Anton Schneider-Postrum

Schneider-Postrum: Construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge in Trier, 1911, tempera on paper, 59.5 × 80.5 cm, City Museum Simeonstift Trier

Schneider-Postrum: Construction of the Kaiser Wilhelm Bridge in Trier, 1912, tempera on paper, 59.5 × 80.5 cm, City Museum Simeonstift Trier

Schneider-Postrum: Trier's main market with trams, around 1913, oil on canvas, 69.5 × 47.7 cm, City Museum Simeonstift Trier

Schneider-Postrum: St. Matthias Church in Trier with the dismantled Marienkapelle, 1910, oil on canvas, 60.8 × 85.6 cm, Museum Am Dom Trier

Schneider-Postrum: Reading room of the city library in the Jesuit college Trier, 1917, tempera on paper, 33 × 47 cm, city library Trier

Schneider-Postrum: Morning sunshine in the Wingert (Niederemmel), undated (before 1930), tempera on paper, 68 × 102 cm, City Museum Simeonstift Trier

Schneider-Postrum: Rocks over the Kylltal, 1913, tempera on paper, 52.4 × 35.8 cm, Stadtmuseum Simeonstift Trier

Schneider-Postrum: Killed fox, undated, watercolor on cardboard, 39 × 26 cm, private collection. Photo City Museum Simeonstift Trier

Schneider-Postrum: The house to the three Steipen in Trier's Krahnenstrasse, 1919, etching, 35.2 × 27 cm, City Museum Simeonstift Trier

Schneider-Postrum: Trierisches Fischhaus on St.-Barbara-Ufer , 1919, etching, 25.7 cm x 14.5 cm

Anton Schneider-Postrum , actually Anton Schneider (born June 13, 1869 in Postrum , † May 24, 1943 in Trier ) was a German art teacher, painter and graphic artist.

Origin and basic education

Anton Schneider came from the former Austrian municipality of Postrum / Northern Bohemia (today Postrelná , Republic of the Czech Republic ) and later added this place of birth to his family name. As the son of the farmer Anton Johann Schneider and his wife Marie geb. Teubner he grew up in economically modest circumstances. After attending the eight-level community school, he received his first professional training in a craft painting studio and then worked as a porcelain painter in Meißen . Between 1891 and 1894 he did his military service in Austria and then, in 1896 at the latest, settled in Berlin. There he married Gertrud Piesnack, who had remained childless, and in 1904 changed from Austrian to Prussian and thus also to German citizenship.

Art studies in Berlin

In Berlin, Schneider-Postrum took the opportunity to study art. From 1896 he completed, partly part-time, partly as a full-time student or intern, the crafts schools I and II as well as the Royal Art School, which with its seminar department for the training of drawing teachers in the Royal Academic College for the Fine Arts (today Berlin University of the Arts ) was integrated. His teachers included Prof. Philipp Franck , co-founder of the Berlin Secession and leading artist in the circle of the Berlin impressionists Max Liebermann , Lovis Corinth and Max Slevogt , as well as the genre painter Prof. Albert Tschautsch . After passing the final exam, Schneider-Postrum was qualified in 1904 to teach drawing at all types of schools, including teacher training institutions. In 1905 he added a successful gymnastics teacher exam.

Drawing teacher in Trier

In response to his application, Schneider-Postrum was appointed drawing teacher at the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gymnasium with Realgymnasium (today Max-Planck-Gymnasium ) in Trier in 1906. In 1914 he switched to the Realgymnasium (Hindenburg-, today Humboldt-Gymnasium Trier ), which was now running independently, and taught there, promoted to the faculty member in 1925, until his retirement in 1932. His teaching duties, which according to the school annual reports included all grade levels, came from Schneider- Postrum eagerly, if a bit pedantic and impatient. In the school chronicle from 1922 it was emphasized that he had acquired a good reputation as an artist far beyond the framework of the institution and that he was represented at the most recent exhibitions with “masterfully successful paintings”.

free art

Schneider-Postrum was almost exclusively a landscape and architecture painter. His oil and tempera paintings can mainly be assigned to German late impressionism, with a clear influence on the art of the Berlin Secession , whose lengthy formation and first successes he had witnessed during his student years in Berlin. The impressionistic landscape painting developed there, the influence of his teacher Philipp Franck, determined Schneider-Postrum's intensely colored painting style, which was accompanied by a tendency towards solidifying realism and occasional recourse to late Romanticism. Unconventional solutions in the choice of motifs and image detail were important to him. Schneider-Postrum became well known for his etchings with views of Trier. His experience as a porcelain painter and his studies with the genre painter Tschautsch, who emerged as a legend and fairy tale illustrator, are likely to have been the inspiration for this, as well as the ease with which these small-format works of art can be sold, without prejudice to competing series such as the Trier painter Fritz Quant .

