Arno Breker

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Arno Breker (1940), right Albert Speer
Arno Breker (1972), in his Düsseldorf studio, photo Joe F. Bodenstein

Arno Breker (born July 19, 1900 in Elberfeld (today a district of Wuppertal ), † February 13, 1991 in Düsseldorf ) was a German sculptor and architect . In the time of National Socialism he was one of the leading artists. In 1941 he was appointed Vice President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts . In 1944, in the final phase of the Second World War , he was appointed by Joseph Goebbels and Adolf Hitler in the context of the creation of the so-called Gottbegnadeten listat the top of the special list of “irreplaceable artists” . Despite his extensive work in terms of National Socialism, he was classified as a follower in 1948. Breker was recognized by important artists of his time ( Aristide Maillol : "Michelangelo of the 20th Century" (1942), Ernst Fuchs : "Prophet of the Beautiful" (1972), Salvador Dali : "God is beauty and Arno Breker his prophet" ( 1975)).

Live and act

education

Arno Breker was born as the eldest son of the master stonemason and gravestone artist Arnold Breker and his wife Luise in Elberfeld in 1900. He attended high school, learned the stonemason craft early on in his parents' business, attended the arts and crafts school in Elberfeld and studied the works of Auguste Rodin and Michelangelo . After being unable to work with the artist and professor Adolf von Hildebrand ( Munich ) for economic reasons, he began studying at the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1920 . There he met the revolutionary artists of the Young Rhineland , from whom he distanced himself after a while. Rodin became his role model after a sculpture by the French sculptor made a strong impression on him. He studied architecture with Wilhelm Kreis and sculpture with Hubert Netzer , a student of Adolf von Hildebrand.

He successfully participated in several architecture competitions and competitions for memorials, for example in 1922/23 in a competition for the design of the cemetery of honor in his hometown Elberfeld (mother-son group, Pietà type). The art association for the Rhineland and Westphalia commissioned him to design annual editions. In 1924, shortly before the end of his studies, he made his first trip to Paris , the then center of modern sculpture. There he met the writer and painter Jean Cocteau , the film director Jean Renoir , the Jewish art dealer Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler and the art dealer and publicist Alfred Flechtheim , who was also of Jewish descent. He also got to know Pablo Picasso there. Flechtheim signed Breker and made him known in the Parisian art scene.

In 1925 he completed his studies in Düsseldorf. The monumental figure of the reclining “Aurora” on the roof of the Ehrenhof in Düsseldorf , created for the exhibition “ GeSoLei ” on behalf of Wilhelm Kreis , already illustrates Breker's talent for building-related sculpture.

1926-1934

Arno Breker was awarded the challenge prize of the district president in Düsseldorf .

In 1927 he received an order from the city of Budberg ( Rheinberg / Niederrhein) to design a war memorial. In 1928 he built a memorial near Kleve -Kellen to commemorate attacks by Belgian troops during the occupation after the First World War (1918–1926) . This was work that he probably owed - like the " Aurora " - to the mediation of his former teacher Wilhelm Kreis . He made portrait busts, such as that of the painter Otto Dix , or a government commissioned bust of Friedrich Ebert , the first Reich President of the Weimar Republic who died in February 1925. He made a second trip to Paris, where he met Alexander Calder, among others .

In 1927 he decided to settle in Paris. He made numerous contacts - including lifelong friendships - with artists and intellectuals such as Aristide Maillol , Charles Despiau , Maurice de Vlaminck , Robert Delaunay , Emile Antoine Bourdelle , Constantin Brâncuși , Jules Pascin , Jean Fautrier , Isamu Noguchi and Man Ray and traveled to North Africa . He met the Greek Demetra Messala, called "Mimina", who became his partner. Demetra was the daughter of a Greek diplomat who was already a model for Pablo Picasso and Aristide Maillol. Breker made a sculpture of her in 1933. Numerous sketches and drawings as well as the series of etchings and lithographs Tunisian Journey were created . In 1927 he exhibited together with Alf Bayrle , who also lived in Paris. This resulted in a long-term friendship, which is also evidenced by a lively exchange of letters.

