Alfred Mahlau

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alfred Mahlau (born June 21, 1894 in Berlin , † January 22, 1967 in Hamburg ) was a German painter , graphic artist and university professor .

Life

Postage stamp 800 years Lübeck (1943)
Postage stamp 1000 years Lüneburg (1956)
The emergency money designed by Alfred Mahlau in 1921 for the city treasury of the Free City of Lübeck, known as egg money (series of 5 notes - top left the uniform front)

Mahlau was a very busy painter and commercial artist. He designed, among other things, the packaging for the marzipan by Niederegger and worked for companies in the region (the Lübeck Seven Towers as Schwartau , the Lübeck-Büchen Railway Company , the Lübeck photographer William Castelli ), but also for the City of advertising such as his Poster for the Nordic Week 1921 in Lübeck.

His emergency money for the Hanseatic city of Lübeck (egg money) became known . Subsequently, he devoted himself to stage art, particularly in Lübeck and Breslau. In 1926 he took over the design and implementation of the historical festival procession for the 700th anniversary of Lübeck's freedom from the Reich, with scenic depictions of Lübeck's history.

During National Socialism he was appointed to the artistic advisory board in the Reich office of the National Socialist-oriented Nordic Society . The National Socialist artist Asmus Jessen , with whom he had long had collegial ties in Lübeck, became his assistant there.

He was one of the artists who were appointed by the regime to the Prussian Academy of the Arts , which had been transformed into a Nazi-compliant institution since 1933 . In 1937, when the propaganda exhibition “ Degenerate Art ” was shown in Munich in the Hofgartenarkaden , the Neue Sammlung Munich, as the state museum for applied arts , showed a large overview of Mahlau's works with major orders for the Reich Ministry of Aviation. He was not only successful as a painter, but also as a stage designer, interior designer, draftsman and graphic artist in the Nazi era. On the mediation of Mayor Hans Böhmcker , he designed the stamp for the 800th anniversary of Lübeck in 1943. From 1934 to 1939 he created over 70 designs for tapestries for the picture weaver Alen Müller-Hellwig . In August 1944, Adolf Hitler included him in the God-gifted list of the most important commercial graphic artists and draftsmen, which initially saved him from being deployed in the war, including on the “ home front ”. In 1944 he made 50 documentary drawings of the destroyed Berlin for the publishing house Gebrüder Mann , which have been missing since the end of the war.

In January 1945 Mahlau was drafted into the Volkssturm after all . He was deployed east of Berlin, was taken prisoner by the Soviets on April 22, 1945 and was taken to POW camp 173/4 in Posen . Sick of dysentery , he was released at the end of July 1945.

At the University of Fine Arts Hamburg am Lerchenfeld in Hamburg he received a professorship for a graphics class in 1945, which he was able to take up in 1946 when the Hamburg State Art School reopened. He trained numerous artists who were later successful, including a. Uwe Bangert , Horst Janssen , Vicco von Bülow (alias Loriot ), Peter Neugebauer , Albert Christoph Reck , Ekkehard Thieme or Heino Jaeger , Bernd Hering . In 1948 he designed the publisher's signature for Hoffmann and Campe , which is still in use today. He influenced the development of the Lübeck glass artist Carl Rotter by designing numerous glass decorations.

After the end of the Nazi regime, he designed, among other things, the dance of death window for the Marienkirche in Lübeck . In the last years of his life in Hamburg he devoted himself to numerous projects in building art. In addition to the coat of arms for the New Hamburg Elbe Bridges, he also designed the clock tower of the St. Jacobi Church, which has been preserved to this day.

Honors

  • In 1972 the street Alfred-Mahlau-Weg in the Hamburg district of Steilshoop was named after him.

Works

Niederegger packaging (1927)
  • Leporello, the historical festival procession for the 700th anniversary of the freedom of the Reich in Lübeck June 1926. Lübeck, 1926
  • Book cover designs e.g. B. to
    • Lübeck on behalf of the Nordic Society with an introduction by Carl Georg Heise , with photographs by Albert Renger-Patzsch , publisher Ernst Timm, Wasmuth, Berlin, 1928.
    • Arno Dohm: The Fleet of God (Roman, Gütersloh: Bertelsmann, 1938).
    • Ulrich Sander: Mann vom See (Roman, Oldenburg / Berlin: Stalling, 1939).
  • Lübeck picture sheet (in 20 sheets). Seemann Verlag, Leipzig undated (around 1935). Ed. Hans Friedrich Geist, Druck Rathgens, Lübeck. Drawn from it by Alfred Mahlau,
    • Hanseatic trade in the Middle Ages with text by Hans Heiler. Lübeck picture sheet no.13.
    • The Hanseatic city of Lübeck with text by Hans Heiler. Lübeck picture sheet No. 14.
    • Conquering the air . A story of development. Lübeck picture sheet no.15.
    • The railroad . A story of development. Lübeck picture sheet no.16.
  • 100 years of the Hamburg and Germania rowing club. Hans Christian's printing and publishing house, undated (1936), drawings by Alfred Mahlau
  • Hans-Friedrich Geist (text) and Alfred Mahlau (pictures), toys. A colorful primer. L. Staakmann, Leipzig 1938
  • The island of Helgoland - the port of Hamburg - the Lower Elbe and the North Sea. Ariel-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1961
  • Westphalian wire industry 1856–1956. A commemorative publication with a text by Ernst Schnabel and drawings by Alfred Mahlau, Hamm 1956
  • "And suddenly it stares next to you", by Joachim Ringelnatz, Karl H. Hernsel Verlag, Berlin, 1961, book cover

