Albert Birkle
Albert Birkle (born April 21, 1900 in Berlin-Charlottenburg , † January 29, 1986 in Salzburg ) was a German painter and draftsman .
Life
Albert Birkle was born in 1900 as the first son of a middle-class family that was open to the arts in Berlin-Charlottenburg. Birkle's maternal grandfather was Gustav Bregenzer , court painter in the Hohenzollern town of Sigmaringen , who especially designed landscapes in the style between realism and Biedermeier and who helped Birkle decisively on his way. The painter's origins and youth were closely linked to Sigmaringen and the upper Danube valley .
Albert Birkle initially served as a soldier in World War I before starting his apprenticeship as a decorative painter in his father's company after the end of the war . From 1918 to 1924 he studied with Ferdinand Spiegel and Paul Plontke at the Hochschule der Künste in Berlin-Charlottenburg. As the youngest member, Birkle was accepted into the Berlin Secession in 1921 and was later accepted into the Prussian Academy of the Arts , headed by Max Liebermann as president . In 1924 Birkle married the craftsperson Elisabeth Starosta. Immediately after graduating from college in 1924, he became a master student of Arthur Kampf at the Prussian Academy of the Arts. During these years of study up to 1927 he developed a religious-social-critical realism with new objective features, which took on caricatural moments in his idiosyncratic characters.
In 1924 he had his first large collective exhibition in the Künstlerhaus Berlin, further exhibitions in Berlin and other German cities followed in 1929 and 1932. In 1927 the first solo exhibition took place in the Galerie Hinrichsen in Berlin. In the same year Birkle declined the appointment to the Königsberg Art Academy in order to be able to carry out orders for church wall paintings in Geislingen and Kattowitz, among others . Albert Birkle went on numerous study trips, including to Austria , Italy , Poland , Denmark , Norway and France .
The political turmoil leading up to the seizure of power by the Nazis moved to turn his back the capital the artist, and he moved in 1932 with his family in the Austrian Salzburg on. Financial support from a committed collector, M. Neumann from Thuringia, made this step easier. At this time he was already able to show a large amount of early work. Standing between Expressionism and New Objectivity and often exaggerated into the fantastic, a direct and close reference to the Christian Passion is often discernible. His work "Great Crucifixion" caused a sensation in 1922. Nevertheless, Birkle continued to strive not to neglect the exhibition business in Berlin. He regularly sent the annual exhibitions of the Berlin Academy and the Association of Berlin Artists .
In the 1930s the socially critical tendencies in Birkle's work are lost; Landscapes and industrial motifs become more atmospheric and monumental. The attitude of the National Socialists towards him remained ambivalent for a long time. After Birkle was still allowed to represent Germany at the Biennale di Venezia in 1936 , the pictures shown there had to be removed a year later on the personal orders of Adolf Hitler before an exhibition was opened in the Haus der Kunst in Munich. His works have now been declared degenerate art and confiscated in other public collections , including the National Gallery in Berlin .
Thus the artist had fallen out of favor, but thanks to his good relationships and the protection of Josef Thorak, he was able to lift a temporary ban on publication. At the same time he received public commissions, including the design of murals and the fresco The Dionysian Festival for the Berlin Schiller Theater and of glass windows for the Reich Ministry of Aviation in Berlin.
At the beginning of the Second World War , Birkle volunteered for the Reich Labor Service and thus temporarily escaped military service. As a war painter, the staunch pacifist commissioned a fresco in the Glasenbach barracks near Salzburg, and was then sent to France as a war correspondent from 1941 to 1943, but had to return to the service in 1944. His picture “Winter in Salzburg” was exhibited at the exhibition German Artists and the SS in Salzburg in 1944 .
Birkle received Austrian citizenship in 1946 . He processed the traumatic experiences of his military service in his graphic cycle “De profundis”, a work of monumental scope and claim that occupied him for many years. In the subject matter, Birkle went far beyond reflecting on concrete current events; rather, despite the resolute social criticism, he seemed to sense suffering in the metaphysical sense as a basic condition of human existence. In contrast, oil painting clearly receded.