Breker's sculptural works were strongly influenced by Aristide Maillol, Charles Despiau and Auguste Rodin during this period. In his files, torsos and portrait busts, Breker tried to merge the different styles, including the surface treatments of his models. He also developed the casting process of pure form - without unevenness on the surfaces of his figures - which later became characteristic of his representations during the National Socialist era.

However, the connection to Germany did not break off. He received orders for a large sculpture for the Matthäikirche in Düsseldorf and for the Conrad Röntgen memorial in Remscheid . There were exhibitions of his works, he took part in competitions in Germany, including the competition of the city of Düsseldorf for a Heinrich Heine monument (location since 1983 in front of the Kurtheater Norderney ).

In 1932 he received the Rome Prize from the Prussian Academy of the Arts. This award was accompanied by a scholarship and he spent seven months, from October 1932 to May 1933, at the Villa Massimo . One of his Jewish acquaintances, the artist Felix Nussbaum , was his studio neighbor here. During his stay in Rome, Breker designed a reconstruction of the first version of Michelangelo's Pietà , which was also mentioned in professional circles, and took part in a competition for a military cemetery in France (Fricourt / Somme department ). Breker himself saw his time in Rome as “preparation for the monumental work on a large scale that awaited me”.

In 1933 he studied in Florence and Naples . The suggestions taken here from sculpture from antiquity and the Renaissance - especially Michelangelo's  - had a lasting influence on Breker's middle, so-called "classical period" during the Nazi era .

1934-1945

Arno Breker's certificate of appointment as professor
Bust of Adolf Hitler (1938)
Lion head by Breker in Brunswick Cathedral
Berlin, New Reich Chancellery , entrance in the inner courtyard with the sculptures The Party and The Wehrmacht , photo Joe F. Bodenstein

In 1934 Breker left France and returned to Germany. According to Breker's own admission, it was the urging of Wilhelm Hausenstein , Grete Ring and Max Liebermann that induced him to leave Paris to settle in Berlin. Liebermann arranged the studio of the sculptor August Gaul, who died in 1921, for Breker at the new residence . A bust of Liebermann was created. When Breker died in 1935, he took off his death mask .

Breker was initially regarded by the National Socialists as decadent and too France-oriented, and so in the first time after his return he mainly carried out portrait commissions from industrialists, the military and artist colleagues. In 1935 he received his first public commissions: the national emblems at the Berlin Ministry of Finance, stone reliefs on the Nordstern life insurance building in Berlin-Schöneberg , figurative decorations on the main portal of the German Aviation Research Institute , Berlin-Adlershof , the sculpture Der Flieger for the main building of the Dresdeners Air war school , but it was not until 1936 that he began his rapid rise to become the most prominent sculptor of the Third Reich. In 1937 he joined the NSDAP .

Breker made a lion's head relief for the reconstruction of Heinrich the Lion's crypt in Braunschweig Cathedral , which was carried out between 1936 and 1938 .

His design, which he submitted on the occasion of a competition to design the goal pillars of the Dietrich-Eckart open-air theater on the Reichssportfeld , was purchased. Subsequently, he received the order for two monumental figures for the House of German Sports ( decathlete and winner ), which particularly attracted Hitler's attention. For both figures he received the silver medal of the International Olympic Committee in the plastic competition at the Olympic Art Exhibition in Berlin in 1936 .

With the Olympic Games in 1936 , the stylistic orientation towards antiquity was officially decided. Breker's reference to sculptures from ancient Greece met these endeavors. The National Socialists saw the aesthetic ideals of their race doctrine, the “healthy, Aryan type of man”, symbolized in Breker's figures .

Breker's form of expression was proclaimed as a “designed attitude, a worldview that has become form”, as pointing the way for the “new German style”. Looking back, Breker himself described 1936 as the “turning point” in his existence. In the period that followed, he was captured by Nazi propaganda and stylized as the “most important German sculptor of the present”, even as a pioneer of the National Socialist revolution to make art ( degenerate art ) and society as a whole visually tangible.

