva Dance Company. The support directed to the salaries of the dancers that have been formalised since 1999, is from the year of 2022 augmented to furthermore strengthen the status of the dancers as the core of the success of the company.

We are proud to announce Ulrica Hydman Vallien Foundation fellows 2022, Masayoshi Oya and Elvira Anekjaer. The designer and ceramicist Masayoshi Oya is the 2022 recipient of Ulrica Hydman Vallien Foundation large scholarship of SEK 90,000, including an invitation to work and experiment in the glass workshop in Kosta together with and under the guidance of the experienced glass blowers. The Foundation also want to encourage Riksglassskolan’s education of glassblowers and glass artists, therefore a small scholarship of sek 10 000 was launched in 2021. The Ulrica Hydman Vallien Foundation small scholarship 2022 goes to Elvira Anekjaer who graduated from Riksglasskolan this spring.

The state, its citizens and Capital are in the same boat. History shows that unless we address the increasing social inequalities, the storm that is now brewing can cause the boat to capsize, writes Robert Weil in a column for Affärsvärlden.

Column in Swedish Magazine Affärsvärlden 25 of August 2020

The summer of 2020 has, in many ways, been a different summer that has made us all reflect. For my part, it has been one of both historical flashbacks and references to the future through the world of books. Not least, they have made me think about my family’s experiences and what they tell us about the time in which we are living.

My summers as a child were not like most of my friends’. They spent their summers at their families’ country houses all around Sweden. I, on the other hand, travelled around with my parents in their shattered Europe that started to be rebuild – a Europe that, during the Nazi 1930s, tore our assimilated Jewish family apart, no longer allowing it to live openly in places where it had been for generations. Now after the war, the survivors were scattered over Europe and some had left for Israel or the United States, like my grandfather. He was forced out of his management position at Deutsche Bank when it was “Aryanised” by the Nazis.

My family had a background in industry, trade and banking, but also as rabbis. My childhood became a history lesson in the structure of industrial society, the political challenges, the widespread hatred of Jews and capitalism, how that all that is solid melts into air capital was created and disappeared, both due to internal and external circumstances. I learned that anything that is solid can evaporate.

In the summer, our car journeys were mainly to our relatives all over Europe, only later were there trips to our family in Israel and the United States. I am pretty sure it is these early summers that have instilled in me my great interest in external analysis that not only evaluates financial material, but also the surrounding culture, policies and political gestures. All this analysing has made me cautious and even a little too scared to take excessive risks. Not without reason. My interest in the humanities and its obvious link with community-building has probably made it easier for me to look into the future. At the same time, I have been amazed by how many people in the industry do not seem to fear the pandemic and the gaps that have been brought to light in the spring and summer, but unwittingly seem to think that everything is back to normal. The stimuli of society seem to have completely disconnected Capital from the world’s everyday financial realities. My reading shows that history often repeats itself. Albeit in different guises. Here is an attempt to summarise my lessons learned.

First to the book that has been closest to my heart, The Order of the Day, written by Éric Vuillard and winner of the 2017 Goncourt Prize. It was the gift of the summer and a starting point for many intriguing encounters. Because of Covid-19, I have exclusively met with a maximum of four friends at a time. This has resulted in frequent important discussions, practically impossible in larger groups, stimulated by The Order of the Day. It opens with a secret meeting on the 20^th of February 1933, just weeks after my grandfather, Ludwig Weil, was forced to leave his position as Head of Deutsche Bank Munich, as well as a large number of boards of major German companies. In his position in the industry he worked with the very people who attended the secret meeting, including Gustav Krupp, Günther Qvandt and Wilhelm von Opel. A total of 25 people from major German companies were represented. The meeting takes place in the Reichstag in Berlin with Adolf Hitler, the new President of the Reichstag, Hermann Göring, and the incoming President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Finance, Hjalmar Schacht. The purpose was to ensure the loyalty of the industry during the impending Nazi takeover. Without the financial guarantees of these men, obviously all male, the Nazis would never have come to power. Entrepreneurs, on the other hand, could work in symbiosis with politics. When the Nazis began their attempts to seek alliances to stop Communism and wipe out Jewish life, the military was needed.

This created a shortage of workers, which was met with slave labourers from concentration camps funded by the then “Aryanised” Deutsche Bank — as described in Dark Towers by David Enrich. According to Enrich, this is also Donald Trump’s main bank to finance his business.

