Adolf Schröter

Adolf Schröter (born January 9, 1904 in Frankfurt (Oder) , † October 18, 1997 in Marburg ) was a German portrait and landscape painter , printmaker and art educator .

Life

Adolf Schröter's career began with a four-year apprenticeship in lithography and commercial graphics at a company in his hometown. This was followed from 1923 onwards by studying art education at the Weimar Art School . He later described it as a student “Weimar Bohème”; he apparently belonged to that minority there who were constantly working productively on themselves.

As a self- reward for the years of training, according to his contemporary Wandervogel values , he spent a semi-natural study trip to the Lofoten Islands in northern Norway, partly financed by teaching at the local folk high school. Then in 1928 he completed a one-year legal traineeship as an art teacher at the secondary school in his hometown. And then he went to Northern Europe again for half a year, this time to the far northwest, to Iceland . As a freelance landscape painter and portraitist, he organized exhibitions in Northern Norway, Reykjavík, Greifswald, Frankfurt (Oder), Berlin and Königsberg. In this the manuscript "Iceland trip by a German painter" from 1929 was created, but it was not published in book form. From 1930 he opened his own studio in Frankfurt (Oder). He was also active in monument protection tasks such as the stained glass windows of the Marienkirche there.

From 1934 he first succeeded in becoming a lecturer at what was then the college for teacher training in Frankfurt (Oder), with subsequent appointment as professor. In the following year he married his wife Dorothea, with whom he gave birth to a total of 8 children over the next 12 years. The inevitable conscription to military service in 1939 was not a problem for him, because because of the consideration for his large family, he was deployed close to home in the stage instead of at the front. After his release from captivity in the United States, he and his family moved to the Central Hessian village of Hachborn in Ebsdorfergrund near Marburg for three years .

Since he did not want to give up his previous "representational" painting practice in favor of the "abstract painting styles" that were almost exclusively desired in the post-war context, the possible path to follow up on his professorial career via the Philipps University was blocked . Instead, since a large family had to be supported, he took up the offer of an art teacher position at grammar schools in Rhineland-Palatinate, which kept him there for eight years. From 1956 he immediately seized the opportunity to switch to an equivalent position at the Martin Luther School in Marburg, which he filled until his retirement in 1969. His wife died in 1963.

After entering (un) retirement, he went on extensive study trips with a new partner. He was drawn again to Scandinavia and Iceland (1978); he toured and explored Greece, Spain, Italy, Austria, Yugoslavia, France, the Canary Islands and more. Since 1973 he has organized around thirty solo exhibitions of his own with paintings and prints on various topics such as landscape, monument preservation, environmental problems in Germany, Switzerland and Yugoslavia. On his 80th birthday in 1984, he was celebrated with a large retrospective in the University Museum for Art and Cultural History Marburg and in the Giessen Congress Hall .

Since his health did not fail him, he remained active into old age, until the end he was an enthusiastic gardener and draftsman in his large natural garden at home. He lived to be over 93 years old before closing his eyes forever in October 1997.

plant

Within his extensive oeuvre , his Icelandic exhibitions are particularly noteworthy. Over the years, under the auspices of the Icelandic Embassy, ​​these have taken place in Cologne, Dortmund, Eisenach, Marburg and Bonn, there in the German Parliamentary Society (DPG). In addition, the German-Icelandic Society Cologne published the diary entries from 1929 with 10 illustrations in yearbook no.

In the area of ​​monument preservation, he and his partner, Ilse Hannsz, made great contributions to the support group Alte Kirchen Marburg and similar associations in Berlin-Brandenburg and Frankfurt an der Oder. In addition to a lot of organizational work, Adolf Schröter provided a large number of drawings of old churches and other buildings in Hesse that are worth preserving , their presentation at Hessentage and monument conservation congresses at home and abroad for the benefit of charitable purposes.

As an enthusiastic pedagogue, which he had not only been in a job, he took an active part in ten “art markets” in Marburg with demonstrations in the graphic technique of etching , watercolor painting and background painting .

Exhibitions

At the end of 2004, a comprehensive retrospective was organized at the Kunst Forum Arbeitsgericht Marburg , “Seeing the big in the small - Adolf Schröter on his 100th birthday”.

Catalogs

• Adolf Schröter: "Paintings, watercolors, ink drawings". Grosshesselohe 1983
• Impressions from Silesia, Bohemia and Moravia: watercolors and hand drawings by Adolf Schröter; Exhibition in the library of the J. G. Herder Institute Marburg 1981
• Landscape and people beyond the Oder: watercolors and hand drawings by Adolf Schröter; Exhibition in the library of the J. G. Herder Institute Marburg 1980

Web links

• The painter and draftsman Adolf Schröter on the occasion of his 100th birthday (Museum Viadrina April 18, 2004 - June 13, 2004)