Breker increasingly gained influence in art political bodies. He was a juror for the plastic department of the first Great German Art Exhibition , which first took place in July 1937 (then annually until 1944) in the House of German Art in Munich . At the side of the President of the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts , Adolf Ziegler , Breker made the selection of the sculptural works. According to state instructions, only artists who did not work in the sense of degenerate art were admitted. Breker himself was represented at the exhibition with four sculptures. By the end of the war he was able to show forty-two of his works at this most important exhibition of National Socialist art. Not only did Breker adapt his own style to the regime's artistic ideal, but, in his capacity as a juror, promoted those artists who worked in the interests of those in power.

Further public commissions followed: for the large sculpture Prometheus for the Propaganda Ministry in Berlin, the Icarus for the Dresden Air War School, the horse guides for the buildings of the Wehrmacht in Dessau , for the city of Hanover the lions on the Maschsee .

In the same year Breker became professor of a sculpture class at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin and married the Greek Demetra Messala. At the end of 1937 he was commissioned to create the two monumental figures of the Party and Wehrmacht for the courtyard of the New Reich Chancellery (inauguration on January 9, 1939). At the same time he worked on five figures ( Wager , Wäger , Anmut , Psyche , Eos ) and two marble reliefs ( Genius , Sieger ) for the round hall of this building. These assignments marked the beginning of the close personal collaboration between the sculptor and Albert Speer , General Building Inspector for the Reich capital since January 30, 1937 , who was to plan and carry out the "redesign of Berlin to become the capital of the Greater Germanic Empire". Breker was given the task of decorating the new buildings with his sculptures. Breker's rise was presumably supported by Wilhelm Kreis , Breker's former teacher of architecture at the Düsseldorf Art Academy , with whom Breker had a close friendship throughout his life. Breker's designs were created for the fountain at Runden Platz , reliefs for the planned soldiers' hall , for a 240-meter-long relief frieze on the planned north-south axis, a series of heroic depictions with the titles torchbearers , victims , avengers , guards , retribution and comrades , then reliefs for the Great Triumphal Arch and the Führerbau .

The studio in Berlin

For this task, Hans Freese set up an open -plan studio for him in Berlin-Dahlem . The studio building on Käuzchensteig was built between 1939 and 1942, but was only used for barely a year due to the approaching war front . The Berlin Senate placed it under monument protection in 1990 .

In the spring of 1938 the show German Sculptors of the Present with Breker, Georg Kolbe and Richard Scheibe was a great success in Warsaw and Krakow . 1940 Breker was the first visual artist to Mussolini Prize of the Biennale in Venice . In 1941 Breker became vice-president of the Reich Chamber of Culture for the Fine Arts .

In May 1942, the Vichy government opened an Arno Breker solo exhibition in the Orangery of the Tuileries Garden in occupied Paris with a state ceremony - in the presence of Abel Bonnard , Fernand de Brinon , Jacques Benoist-Méchin , Georges Scapini , and numerous French artists, such as Charles Despiau , Jean Cocteau , the German Ambassador Otto Abetz and other representatives of the German occupying power and other selected guests. Education and Education Minister Abel Bonnard and State Secretary Jacques Benoist-Méchin gave the official speeches.

Further solo exhibitions during the war took place in 1943 in the " Haus der Rheinischen Heimat " in Cologne and from June to September 1944 in the Potsdam Garrison Museum Lustgarten - organized by Albert Speer and the Gauleiter for the Mark Brandenburg , Oberpräsident Emil Stürtz .

Breker (front right) in the wake of Adolf Hitler , Paris 23 June 1940
Opening of a Breker exhibition, center Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel , May 15, 1942 in Paris occupied by the Wehrmacht

On June 23, 1940, one day after the signing of the armistice agreement with France in the Compiègne forest , Breker took part in a visit to occupied Paris that lasted only a few hours in the wake of Adolf Hitler , together with the architects Albert Speer and Hermann Giesler . The Paris Opera , Champs Elysées , Trocadéro , Eiffel Tower , Invalides (tomb of Napoleon I ), Panthéon and Sacré Cœur were visited . A little later, Breker - presumably mediated by Speer - received the "Aryanized" luxury apartment from Helena Rubinstein on the Ile Saint Louis (Quai de Béthune 24) at his disposal.