Unfortunately, there are obvious similarities between the collaboration between Capital and politics of the German 1930s, described in The Order of the Day, and the collaboration we see in today’s United States, where Capital chooses to turn a blind eye when it comes to Trump’s racist rhetoric. In the United States, Capital has benefited from the economic benefits of Trump’s policies through significant corporate tax cuts and deregulation, resulting in enhanced wealth and freedom. This, at the expense of the less privileged. The US government deficit has increased dramatically, and the state tax revenues are not adequate to provide the necessary health care and education for the American society to be able to bridge the gaps and prepare its population for the major technological shifts that have only just begun.

On the whole, Covid-19 has exposed the polarisation of the United States and fundamentally shaken its unequal construction. This is shown, in particular, by the Black Lives Matter movement. James Baldwin’s wise voice in, The Fire Next Time, from 1963, reminds us of the country’s long overdue changes in justice. While the United States became one of the world’s most important countries politically and economically, it accepted the vulnerability of the Black population. We can only hope that the movement that has now been launched can make a real difference.

Our Swedish reality is not too different from that of the world around us. The pandemic has particularly affected the weak, exposing our social inequalities, and risks widening them even more. We are at a point in time when most business managers and investors know in their heart that corporate responsibility is not just about creating value for their shareholders, but also involves strengthening the whole of society and providing sustainability at all levels. This particularly applies to our educational system, which requires improvement, becoming more egalitarian at a time when we will have a greater shortage of skilled labour than ever before.

The state, its citizens and Capital are all in the same boat. Sensible companies and sensible members of society build empowered and egalitarian societies. All this sounds familiar, that is how we have historically achieved growth. Hopefully, the storm that is now brewing all around us can make us realize that the boat will capsize, unless we deal with the polarisation. I know this by listening to Vuillard and Baldwin, and not least to my family’s experiences that keep echoing in my mind.

Robert Weil

Founder and owner of Proventus AB and The Robert Weil Family Foundation

Stilla Vatten

Stilla Vatten was part of a series of dramas written by Lars Norén on the boundary between life and death. The performance premiered at the Jewish Theatre in Stockholm in October 2002 and was a collaboration between the Jewish Theatre and Riksteatern-Riks drama. Lars Norén directed his own play about six people and an uninvited guest.

‘Still Waters is a rich text, hilarious and horrific, but above all, substantial and full of reflecting facets in which we constantly catch glimpses of ourselves and our own situation… Still Waters is a group achievement, a totality made up of seven parts packed with aggressions, sorrow, and all sorts of laughs.’- Lars Ring, Svenska Dagbladet, October 14, 2002.

The production also made possible the meeting between Lars Norén and Anders Wester, Art Director at Proventus since 1982 and involved in almost every production at the Jewish Theatre. Stilla Vatten led to a fruitful collaboration between the two, amongst other a campaign of posters displaying Noréns unforgettable oneliners. Visit The Archive to read more about Stilla Vatten.

Jewish Theatre archive

During the year of 2020 the situation for our already embattled partners became worse than ever. The effects of confinement and economic collapse hit the weakest groups the hardest, such as the community of asylum seekers in Tel Aviv, who lost the possibility to income and are locked up in their often under dimensioned and poor homes.

The Robert Weil Family Foundation made two major donations to Tel Aviv Foundation which the city of Tel Aviv matched. The fundings are distributed to Mesila, Kuchinate – African Refugee Women’s Collective and Pesia’s Kitchen, all three NGO:s working directly with the groups at risk and to the Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo’s Emergency Relief Fund.

The Mayor of Tel Aviv-Yafo’s Emergency Relief Fund significantly assists the Municipality in solving the needs of individuals, families and communities most urgently and extremely effected by the Coronavirus Outbreak: Holocaust Survivors and the Elderly, Asylum Seekers and Work Immigrants, High-Risk Populations (Welfare Families, the Homeless and Youth at Risk), The Jaffa Community (Specifically the Arab Community and Ethiopian Immigrants), Small Businesses, Women Suffering from Domestic Violence and Prostitution.