Fonts

  • Wide world . Travel diary of a German painter. Foreword by Alfred Mahlau and an afterword by Carl Georg Heise . Gebr. Mann, Berlin 1940

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1927 - Mahlau creates the “corporate design” that is still valid today: trademarks and Lübeck symbols in white, red and gold ( “The history of the Niederegger house” ).
  2. ↑ Henning Repetzky, "A world to plow is ahead of me". Erich Klahn . A monograph, Hannover 2001, p. 78.
  3. ↑ Hildegard Brenner : End of a bourgeois art institution. The political formation of the Prussian Academy of the Arts from 1933. Munich 1972, p. 155f.
  4. ^ Peter Klaus Schuster / Karl Arndt, National Socialism and 'Degenerate Art'. The Art City of Munich 1937, Munich 1988, p. 41.
  5. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 384.
  6. ↑ Susanne Mahlstedt / Ingaburgh Klatt (ed.): Alfred Mahlau. Catalog of the exhibition in the Burgkloster Lübeck 1994 ISBN 978-3-926048-80-6 , p. 27
  7. ^ Hoffmann and Campe. New beginning for the 200th anniversary ( memento of December 23, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) accessed on April 15, 2013

literature

  • Gerhard Ahrens:  Mahlau, Alfred. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 15, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-428-00196-6 , p. 679 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Beuster, Kirsten: Alfred Mahlau, painter (1894–1967), graphic artist and lecturer. With a catalog raisonné of his objects, graphics and paintings from the public collections in Hamburg and Lübeck as well as selected estates . Vol. 1 - Vol. 3. University of Hamburg dissertation. 2017 ( uni-hamburg.de [accessed October 11, 2019]).
  • Abram B. Enns : Alfred Mahlau. Artist between freedom and usefulness. In: Art and the bourgeoisie. The controversial twenties in Lübeck. Lübeck 1978, ISBN 3-7672-0571-8 , p. 220 ff.
  • Carl Georg Heise : Alfred Mahlau (obituary), in: Die Zeit, February 3, 1967
  • Horst Janssen: Alfred Mahlau, the draftsman and educator. For the Alfred Mahlau exhibition at the Kunsthaus Lübeck, November 1980, Christians Verlag, ISBN 3-7672-0714-1
  • Alfred Mahlau 1894–1967. Travel sketches owned by the museum (February 20 to March 31, 1974), Altonaer Museum, Hamburg 1974
  • Alfred Mahlau drawings watercolors. Printed by Hans Christians, Hamburg 1968
  • S. Mahlstedt, I. Klatt (Ed.): Alfred Mahlau. Painter and graphic artist. Publication accompanying the exhibition from August 19 to October 9, 1994 in the Burgkloster zu Lübeck , Kiel 1994
  • Peter Reindl: Alfred Mahlau and his students. With unpublished memoirs of Alfred Mahlau as well as contributions by Horst Janssen , Siegfried Oelke, Carl Georg Heise, Ulrich Appel, Theodor Riewerts . In the appendix Alfred Mahlaus book artistic work, Christians Verlag, Hamburg 1982
  • Traugott Schalcher: Alfred Mahlau . In: Nutzgraphik, Vol. 14, 1937, Issue 11, pp. 13–-27 ( digitized version )
  • Ulrich Schulte-Wülwer: artist island Sylt . Heide 2005, pp. 230-235.
  • Hugo Sieker : Alfred Mahlau as a commercial artist. In: Schleswig Holsteinisches Jahrbuch 1930/31. 19th year, limited and ed. by Dr. Ernst Sauermann, director of the Thaulow Museum in Kiel, Paul Hartung Verlag, Hamburg 1930
  • Jan Zimmermann : Typ (ograf) isch Mahlau or from the becoming of a font . In: The car . Lübeck contributions to culture and society (2010), pp. 72–85

Web links

Commons : Alfred Mahlau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Mahlau, Alfred
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter, graphic artist and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH June 21, 1894
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH January 22, 1967
Place of death Hamburg