This incident is recorded by Marc Petitjean, whose father, Michel Petitjean, was a friend of Frida.
She changed the spelling of her name to distance herself from the brutality of the National Socialist government. Her disdain was for the Nazis. For the oppressed and suffering Germans, who were the victims of the Nazis, she felt kinship. After the war, she was enthusiastic in establishing a connection with her extended family members who lived in Germany.
Frida’s relationship to her own name is therefore already complex.
Long before changing her name, Frida’s heritage was established as a mixture of German and Mexican, as Marc Petitjean writes:
Frida’s father, Wilhelm Kahlo, was the son of a jeweler who lived in Baden-Baden in Germany and whom Frida maintained was of Hungarian descent. At twenty-one he emigrated to Mexico and Hispanicized his first name to Guillermo. He worked in the German community as a cashier in a glassware shop, as a salesman in a bookshop, and for a jeweler.
Wilhelm played important roles in Frida’s life: he transmitted her family’s German heritage to her, he taught her the German language, and he introduced her to the visual arts and encouraged her to pursue them. Wilhelm was himself an artist, working mainly in photography and graphic design.
The Kahlo home was a cultural enclave, and Wilhelm felt at home in Mexico’s small community of German immigrants. He did not, however, isolate: he learned to speak Spanish well, and more importantly, to read and write it. He developed significant business connections among Mexican business and government leaders.
Marc Petitjean describes Wilhelm’s personality, and his influence on Frida:
Guillermo was a Germanophile who read Schopenhauer and played Beethoven sonatas on the piano alone in his study. He taught Frida to speak German, to paint, and to take photographs.
Frida’s mother was a widow named Maria. Her first husband had also been a German. Wilhelm Kahlo was a widower; Maria was his second wife and the mother of Frida. Marc Petitjean records that Maria was “illiterate.” Maria died a decade before Wilhelm died. In sum, Wilhelm had more time and more intellectual resources to shape Frida’s thinking about art and culture.
Two cultures lived inside Frida: the Mexican which surrounded her, and the German which shaped her home life. Marc Petitjean recounts his father’s analysis of Frida:
My father was particularly aware of the two cultures within Frida: “a degree of rationalism, due to her German heritage, grew more complex when it was combined with Mexican exuberance, Mexican generosity, and Mexico’s colorful religious fervor. Frida was all this rolled into one.” She was completely Mexican and German. It fascinated him.
“In order to” express her contempt for Hitler and the National Socialists and to “distance herself from Nazi” politics, “she even claims that her father’s family is Jewish,” according to Petitjean. Sometimes she added Hungarian to her heritage. Frida’s view of historical reality was rather fluid and fanciful. There is no evidence that the Kahlo family had Jewish or Hungarian roots. The family seems to have been long established in western and southwestern Germany.
Frida often rewrote history to make a symbolic point: she changed her date of birth to reflect events in Mexican history, sometimes citing it as 1910 instead of 1907.
There are distinctly Mexican features combined with distinctly German features in Frida’s thought and work. Her father’s artistic contributions and affectionate support of Frida’s work are integral to her achievements.
