Andreas Helmle (glass painter)

Andreas Helmle (born November 11, 1784 in Breitnau , † October 5, 1839 in Freiburg im Breisgau ) was a German glass painter .

Andreas and his brother Lorenz (1783–1849) were the sons of the farmer Georg Helmle (* 1758). Andreas trained as a clock shield painter and then earned his money as a clock shield painter working from home with his father and brother. Andreas also worked as a portrait painter. 1814-16 he took part in the Wars of Liberation . The two brothers went to Freiburg around 1820. In 1821/22 Andreas worked for the glassmaker Lorenz Hermann (1788-1853), who worked on the restoration of the stained glass windows in the Freiburg Minster . With financial and non-material support from Ferdinand Benedikt von Reinach-Werth (1769–1841), they dealt with medieval glass painting, with Andreas specializing in the technical side of glass painting and Lorenz in painting. They created the first monumental stained glass in southwest Germany after the Middle Ages.

In 1823 Andreas Helmle created a window with evangelist figures for the south aisle of the Freiburg Minster ( removed from Fritz Geiges in 1924 , now part of the Münsterbauverein). In 1824/26 the Helmle brothers made windows with a Passion cycle based on Dürer's templates for the Last Supper and Holy Sepulcher chapel of the Freiburg Minster (badly damaged in 1944, restored today and back in the Minster). In 1830/31 they made the west window for the Mainz Cathedral according to a design by Franz Hubert Müller (destroyed in an explosion in 1857). Between 1830 and 1849 they worked with the Swiss painter Hieronymus Hess (1799–1850), who created numerous designs for them. According to his designs, windows with the allegories of the sciences and arts were also created for the reading room of the General Reading Society in Basel in 1833 and windows with famous Basel personalities in the Haus zum Schönen Eck in Basel in 1844/45.

Andreas's health was ruined by handling chemicals and he died after a long illness, he left a widow and three underage children, the family fell into poverty.

literature

• Andreas Helmle. Biographical sketch. In: Badenia or the Baden region and people. A magazine for patriotic history and regional studies 3, 1844, pp. 39–42 ( digitized version ).
• Elgin Vaassen: Pictures on Glass. Glass painting between 1780 and 1870 . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-422-06206-8 , pp. 43–45.
• Daniel Parello: From Helmle to Geiges. A century of historicist glass painting in Freiburg . Stadtarchiv, Freiburg im Breisgau 2000, ISBN 3-00-006521-0 , pp. 38–56. 90-118. 258–259 (catalog raisonné).
• Daniel Parello: Helmle, German glass painter . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 71, de Gruyter, Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-11-023176-2 , p. 390.