German child artists’ model generally called Fränzi and associated with Die Brücke (The Bridge), a group of German expressionist artists formed in Dresden in 1905. Her role in their work has occasionally been deemed unsettling. In 1909, at the age of eight, she became acquainted with the group of artists and was depicted in numerous works by the painters until 1911. Unlike professional models, Fehrmann was often portrayed in motion and is connected to a new, faster painting style in oil associated with Die Brücke artists.
An icon of Die Brücke, she appears in paintings by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, and Max Pechstein.
At the age of 16, she fell pregnant to a neighbour, Fleischer Max Rabe, and illegitimately gave birth to her daughter Franziska Gertrud on 12 October 1917. In 1921 her father died, and Fehrmann lived from then on with her mother and her brother, who had returned from the First World War, in Kleine Plauenschengasse 60, Dresden. Her second daughter Erika came into the world on 4 November 1923.
On New Year’s Eve 1931, “Fränzi” married 21-year-old book printer Alfred Kurt Fleischer. It is recorded that she was working as a bookbinder at the time. Alfred Fleischer was a soldier in the Second World War and after his return home, they divorced on 6 August 1948.
She died in Dresden on died 10 June 1950, aged 49.
Link to Wikipedia biography