These funds will go in their entirety for emergency aid to the communities these NGOs serve, such as food, medicine, personal hygiene, contraception, care products, toys, basic mobile phones, i-pads for children’s educational use, children’s essential items, diapers, formula, medical insurance, blankets, gloves, masks, warm clothes, pre-paid SIM cards, blankets, sleeping bags, mattresses and safety equipment, as well as safe housing and relief from domestic abuse.

This emergency grant is part of the long term work and presence the Robert Weil Family Foundation have in Israel. All the projects and institutions we are involved with are in different ways supporting a democratic development. All are projects that aim for and raise questions about developing a sustainable, equal and just society.

He was an artist, Pia Forsgren says. Yes; an artist’s artist

“The very word ‘erotic’ is surely erotic”, it says on the poster. You have to look a good distance up the lamppost to see this. But the white letters on a black background are like magnets. The gaze is drawn to it whether you want it or not. “This pen, this completely innocent pen”, on another poster attracts you. And on another poster, right next to it, there is a huge “J” with a Star of David on the top of it. It is 2002 and Judiska Teatern (The Jewish Theatre) will soon premiere the Lars Norén play Stilla Vatten (Still Water).

The posters for Stilla Vatten were not just a fluke. They were part of a long series of works, created by art director Anders Wester, who died after a period of illness in 2018, only 62 years old. At the beginning of the history of the Jewish Theater, the founder Robert Weil and the artistic director Pia Forsgren sat down with Anders Wester to discuss ways in which the theater could communicate with a wider public. Weil and Wester had got to know each other already in the ’eighties. Together, they had turned the annual reports for Weil’s Proventus into desired collectibles. These became a series of books that not only reported the company’s finances, but also had high artistic value.

“Proventus’s was the only Annual Report that the Minister of Culture had on his bookshelf”, claims Robert Weil. But the main focus of their partnership was the Jewish theater. Weil’s role model came from ancient Europe, where there was no boundary between the Jewish and other cultures. This was a time when Jewish theater was not a minority theater, but part of the common cultural landscape.

“Anders quickly decided that we would use a ‘J’. In addition, he wanted to put a Star of David in it.” Both the founder and the artistic director understood that this could be provocative. The star, of course; but also the J, with its clear allusion to the stamps that used to be put in Jewish passports, also in Sweden. But Wester was sure. For him, there was no doubt that the symbols must be “reclaimed”. “Both Anders and Robert had lived in New York for a long time. They had lived and been formed by a city where multiculturalism is a normal state. Words like ‘schmuck’ are, for example, a completely natural part of the city’s melting pot dialect, the one that everyone speaks”, says Pia Forsgren.

The use of the J and the Star also matched the theatre’s programme, which it was determined should tell about the Jewish group in an inclusive way, and show how exciting it is to live within several cultures. Wester’s sketches showed that the symbols could be used in a way that not only attracted attention, but also invited dialogue. Once the foundation was decided, Robert Weil did not interfere with Wester’s ideas. The principle was exactly the same as for Pia Forsgren’s work with the theater.

“Pia and I never had a conversation about what she would do artistically. However, we talked all the time about society. It was the same with Anders. There was an ongoing conversation between us, that was enough. He knew he had my support.” In the Jewish Theater’s archive, everything is gathered together. And when you look through it, it becomes clear how everything is closely connected. The posters are as much a part of the work as what happens on stage. “One of Anders’s great role models was the art director John Melin, who, among other things, had an enormous significance for the Modern Museum’s early successes. Everyone remembers Pontus Hultén; but without the educator Carlo Derkert, the communicator John Melin and a few others, it would never have become what it became”, says Weil.

Wester began his career as an art director at the age of seventeen. After a short time in Helsingborg, he got a job with John Melin at Arbmans in Malmö. He later joined Hall & Cederquist in Stockholm, where he was also Executive Director (CEO) for several years, but without stepping down from his role as creator. He made a number of successful and award-winning campaigns for, among others, Expressen, the petrol company Norsk Hydro and Ericsson’s mobile phones. In 2009 he was elected to the Platinum Academy, an honorary nomination that placed him in the same company as not only John Melin but also several other of his role models, including Art Director Lars Hall and photographer Georg Oddner.

