I studied under him in 1987 thu 89. I knew he was a big name but never knew just how far. I did hear him tell of the stories of his escaping Nazi Germany and coming to America. His family gone. All of them. He married a art student some 40 years younger than him.
A few years later, (2 years after I had studied under him), he was killed while hit by a car in Italy riding his bike with his wife. Of all the luck.
but he must of had some GREAT last few years.
Imagine this.
1943 Koerner was drafted into the United States Army and was ordered to the Office of Strategic Services in Washington, D.C. and London. After the war ended, Koerner was reassigned to Berlin as a court artist to sketch the Nazi war criminals at the Nuremberg trials for the American Military Government. Following his discharge from the Army in 1946, he returned to Vienna to learn the grim reality that his parents, (Leo and Fanny) brother (Kurt) and all his relatives were victims of the Holocaust and died in extermination camps in Poland. Like many survivors of the Holocaust, Koerner was always haunted by a sense of remorse at having survived while the rest of his family perished.
http://naplesart.org/content/past-exhibitions?q=content/henry-koerner-real-and-imagined