Paintings (selection)

Schneider-Postrum recorded the construction of the Trier Kaiser-Wilhelm-Brücke in 1911/12 with two historically and artistically significant views : First the two huge bridge scaffolding with a corridor from the water in the foreground to the hills to the left of the Moselle, then in a bold close-up view the tangle of scaffolding poles and iron girders pulls into the depths of the bridge construction site. His tension between contemporary traffic engineering and medieval cityscape was also unique when he portrayed the Trier main market / confluence with Simeonstraße in the wintry twilight with the "shining" trams of the Red, Blue and Green Lines. As early as 1910 he had created a highly idiosyncratic picture of the St. Matthias Church in Trier with the remains of the Marienkapelle, which had been dismantled in 1805/10, on its east side, sparkling with colors and at the same time caught up in ruins. Enthusiasm for historical architecture also spoke from his tempera painting, dated 1917, of the then city library reading room with the two precious Coronelli globes in the Jesuit college in Trier. Schneider-Postrum achieved his freest painting style, however, when he could capture light, air and water in pure landscape views, e.g. B. Morning sunshine in Wingert (Niederemmel), rocks over the Kylltal, frozen Mosel (winter 1928/29) - painting titles that need to be supplemented by numerous works that can be derived from literature. As an avid hunter, he occasionally turned to animal painting, as an undated watercolor sketch "Killed Fox" shows. In his pupil, the hunting and animal painter Wilhelm Buddenberg (1890-1967), whom he had led to his Abitur in 1911, the turn to this art branch continued.

Graphic (selection)

A first series of the now lost pen drawings by Schneider-Postrum was published around 1920 in the highly regarded illustrated book "Alt-Trier". Far more extensive, however, was his series of late romantic etchings, with which he captured Trier architectural monuments, secluded inner courtyards and alleyways with picturesque genre scenes, including the cathedral cloister, the lower Krahnenstrasse with the “Haus zu den Drei Steipen” or the circus carriages in front of the “Trierische Fischgaststätte” “On St. Barbaraufer. Reprints of some of the original eraser plates were made in 1985.

Exhibitions

After the extensive Eifel art exhibition in 1913, at which Schneider-Postrum had shown several landscape paintings, it was not until the 1920s that new exhibition opportunities opened up for him. In association with his colleagues in Trier, including Prof. August Trümper , who was also trained in the Berlin Secessionist Circle , the artists 'associations "Trier Artists' Guild" (1920), "Trier Painter Group" (1921) and "Free Association Trier Artists" (1926) were founded . Despite the everyday hardships of the Trier post-war period with its occupying power conflicts, inflation and the lack of apartments, heating material and food, they successfully organized art exhibitions or took part in larger companies such as the “Trier Trade Show 1925 on the occasion of the millennium of the Rhineland”. Schneider-Postrum regularly sent these presentations and in 1930 also became a founding member of the still active society "Visual Artists and Art Friends eV" in the Trier district, which also served him as a forum until the 1932 Christmas exhibition.

A little later, on May 1, 1933, Schneider-Postrum joined the NSDAP, but was passed over when the Trier artists were licensed, which took place in September of the same year, and was not accepted into the Trier district group of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts . As a result - apart from politically opportune individual cases - the acceptance of public contracts and the issuing authority was no longer applicable. However, painting bans were not imposed in the remote Trier art province, and Schneider Postrum continued to work. According to the NSDAP district index card, his membership was terminated and accounted for by the Koblenz-Trier district after two years, in June 1935, due to "unknown residence", ie he had no longer reported to the responsible party offices and had not paid a membership fee. It is therefore not surprising that Schneider-Postrum was not involved in a single art exhibition from 1933 until his death in 1943, although these were numerous and part-controlled by the city of Trier, the “Kulturverband Gau Moselland” and the so-called Kunsthaus Luxemburg until shortly before the end of the war. Even posthumously, no individual presentation was dedicated to the artist; However, some of the painter's works are shown in the permanent exhibition of the Simeonstift Trier City Museum .

