Alfred Dark

Alfred Dunkel (born August 18, 1901 in Altona , † September 13, 1988 in Hamburg ) was a German painter and commercial artist .

Live and act

Alfred Dunkel was the son of the carpenter Otto Dunkel. He grew up in Barmbek and received six weeks of training from Hugo Meier-Thur and Arthur Siebelist at the Hamburg School of Applied Arts . At his father's insistence, he began training as an art locksmith in 1916. A year later he finished his training and went to sea, illegally serving as a courier for the communists in Scandinavia and Holland . After returning to his hometown, Dunkel worked as a commercial artist from 1919. He had taught himself the skills necessary for this. Dunkel received orders from left-wing parties, for which he made picture posters, flyers, newspaper heads and banners. The figures created were reminiscent of Käthe Kollwitz around 1920 , but later appeared more angular. Dark occasionally worked as a house painter, but was often unemployed.

Since 1926, Dunkel was a member of the SPD. He switched to the KPD in 1930 , but never became a member of the Association of Revolutionary Visual Artists . After they came to power , the Nazis imprisoned Dunkel from May to August 1933. After his release from prison, Dunkel lived in a stable in Lützowstrasse until the end of 1935. He led a life underground and worked black as a house painter. He did not belong to the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts and therefore could not practice his profession as a graphic designer. Franz Jacob , whom the graphic artist met at illegal gatherings of the KPD, commissioned individual issues of the Hamburger Volkszeitung and leaflets in the dark . Since his expulsion from the KPD, Dunkel had been a member of the Trotskyist cell .

On November 16, 1935, the Nazis arrested Alfred Dunkel again. The Hamburg Higher Regional Court imposed a three-year prison sentence for “preparation for high treason”. The time in prison was in the Fuhlsbüttel police prison , in Bremen-Oslebshausen and in the Berlin-Alexanderplatz police prison. On December 24, 1938, the National Socialists took Dunkel into protective custody and transferred him to Sachsenhausen concentration camp . Here he spent six years and survived as he was patient, careful and humble.

In the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, Dunkel became a foreman at the Wald motor vehicle depot , which at times comprised 1,250 people. Dunkel was particularly committed to helping Norwegian inmates who belonged to the resistance, including Einar Gerhardsen and Halvard Lange . Dark was therefore considered the "father of the Norwegians". During his imprisonment, Dunkel produced more than 100 small-format drawings and watercolors. He received the necessary paper from relatives of Norwegian concentration camp inmates. Prisoners who worked or searched for food in garbage cans painted dark. He also drew the wishes, dreams and thoughts of fellow prisoners, but also ideological views. A guard friend of the SS kept the drawings in his locker. Norwegian concentration camp inmates took the pictures with them after they were released from the concentration camp. Dunkel made presents and drawings on behalf of the SS, where he met Hans Grundig in the "graphic block" .

In 1944 the Nazis assigned Dunkel to the 3rd Penal Battalion of the SS Special Unit Dirlewanger . Dunkel did military service as a driver in Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia , but did not have to use any weapons. At Christmas 1944, Dunkel deserted. The Red Army imprisoned him in a camp in Stalino until September 10, 1945 . The health-impaired dark was dependent on crutches when released from prison.

After the end of the Second World War , Dunkel worked as a freelancer in Hamburg. In addition, he took part in the work of the Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime . Dunkel tried to work through the impressions from the imprisonment with pen drawings. The works were bold, overdone and almost resembled caricatures. In 1946 the gallery Der Weg exhibited the drawings in Blankenese . Dunkel planned to make a portfolio of woodcuts. The work should be called What You Didn't Know and describe the impressions gained on a general human level. Since Dunkel could not find buyers for the paintings during the exhibition, he gave the paintings away and did not create the woodcuts.

Until 1953, Dunkel freelanced political caricatures for Welt am Sonntag . In 1955, the former inmate Sigurd Mortensen brokered orders from the Oslo Workers' Bladet . Until 1956, Dunkel also drew for Die Welt , the Hamburger Abendblatt and the Sozialistische Hefte . Subsequently, no further political cartoons created. In addition to the commissioned work, Dunkel created abstract pictures of figures, workers, landscapes and lakes without professional guidance.

Dunkel, who met former inmates in Norway in 1956, belonged to the SPD from 1955 to 1957, but repeatedly came into conflict with party interests. In the 1960s he belonged to the Socialist Correspondence , which positioned itself left-opposed to the SPD. From 1967, Dunkel received a reparation pension and low retirement benefits from Norway. In 1981 the Association of German Graphic Artists honored Alfred Dunkel, who went almost completely blind in 1983. Dunkel gave away the paintings he still had and spent the following years in Groß Borstel , where he died in a nursing home in 1988 after a long period of suffering.

Alfred Dunkel's first marriage was Hanni Möhlenbrink in 1932. The couple had a daughter named Ingeborg, who was mentally disabled due to a vaccination error. In 1948 he married Anna Alpen for the second time. Through his wife, who was a communist, he made friends with Magnus Zeller and Hans Müller-Dünnwald, who also painted.

The paintings by Dunkels can be seen in the Museum of Hamburg History , the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial and in the German Historical Museum . The drawings made during the imprisonment are in Norwegian private ownership.

literature

• Maike Bruhns: Dark, Alfred . In: Franklin Kopitzsch, Dirk Brietzke (Hrsg.): Hamburgische Biographie . tape 3 . Wallstein, Göttingen 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0081-4 , p. 102-104 .