Albert Windisch

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Albert Windisch (born May 17, 1878 in Friedberg (Hesse) ; † April 1, 1967 in Frankfurt am Main ) was a German painter , academy professor and typographer .

Life

Albert Adam Windisch was the son of the court baker Georg Windisch, who supplied the Hessian court and the royal family when they were in Germany. The residential and commercial building at Usagasse 14 in Friedberg still houses a bakery today.

After he had left the secondary school in Friedberg in 1895 with the primary school, Windisch first attended the Royal Art School in Berlin from 1895 to 1898 , where he took the Prussian drawing teacher examination. After a year of private studies with Adolf Schlabitz , he studied at the Academy of Arts in Berlin and from 1901 in Munich for one year at the Academy of Fine Arts and at the Technical University , and in 1903 also passed the Bavarian drawing examination. From 1905 he taught commercial graphics as a full-time municipal civil servant at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Frankfurt and was in contact with the art historian Fritz Wichert from the Städel, whose correspondence has been preserved to this day. In 1922 he founded the Frankfurt Gutenberg Press , which also included Carl Nebel, Hugo Kühn and Ernst Rehbein . In 1924 he founded the typography and bookbinding department at the Kunstgewerbeschule with Philipp Albinus and Rehbein, and in 1925 he entrusted the management of this department to Fritz Wichert, with whom he also promoted the integration of the arts and crafts school into the Städelschule. Windisch's students included the artists Kurt Scheele , Moritz Coschell and Fried Stern , who were later defamed as "degenerate" , as well as the typographers Herbert Post and Max Waibel . When Willi Baumeister's professorship had to be sacrificed to the politically motivated austerity dictates of the Nazis, Windisch also took over part of his courses at the Städelschule .

Windisch had been a member of the German Werkbund and a member of the Weimar Society of Bibliophiles since 1913 at the latest . From 1921 he belonged to the Bund Deutscher Nutzgraphiker (local group Offenbach) and in June 1926 he became the first chairman of the Rhein-Main group of this association. He also held this position after the synchronization in 1933, and is named as such in the publication of a speech by Joseph Goebbels to the Reich Chamber of Culture on November 15, 1933 in the imprint. It should be noted that an exit would at least have resulted in an occupational ban. Windisch was also a lifetime member of the Gutenberg Society . From 1949 he was in contact with Theodor Heuss .

Until the 1960s Windisch taught at the Städelschule. His private studio was at Adickesallee No. 11 in Frankfurt and his house was at Kaiserstraße No. 150 in Friedberg . In 1958, Windisch donated drawings by Wilhelm Konrad Kalb from his property to the Frankfurt Artists' Society.

The Frankfurter Rundschau wrote an extensive review of his life's work in 1958 on his 80th birthday, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung on his 85th birthday.

plant

In the 1920s, there was a creative rivalry between the traditional Offenbach school around Rudolf Koch, Hugo Eberhardt and Dominikus Böhm , and the modern avant-garde project Neues Frankfurt by Ernst May, which was supported by the Frankfurt schools (Kunstgewerbeschule and Städelschule).

Windisch was probably the only protagonist who acted in these two spheres of activity over a long period of time, he worked as an educator with Fritz Wichert on a reform and merger of the two Frankfurt schools and was a graphic artist together with the siblings Hans Leistikow in the 1920s and 1930s and Grete Leistikow . More often, however, it is assigned to the Offenbach district. probably because of his friendship with Rudolf Koch , who was two years his senior, and his bibliophile circles. From this environment (which preferred the Gothic script) there was also criticism of his Windisch italic font : “The“ Windisch italic ”drawn by the Frankfurt graphic artist Albert Windisch is one from the writing tool, ... even if the extremely expressionistic drawings lack the closed vignette character "

As a painter, Windisch preferred urban scenes and landscapes and, after 1945, mainly floral motifs. His artistic work has expressionist traits, but also took up painting from the late 19th century and the art-historical tradition .