On his 40th birthday in 1940, Breker received the former Jäckelsbruch manor in Eichwerder (Wriezen) as a gift from Hitler , in “grateful recognition of his creative work in the service of German art”. The donation included not only the palace with its park, but also the entire equipment of the house as well as a new studio built by the architect Friedrich Tamms . The interior was redesigned by Paul von Waldthausen .

In April 1942, during a conversation at the table, Hitler mentioned that he had personally ensured that Breker's annual income of RM 1 million was kept  at a tax rate of 15%. In Wriezen the - a large factory premises with siding and Kanalhafen been held since mid-1941 stone sculpture workshops Arno Breker GmbH . The endowment was worth 800,000 Reichsmarks.

The stone carving workshops were set up by the general building inspector for the Reich capital Berlin, which enabled Speer to award orders of any size directly to Breker without a permit process. Sculpture works for the redesign of Berlin and for the party convention grounds in Nuremberg were created in the workshops. The workshops were continuously expanded in the following years by millions. Towards the end of the war, up to 50 prisoners of war and forced laborers were used to work on the figures.

In 1944, Breker accepted the call to the Prussian Academy of the Arts as head of a master's atelier and was accepted into the academy's senate. Also in 1944, the documentary Arno Breker - Hard Times, Strong Art was made about Breker . (Direction: Arnold Fanck , Hans Cürlis ; Production: Riefenstahl -Film GmbH, Berlin). In view of these numerous activities, Adolf Hitler's sculptor himself was included in the special list of the God-gifted list of “irreplaceable artists”, which meant that he was exempt from military service. Many of the monumental sculptures were destroyed by the effects of the war, other works disappeared in depots or are in private collections, but some of his works are still on pedestals in museums, in parks or on portals and squares, without at first glance as sculptures by Arno Breker to be recognized.

From mid-1944, when the air raids on Berlin became too violent, the workforce for the reconstruction of cities destroyed by bombs sought refuge in a barracks camp in Wriezen.

The party , photo Joe F. Bodenstein

Numerous illustrated books and photo postcards were created during this time. Breker's works were photographed by Charlotte Rohrbach .

post war period

In spring 1945 Breker moved to Wemding in Bavaria.

1948 Breker was in the denazification by the denazification Donauwörth in the then US - occupied zone Bayern , despite its massive artistic commitment to the Nazi state, as followers classified since it had demonstrably used for persecuted artists. According to his own account, he had saved the painter Pablo Picasso from the Gestapo in Paris during the German occupation ; Picasso, a sympathizer of the communists , escaped deportation to a concentration camp . One of the merits of Arno Breker was the rescue of the German publisher Peter Suhrkamp , who was imprisoned on suspicion of resisting Adolf Hitler. Breker had visited Suhrkamp in prison and had successfully campaigned for Albert Speer and Hitler to have the publisher released.

In 1950 Breker settled in Düsseldorf, where other former employees of the reconstruction team  - such as Friedrich Tamms , Wilhelm Kreis , Helmut Hentrich , Rudolf Wolters , Hans Heuser , Karl Piepenburg , Hanns Dustmann , Kurt Groote, later also Julius Schulte-Frohlinde  - had regained a foothold. It can be assumed that Arno Breker, who is also in Wriezen, was well informed about the post-war planning through his contacts with the general building inspector and the working staff. After Friedrich Tamms was appointed head of the city planning office in Düsseldorf in 1948 and subsequently began, in close cooperation with Rudolf Wolters, to increasingly move former employees of the general building inspector of the Reich capital Berlin to Düsseldorf, Arno Breker obviously believed the time had come, his To move residence here.