Factory locations

The City Museum Simeonstift Trier has an extensive collection of oil and tempera paintings and original Schneider-Postrum etchings. Other works are kept in the Museum am Dom Trier and in the Trier City Library. However, the vast majority of his paintings and graphics are likely to be in private ownership - unless they are lost due to the war or otherwise.

literature

• Official guide through the Eifel exhibition Trier 1913 in the crafts and arts and crafts school from May 18 to June 29: Eifel art and culture from old and new times. Trier 1913, p. 47.
• Wilhelm Blatt: Heimatkunst in the 1st exhibition of the Trier artists' guild. In: Kur-Trier 4th year, No. 6, November 1920, pp. 89–91 with ill. "Ruwertal mit Mühle."
• Gottfried Kentenich : Old Trier. An artistic series of pictures, Trier no year (around 1920).
• Aloys Resch / Heinrich Milz: From the boys' community school to the secondary school with secondary school - Festschrift to celebrate the centennial of the institution. Trier 1922, pp. 99-102; Pp. 119-124, pp. 170 and 210.
• Society for useful research (ed.): Trier home book. Festschrift for the Rhenish millennium in 1925. Trier 1925. Color plate after p. 136.
• Official exhibition guide of the "Gewerbeschau Trier 1925 on the occasion of the millennium of the Rhineland", Trier 1925, p. 41/42: Exhibition of the Trier artists' guild.
• Visual artists and art lovers in the Trier district: Catalog of the art exhibition in the Casino, November 30 to December 14, 1930, Trier 1930, pp. 18 and 35; Fig. P. 33.
• Paul Mauder: Trier painting - Trier painter groups and Trier painters. In: Trierische Heimat, 7th year, issue 7, April 1931, pp. 97–99 and issue 8/9, May / June 1931, pp. 117–119.
• Paul Mauder: Schneider-Postrum. In: Trierische Heimat, 9th year, issue 9/10, June / July 1933, pp. 146–148 with illus. "Blossom in the Trier Valley" and "Frozen Mosel."
• Christian Stöck: From my memories of the time of occupation in Trier, Trier 1930.
• Nicolaas Teeuwisse: From the Salon to the Secession. Art life in Berlin between tradition and the dawn of modernity 1871–1900. Berlin 1986 (annual gift of the German Association for Art History; 1985).
• Bernd Raussen: 175 years of Kaiser-Wilhelms-Gymnasium - Max-Planck-Gymnasium Trier. 2nd edition, Trier 1997.
• Bärbel Schulte: Schneider-Postrum, Anton, teacher and painter. In: Heinz Monz (Ed.): Trier Biographisches Lexikon, Trier 2000, pp. 414–415.
• Elisabeth Dühr (Hrsg.): Painter friendships in threatening times - the 30s in the region. Trier 2001.
• Elisabeth Dühr / Frank G. Hirschmann / Christl Lehnert-Leven: City history in the city museum. Accompanying volume for the new city history exhibition in the City Museum Simeonstift Trier. Trier 2007.
• Hanns-Georg Salm: Schneider Postrum (1869–1943) - a painter personality. Gondola board 2010.
• Miriam-Esther Owesle: On Max Slevogt's impressionism (contribution to the discussion of terms relating to German impressionism, including its romantic element, which continues to this day). In: Direction Landesmuseum Mainz (ed.), Sigrun Paas (arrangement): Max Slevogt - New Paths of Impressionism. Catalog of the exhibition of the same name in the Landesmuseum Mainz May 4 to October 12, 2014. Munich 2014. pp. 34–45.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Personal files Anton Schneider, Landeshauptarchiv Koblenz, inventory 403 - C.04.03.04.02 - personal files of high school teachers, factual files 17205, running time 1906–1943. It contains extensive information on biography, training course and activity as a drawing teacher (including personal form, curriculum vitae, certificates, naturalization certificate, employment, promotion); further details of origin also from Hanns-Georg Salm, like lit.
2. ↑ According to the law on the acquisition and loss of federal and citizenship of June 1, 1870, federal citizenship was acquired through citizenship in a federal state, here Prussia. The new Reich and Citizenship Act that came into force on January 1, 1914, upheld this principle.
