Elias Maria Reti

Elias Maria Reti (born 04.04.1956 in Budapest) is of Jewish-Hungarian heritage. His great-grandfather was the Hungarian chess champion Richard Reti.
His paternal grandfather, Simon Reti, was a Hungarian communist and, like his wife and the grandmother of Elias, murdered in Auschwitz.
His father, Benjamin Reti hid with a farmer's family in Pecs and was so able to survive.
When Elias Maria was six months old, the Hungarian People's Resistance broke out, where his father was a freedom fighter against the Soviet Union.
After the rebellion, Elias' parents were killed as they tried to flee Hungary.
In 1957 Elias Maria entered an orphanage in Munich. He was adopted the same year and renamed Elias Neumann. 1970 Elias Maria Reti worked along side his uncle Hannes Neumann in a circus, where he preformed in France and Italy among other places.
During a show in France he met Pablo Picasso, who gave him a painting as a gift. On the 13th of November, 1971, Hannes Neumann fell to his death during his circus act. Before the end of the year Elias Maria began studying art under Prof. Joseph Beuys.
When Joseph Beuys' position as a professor was terminated without notice by President of the German State Johannes Rau, Elias Maria Reti chose...