Arno Breker's brother Hans , sculptor like Arno, and like him worked for the Nazi regime (bronze relief of the naval memorial in Laboe 1935/36, "Ährenlesergruppe" and "Sämann" for the exhibition "Schaffendes Volk" in Düsseldorf 1937, sculpture for the NS -Mother home in Meisenheim am Glan 1939), also moved to Düsseldorf in 1954. Arno Breker moved into the former studio of the animal sculptor Josef Pallenberg , married in 1958 - two years after the death of his first wife Demetra - the 26 years younger Charlotte Kluge, with whom he had two children (son Gerhard, born 1959 and daughter Carola, born. 1962).

Salvador Dalí , 1975

After 1945 he received hardly any public, but numerous private commissions: he portrayed influential industrialists - such as Hermann Josef Abs , Hugo Henkel , Günther and Herbert Quandt , Rudolf-August Oetker , Paul Girardet and Gustav Schickedanz  -, politicians - such as Konrad Adenauer , Ludwig Erhard  -, artists - such as Jean Cocteau , Jean Marais , Salvador Dalí , Ernst Jünger , Ezra Pound  - or art collectors like Irene and Peter Ludwig , and allegedly received fees of up to 150,000 marks. He was friends with Salvador Dalí and Ernst Fuchs . About the friendship of the three artists, called the Golden Triangle , Dalí said: “Breker-Dalí-Fox. You can turn us around as you want, we are always on top. "About Breker, whom he saw as a great artist and whom he praised in his television program about artists, he said:" Breker has captured my soul. "

His lion was a study for the “Monument to the Liberation of Africa”, which Breker had been working on at the request of King Hassan II of Morocco since 1970 and which was to be located on the Great Square of the United Nations in Casablanca . He got the job through the intermediary of Jacques Benoist-Méchin , who was friends with the king. After the assassination attempt on the king in 1971, in which Benoist-Méchin and Breker were also present and in which, like the king, they barely escaped death, the memorial was no longer built.

Pax sculpture on Arno Breker's grave, Nordfriedhof in Düsseldorf (2019)

Breker retained his fondness for portrait busts and athletic, mostly male bodies. Until the 1980s he worked, who, according to his own statements, “could never get enough of muscles” (Breker 1980), according to athlete models. The decathlete Jürgen Hingsen , the high jumper Ulrike Nasse-Meyfarth and the swimmers Walter Kusch and Peter Nocke were his models. Hingsen was immortalized as the "Greek Apollo ".

Together with the poet and philosopher Rolf Schilling , the joint work “Days of the Gods” was created, which contains numerous drawings by the sculptor. For the luxury edition of the publication he dedicated the original lithograph to Orpheus with the harp to Schilling . Schilling was also a guest in the figure studio and in Brekers Museum.

Breker as an architect

Breker had been involved in architectural projects all his life. According to Albert Speer, his previous specialist studies in Düsseldorf were also helpful for the plans for redesigning Berlin. After 1945 he was involved in the design of the Gerling group headquarters in Cologne. Because of the monumental character of the buildings, which brought back memories of Albert Speer's colossal buildings, the building ensemble was soon called the “Small Reich Chancellery” by the population. Here Breker came under criticism simply because the participating architects and site managers (Kurt Groote, Karl Piepenburg, Helmut Hentrich, Hans Heuser), like the supporting experts Friedrich Tamms and Hans Mertens, were already leading in the “Third Reich”. After dissonances with Hans Gerling , the son of the group's founder Robert Gerling , the architects Helmut Hentrich and Hans Heuser resigned their order and the building was completed under the formal direction of Breker by Hans Gerling himself. Breker was active here as a sculptor. The figures on the central fountain at Gereonshof come from him, as well as several reliefs on the walls of the buildings: depictions of the Three Kings , St. George and St. Martin , St. Christopher and other groups of figures.

In 1955/1956 Breker designed the now listed office and residential building for the Gerling Group at Körnerstrasse 45 in Hagen, and in 1957 the now also listed office building Jägerhofstrasse 21 in Düsseldorf-Pempelfort.