3. ^ For example, reports on the school years 1924/25 to 1928/29. Trier City Library Sign. 11 / 475-4 °.
4. ↑ Information from Dr. Christoph Krapp from October 27, 2014 on reports from his grandfather Georg Krapp (colleague from Schneider-Postrum) and his father Heinrich Krapp (long-time student of Schneider-Postrum at the Hindenburg-Gymnasium).
5. ^ Inauguration in 1913 in the presence of the namesake: Kaiser Wilhelm II.
6. ^ Joachim and Karl-Josef Gilles: The Trier trams. Erfurt 2006, p. 47: The Blue Line was not redesigned into a circular route until 1913, which now also ran on Simeonstrasse. The lines were marked with colored lights on the roof of the railcars.
7. ^ Friedrich Kutzbach: The Marienkapelle in the church yard of St. Matthias. In: Max Keuffer (Ed.): Trierisches Archiv, Issue V. Trier 1900, pp. 37–51.
8. ↑ Gottfried Kentenich, the director of the city library for many years, probably commissioned the tempera painting.
   About Gottfried Kentenich: Entry about Gottfried Kentenich in the Rhineland-Palatinate personal
   database. To view the reading room: Gunther Franz / Reiner Nolden: Precious books and documents from the Middle Ages and modern times. Catalog of the exhibition of the city library and the city archive Trier 1984, pp. 81–83.
9. ↑ Original title from the catalog of the 1930 art exhibition. Different designation: "Mosellandschaft" or "Moselloreley". The once independent village of Niederemmel is now part of the municipality of Piesport.
10. ↑ From exhibition catalogs, reviews, book illustrations, auction offers and private collections, around 60 painting titles are currently available.
11. ↑ Gottfried Kentenich: Alt-Trier, like lit. Verz., With the imprint of eight pen drawings in the foreword and on pages 43, 67, 68, 69, 71, 73 and 88.
12. ^ Rudolf M. Gall: Im Krahnen: A contribution to the history of Trier town houses and boatmen families. Trier (no year), p. 25 (with ill.): The half-timbered building at Krahnenstrasse 22, which was destroyed in the Second World War, was supported on the street side on three stone pillars.
13. ^ Rudolf M. Gall: St. Barbara. A contribution to the history of the fishing and boatmen's village at the gates of the city of Trier, its town houses and residents. Trier 1982, after p. 14 (with ill.): Trierisches Fischhaus, corner Barbaraufer / Schulgasse, run by Peter Herrig-Kaiser.
14. ↑ E.g. Cathedral cloister, Museum Am Dom Trier. Inv. G 251. See also Hans-Georg Salm, such as Lit. Verz., P. 41.
15. ↑ The official exhibition guide 1913, like Lit. Verz., Lists the following paintings by Schneider-Postrum: "Loriger Tal", "Eifel lines, at Sivenicher Hof", "Dorfstraße, Sirzenich", "Abendsonne Sirzenich", "Genovefahöhlenfelsen", " Ramstein Castle ", autumn birch with a view of the Roman road" and "Mühlenwehr an der Kyll".
16. ↑ In the catalog of the founding exhibition in 1930, the following Schneider-Postrum exhibits are named: “Grape harvest in the Klosterberg”, “Morning sunshine in Wingert (Niederemmel)”, “Beilstein”, “Trier from the south”, “House walk in Jakobsgäßchen” and “March snow (Mehring) ".
17. ^ Information from the Federal Archives - Berlin Document Center dated May 18, 2001 and NSDAP - Gaukarteikarte, membership number 3.013.010.
18. ↑ “Development work of the Reich Cartel of Fine Arts. From the district group Trier. “Article without indication of responsibility. In: Trier National Journal of September 16, 1933. 8 painters and 2 sculptors were selected from the 34 applicants, including his pupil Wilhelm Buddenberg. Cf. Christl Lehnert-Leven: Alexander Mohr - The painter with the wing shoes, Trier 1996, pp. 290–293 and 317–332.
19. ^ Obituary (without details of the author) in the Trier National Gazette of May 27, 1943: "Tireless in his work until the last years of his life ..." as well as evidence of an oil painting "River Landscape" dated 1941 in the art trade.
20. ↑ Information from the Federal Archives Berlin from November 10, 2014: Membership struck out, (19) 35 / (sheet) 32. Diagonal deletion of the card after reporting to the Reich leadership of the party in Munich.