Works (selection)

The magazine Die Rheinlande wrote about an exhibition in 1922: The “Pfirsische” by Albert Windisch and the “Sunflower Composition” by Karl Lippmann are both quality works with a finely chosen color effect . His class at the Städel is also praised for the colors in a report: the commercial graphics, which are supervised by Albert Windisch, offer a happy, colorful picture.

  • “Goethe's garden house in Weimar”, 1911
  • "Obermainbrücke / Mainufer / Advertising column", mixed media (charcoal, chalk, opaque white), 1920
  • "Peaches", 1922
  • "Interior", 1922
  • "Gottfried Keller", woodcut, 1924
  • “Flock of sheep on the way to a thirsty autumn landscape”, oil painting
  • “Sheep in a mountain landscape”, oil painting, 1927
  • Artistic design of the Olympic village for the 1936 Summer Olympics (together with Johann Vincenz Cissarz , Hugo Bäppler and Franz Karl Delavilla )
  • “Am Staedtischen Flussufer”, mixed media (charcoal, chalk, opaque white), 1938
  • "Winter landscape / Uferbrücke", mixed media (charcoal, chalk, opaque white), 1952
  • "View of Baden-Baden", oil painting, 1958
  • "Arthur Schopenhauer" , 1959 (woodcut for Arthur Hübscher , today in the collection of the University of Frankfurt)
  • “Summer day on the lake shore”, watercolor, 1950s
  • "Mother with child in the park"
  • "Weimar Summer Park"

Graphic design and typography (selection)

  • Windisch Kursiv font for Klingspor , 1917
  • Typographic advice to Stempel AG
  • "German contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main" poster design for the 1933 exhibition
  • “Reichshandwerkertag” certificate from the city of Frankfurt for the award of the Hans Handwerk-Gedächtnis-Preis, 1936
  • "Swiss Wine" by Emanuel Stickelberger , Basel 1945

Publications

  • Albert Windisch: The Kleukens Fraktur and some thoughts on the subject of “book culture”, 1910
  • Albert Windisch: Rudolf Koch: a German type artist, 1911 (English: "The Work of Rudolf Koch" by Albert Windisch, - Cambridge University Press)
  • Albert Windisch: German typeface designer since 1900
  • Albert Windisch: William Morris as a printer, Gutenberg Society, 1929
  • Albert Windisch: The artistic print type: how is a font created? How do you judge a font? Stamp, 1955
  • Albert Windisch: The prints of the Ernst Ludwig press
  • Albert Windisch: Walter Tiemann

literature

  • Windisch-Kursiv A new font, drawn by Albert Windisch-Frankfurt a. M. 1917, Klingspor.
  • Wilhelm H. Lange: Albert Windisch . In: Klaus Blanckertz (Ed.): The contemporary font. Study books for writing and design. Magazine for Lettering, Design and Script. Issue 61, April 1942.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://www.brezelmaschine.de/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33&Itemid=55
  2. ↑ http://matrikel.adbk.de/05older/mb_1884-1920/jahr_1901/matrikel-02380
  3. ↑ Cf. dissertation by Gabriele Lohmann on the photographer Elisabeth Hase, Bochum 2002, p. 13.
  4. ↑ http://www.exilarchiv.de/DE/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1339%3Ascheele-kurt&catid=46&lang=de
  5. ↑ http://www.bildindex.de/kue14000297.html#%7Chome
  6. ^ Federal Archives: Theodor Heuss estate, viewed in 1994 by Frauke Laufhütte and Jürgen Real.
  7. ^ Marginalia - Issues 129-132, page 87, 1993
  8. ^ Bibliophile Profiles, Volume 6, p. 139, Aschaffenburg, 1958
  9. ↑ Usage graphics: Monthly for the Promotion of Artistic Advertising, Volume 1, Issues 8-10, page 48
  10. ↑ Die Rheinlande, Volume 22, Ed. 1-2, A. Bagel., 1922, p. 48.
  11. ^ Art and the beautiful home: No. 73, 1936 p. 498
personal data
SURNAME Windisch, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, academy professor and typographer
DATE OF BIRTH May 17, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Friedberg (Hesse)
DATE OF DEATH April 1, 1967
Place of death Frankfurt am Main