Alfred Kutschera

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Alfred Kutschera, portrait 1962

Alfred Kutschera (born July 19, 1928 in Mittel Langenau , Hohenelbe , Czechoslovakia ; † June 1, 2004 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German painter and photographer. He is the father of the evolutionary biologist Ulrich Kutschera and known through the publication of several works.

Life

Alfred Kutschera was born in what was then the Czech Republic as the son of the Czech businessman Josef Kučera (1880-1932) and his German wife Aloisia (née Rilk). After the early death of his father, he grew up with his single mother and two older sisters in Mittel-Langenau / Hohenelbe (Sudetenland). On the recommendation of a teacher, he attended an art school from the age of 14 and was trained as a draftsman there (professional qualification). Then Kutschera successfully applied to an art school in Prague with the aim of later earning a living as a teacher. As a result of the Second World War and the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans from the former Czechoslovakia, which began in 1945 , Alfred Kutschera was unable to complete his planned artistic university education.

He was expelled together with his mother and two sisters and from 1946 lived in Heldrungen (Thuringia). After the founding of the GDR (1949), Kutschera moved with his mother and a sister to West Germany (FRG, Freiburg i. Br.) In 1952. There he completed an apprenticeship as a photographer at what was then Herder-Verlag . In 1954 he married the Freiburg accountant Esther Geng (1929–2016). The marriage resulted in a son and two daughters. At the beginning of the 1970s he completed his master craftsman examination. Thereupon Kutschera worked as head of the photo department for the publishers Herder, Karl Alber and Christophorus, among other things as a graphic artist and draftsman.

Works

As a master photographer at Verlag Herder, Kutschera produced hundreds of pictures (focus: Freiburg Minster and Old Town), which were widely distributed via postcards, brochures and illustrated books and some of them are still in circulation today. For his son Ulrich Kutschera he created numerous behavioral schemes and scientific graphics. These illustrations are, among other things, in the textbook evolutionary biology. Origin and evolution of the organisms. 4th A., 2015, printed.

Kutschera's most famous work is the cover of one of the rarest sampler albums by the British rock group The Rolling Stones . From the end of the 1960s to the mid-1980s, the then Christophorus-Verlag / Freiburg i. Br. Collective albums of well-known musicians; among them were also pop stars (big hits samplers). On behalf of the then head of the Fono-Ring (responsible for record production at Christophorus), Alfred Kutschera independently produced his later famous cover. He went to the Dreisam river (where, among others, the Freiburg Egel lives), photographed rolling stones, put the white letters “The Rolling Stones” over them, so that his original collage, supplemented by the title of the LP, could go into the record sleeve production . On July 7, 2012, the Badische Zeitung reported under the heading “Die Dreisam -steine” on the 50th anniversary of the Rolling Stones, with a cover picture of the singer Mick Jagger . In this article it was shown that the "stone cover" of the big hits album "High Tide and Green Grass" is still a popular collector's item among German rock music fans (an estimated 1,000 albums were created and sold with this cover ). Even in the English-speaking world (UK, USA) this Freiburg “Stonewall cover” is still a rarity in demand.

Other well-known works by Alfred Kutschera include the colored cover picture of the controversial textbook Das Gender-Paradoxon. Man and woman as evolved types of people. 2nd A. 2018; the watercolor was taken from the archive of Alfred Kutschera. Some of his watercolors are reproduced in the CD booklets of the neoclassical piano-synthesizer music by U. Kutschera to illustrate the compositions. The US music reviewer Gary Lemco (San Francisco, CA) commented positively on the A. Kutschera watercolors in his reviews of this music on KZSU-Stanford Radio. The entire inventory of pictures and original photos by Alfred Kutschera (approx. 300 originals) is archived by his son. In the specialist book Physiology of Plants by Ulrich Kutschera, published at the beginning of 2019, 4 color watercolors by the painter are reproduced. The cover picture shows sunflower plants, which are important model organisms for climate change research.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Thomas Steiner, Die Dreisam-Steine. Badish newspaper. Saturday, July 7, 2012, magazine 1-2
  2. ↑ a b Ulrich Kutschera, family documents in private ownership (as of August 8, 2018).
  3. ^ Review of the textbook evolutionary biology. 4th A., 2015
  4. ↑ Review of the textbook Das Gender-Paradoxon. 2nd A., 2018
  5. ↑ Web-Page U. Kutschera Piano-Synth-Music
  6. ↑ kzsu-Stanford Radio
  7. ↑ Note on the watercolors by Alfred Kutschera, 2017
  8. ↑ Note on the watercolors by Alfred Kutschera, 2018
  9. ↑ Niklas, KJ (2019) Book Review: Historical roots and current status of plant physiology (Abstract)
personal data
SURNAME Kutschera, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and photographer
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1928
PLACE OF BIRTH Mittel-Langenau , Hohenelbe , Czechoslovakia
DATE OF DEATH June 1, 2004
Place of death Freiburg in Breisgau