Among Wester’s works, it can be seen that he gladly ‘stuck out his chin’. Perhaps it is most clear when he acts as an interpreter for Expressen, a newspaper that at the time liked to criticize those in power. With the Expressen Wasp as a symbol he criticized Birgit Friggebo, then Minister of Culture, for her trying to ‘sing’ Sweden out of the national trauma caused by the so-called ‘Lasermannen’, who had shot eleven immigrants in 1991-92. She had tried to make the people exposed to the shootings – all immigrants – sing together: ‘We shall overcome’. The naïvity of this effort was made clear when Wester, in one of the campaigns, proposed that the song should be followed by the children’s song ‘The little frogs’.

Provocation is easy. But not many people can do it with fingertip feeling and precision. The Jewish Theater’s posters show that Anders Wester could do it again and again. How did it happen? Robert Weil believes it was because Wester was always a prolific reader. “He considered himself to be dyslexic, but read all the time. In front of a stage set, he had not only skimmed the content quickly; he had really delved deeply into the work and the subject and understood what it was all about.”

This did not only apply to current assignments. When he lived in New York, for example, he was a regular visitor to ‘92nd Street Y’, a Jewish cultural center. There he went to lectures, readings and conversations on every conceivable subject. “Anders had grown up in an academic family. But he started his career as an art director at the age of seventeen. After that he did not have time for any academic education”, explains Robert Weil. Annika Rehn, who ran the advertising agency ‘Voice’ together with Wester from 2003 to 2007, remembers that he used to say that it had gone well for him even though he “had only had an elementary school education”.

“He did not have a complex about his lack of education, but liked to make fun of people who he thought were highly educated but also stupid. He had every right to do so, because he himself was admittedly poorly educated but astonishingly smart and constantly well-read.” When the Jewish Theater was to stage The Dogs in Prague, a play based on Marguerite Dura’s novel Abahn Sabana David, Wester came up with the idea to make an entire book in connection with the stage set.

“The book MD was really his magnum opus”, says Pia Forsgren. “I do not know how much time and energy he must have put into it. And everyone involved noticed that. When he came down to Paris to scan pictures of Dura’s son Jean Mascolo, he got access to a lot of material that no one had seen and used before. Anders could bring out that side in people. He was obsessed and they wanted to do their best for him.”

Today, the book about Duras is sold on the auction site Ebay. Collectors pay between five and six thousand for an unused copy. And you can understand that. The content is unique, both text and images. The design is almost unbelievably elaborate. Together with the designer Fredrik Axell, Wester twisted and turned everything around. “The cover has a pattern on it reminiscent of worn leather. We found the design on the back of Dura’s old student ID from 1934. We took the opportunity to scan it in when we sat in the archive in Paris,” says Axell.

The cover also has another feature, which many have never discovered. There is a dust cover around the cover. It can be removed and unfolded like a poster. On the inside, printed in its entirety, is Pia Forsgren’s script for The Dogs in Prague, the play that was the source of the entire book. “He was an artist”, Pia Forsgren says. Yes; an artist’s artist.

Mattias Jersild

Snowcrash, one of the most talked about and obscured design events of the past two decades has finally been documented, revealing an alternative image of “Scandinavian Design” and offering a trip to the very moment when the furniture industry took the plunge into a digital world

At the end of the 1990s, Finland and Sweden moved out of a deep recession to become the driving forces behind information technology. In this climate, a group of likeminded Finnish architects and designers in 1997, decided to make an exhibition during the design week in Milan, and they called it Snowcrash. Their designs – often made in technologically advanced materials – were worlds apart from what people expected to come out of the north, and Snowcrash was quickly and unanimously hailed in the world press.

The following year, under ownership of Proventus, Snowcrash began to transform into an international design company. And the experimental approach to design that had been manifested by its founders, continued to flourish and result in objects that adressed new work- and lifestyles in a rapidly digitalised society. The company was eventually put on ice in 2003, and without coherent documentation it turned into a folk tale within the international design community.

Since 2019, Ilkka Suppanen, Finnish architect/designer and one of the founding members of Snowcrash – together with independent Swedish curator Gustaf Kjellin – have been working with Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, Sweden’s museum of art and design, to make an exhibition about Snowcrash. Nearly the entire collection that was made are shown along with never before seen videos and images, that finally will bring the Snowcrash story to a wide audience. The exhibition is supported by Proventus and the The Robert Weil Family Foundation, and is open from May 4th, 2021 – February 13th, 2022.

Nationalmuseum