After the end of the war, Birkle received more and more orders for the design of glass windows in his new adopted home. He worked primarily as a religious glass painter who broke new ground with the " Dallglas technique" from France . These included works for the Bürgerspitalkirche St. Blasius and the Christ Church in Salzburg as well as the City Parish Church of the Holy Blood in Graz. The deeply religious artist had thus opened up a field of activity through which he defined himself more decisively in his artistic self-image than ever through the painting of his early days, and to which he gave unrestricted priority during the following decades. It was only when the art public celebrated a revival of his painterly work from the twenties that he found his way back to his old medium. In his later oil paintings he took up the theme of the twenties again; in the much more luminous palette and the unusual treatment of shapes, however, he undeniably reflected his decades of experience in glass painting .
1958 Birkle was awarded the title of professor. The 1950s and 1960s were filled with intense work in the field of glass painting. Significant works and window cycles with a religious and decorative character were created. In his late expressive painterly and graphic work, Birkle, understanding himself as a “chronicler of time”, went back to earlier motifs from the 1920s and 1940s and their socially critical tendencies. The critical time commentary can also be found in his biblical representations. From 1968 to 1978 Albert Birkle created a cycle of five large glass windows for the National Cathedral in Washington, DC He was the only European artist to receive the commission.
Albert Birkle died on January 29, 1986 in Salzburg.
Works
Its many church stained glass windows are known , for example in the Protestant Christ Church or the St. Blasius Citizens Hospital Church in Salzburg. But also in Graz , in Dornbirn-Rohrbach St. Christophorus, in the Konstanzer Maria Hilfekirche, for the churches of Herrenberg and Weitingen , as well as Washington, DC , he created church windows, which here are kept in a strikingly strong style and full of intense luminosity.
In its pictures it mainly dealt with the people in their environment. Above all, he denounced the misery of workers, urban vices and dehumanization . This portrayal of splendor and misery was an elementary task for him and Birkle was in a sense an "incorruptible witness to the time before a supernatural high judgment". In Upper Silesia, for example, he painted poor women who went to work barefoot in winter, he painted the blind turned away from the light, the workers under the weight of the machine (a motif that the artist repeatedly faced), he painted pale people under red Flags, people and soldiers as powerless remote-controlled puppets and he painted the misery of the displaced. "In the air raid shelter", "The mothers", and "Bombed out" are, in addition to "Hitler's entry into Austria", accusing images from the time of the Second World War.
However, the artist also created lyrical, transfigured landscapes in praise of mountains and forests and natural beauties. Its atmospheric cityscapes, especially those from old Wroclaw and the city of Salzburg, are well known. His pictures of the magician Merlin , his picture of the “beautiful Perchten ” and the “Erlenkönig” go into the ghostly fantastic . His portraits are also known for their high level of creativity.
- 1961 Glass picture in the choir of the parish church in Pölfing-Brunn in Styria
- 1964 Two glass concrete windows in the baptistery of the parish church Amstetten - St. Stephan
literature
- Rudolf Pfefferkorn: Albert Birkle. Life and work. Hamburg 1983.
- Nikolaus Schaffer: Albert Birkle. Exhibition catalog. Published by the Carolino Augusteum Museum . Monographic series on Salzburg art. Volume 20. Salzburg 2001.
- Erich Schneider: Albert Birkle: (1900-1986). De profundis - From the depths. Exhibition catalog. Schweinfurt 1990.
Web links
- Literature by and about Albert Birkle in the catalog of the German National Library
- Albert Birkle on the website of the Oesterreichische Nationalbank
- Radio interview with Albert Birkle in the Ö1 series Selbstportrait - fellow human beings talk about their lives and about their work from 1980.
Individual evidence
- ^ Wilhelm Zotti: Church art in Lower Austria . Volume 1 (parish and branch churches south of the Danube). St. Pölten 1983, p. 120
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Birkle, Albert |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German painter |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 21, 1900 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Berlin |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 29, 1986 |
| Place of death | Salzburg |