Working on Happiness: can you help us trace botanical artist Emmy Herzig-Welser?

In 1953, while living in Germany, my mother began creating a remarkable book. She called it Happiness. It’s a deeply personal, carefully assembled collection of poems, biblical passages, prayers, prose and pictures through which she explored love, faith, beauty, belonging and the life she hoped to lead. Among its approximately 170 pictures is Enzian, a delicate botanical illustration of gentians signed E. Herzig-Welser.

Our research suggests that the artist was Emmy Herzig-Welser, born in Salzburg to Dr Hermann Welser (1890–1975). She reportedly studied under the Salzburg flower painter Adele Esinger and produced floral postcards for publishers including F. A. Ackermann of Munich, Hans Glogner of Heidelberg and Carl Werner of Reichenbach.

A postcard catalogue identifies Enzian as a large-format artist’s postcard published by F. A. Ackermann, Munich, probably during the 1940s. We would now like to establish its publication history more precisely and discover what became of the publisher’s records and reproduction rights.

Emmy appears to have lived briefly in Plauen in the Vogtland region around 1942. The 1942–43 address directory records Major Karl Herzig at Ludendorffstraße 35 (now Kopernikusstraße 35) – a house known as Villa Zadera. Karl Herzig, who had served in the 3rd Tyrolean Imperial Rifle Regiment before and during the First World War, may have been Emmy’s husband. By the late 1940s, she appears to have returned to Austria. However, much of her story remains uncertain.

Do you recognise her name or her distinctive floral illustrations? Do you know:

• when and where she was born and died?
• whether she had children or other surviving relatives?
• where her papers or artwork might be held?
• what became of the archives of F. A. Ackermann?
• who, if anyone, now administers the copyright in her work; or
• whether her postcards appeared in catalogues or identifiable series?

We want to identify and acknowledge every artist whose work appears in Happiness. Where copyright still applies, we also hope to contact the appropriate families, estates, publishers or rights representatives and obtain permission to reproduce their work.

If you can help, with even the slightest clue, please leave a comment or contact us through this website. We would also be enormously grateful if you could share this appeal with art historians, postcard collectors, archivists, botanical-art specialists and anyone familiar with twentieth-century German or Austrian illustration.

By tracing Emmy Herzig-Welser’s story, we hope to ensure that she—and the beautiful work she created—remains visible to new generations.