Honors, honors

According to a report by Stern magazine , Breker accepted the Golden Ring of Honor from the right-wing extremist German cultural organization European Spirit in the 1970s . In 1986, Breker praised the “culturally sophisticated style” of the right-wing extremist paper, Deutsche Monatshefte, and published here in issue 12 an article about the French sculptor Aristide Maillol . After Breker's death, the anti-Semitic paper Die Bauernschaft (publisher Thies Christophersen ) mourned its reader Breker.

Controversial in person and work, Breker also experienced multiple appreciation far beyond the National Socialist intellectual world, in particular by artist colleagues and art connoisseurs. Can be cited:

  • Charles Despiau : "Breker opens up new dimensions in the representation of humans." (1937)
  • Aristide Maillol : “Breker is the German Michelangelo des XX. Century. "(1942)
  • Ernst Fuchs : "Arno Breker is the true prophet of the beautiful." (1972)
  • Salvador Dali : "God is beauty and Arno Breker is his prophet." (1975)
  • Peter Ludwig : “I think Breker is an interesting artist, a great portrait artist. He, too, is one of those whose performance is simply pushed aside with catchphrases. "(1986)

Work (selection)

Sculptures until 1934

Aurora (1924) on the roof of the Kunstpalast Museum in Düsseldorf

Portraits (bronze busts)

1935-1945

Prometheus .
Head of a woman at the Yugoslav legation
  • Sculpture: Prometheus (1935)
  • Relief on the Nordstern life insurance building, Berlin (1936)
  • Sculpture: The decathlete for the Olympic Stadium, Berlin (1936)
  • Sculpture: The winner for the Olympic Stadium, Berlin (1936)
  • Sculpture: Dionysus for the Olympic Village, Berlin (1936)
  • Sculpture: The Wounded Man (1938)
  • Sculpture: The Horse Leader (1938)
  • Relief: The Genius (1938)
  • Relief: The Fighter (1938)
  • Bronzes: Lion Bastion on the Maschsee in Hanover (1938)
  • Sculpture: Grace (1938)
  • Bronze bust: Adolf Hitler (1938, exhibited in Munich from 1939)
  • Sculpture: Torchbearers ("The Party") in the courtyard of the New Reich Chancellery (1939)
  • Sculpture: swordtail ("The Wehrmacht") in the courtyard of the New Reich Chancellery (1939)
  • Sculpture: The Weigher (1939)
  • Sculpture: The Wager (1939)
  • Sculpture: Readiness (1939)
  • Relief: coat of arms of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and a woman's head on the building of the Yugoslav legation in Berlin (1939/40)
  • Relief: The Avenger (1940)
  • Relief: Comrades (1940), Breker Museum
  • Relief: standard bearer (1940)
  • Relief: Farewell (1940)
  • Relief: Annihilation (1940)
  • Relief: Sacrifice (1940)
  • Sculpture: Striding (1940)
  • Relief: Departure of the Fighters (1940/41)
  • Relief: The Caller (1941)
  • Relief: Orpheus and Eurydice (1944) Breker Museum
  • Sculpture: The Guardian (1941)
  • Relief: Excerpt from the fight (1941)
  • Sculpture: Psyche (1941)
  • Sculpture: Vocation (1941)
  • Sculpture: The Herald (1942)
  • Sculpture: The Victor (1942)
  • Sculpture: Kneeling (1942)
  • Sculpture: Eos (1942)
  • Portrait bust: Gerhart Hauptmann (1942)
  • Sculpture: Flora (1943)
  • Marble bust: Richard Wagner
  • Relief: Apollo and Daphne
  • Bronze bust: Maillol (1943)

Since 1946

Cosima Wagner , 1982. Commissioned by the City of Bayreuth
Franz Liszt bust in the Bayreuth Festival Park
Pallas Athene in Wuppertal
Gerhart Hauptmann (1988)
Tomb of the Albano Müller family in Schwelm, 1950 (without bust of Jesus)

Monuments

architecture

  • Schwelm : Tomb of the Albano Müller family ( picture ), 1950, Schwelm Protestant cemetery
  • Hagen : Office building of the Gerling Group ( picture ), 1955/56, Körnerstrasse 45
  • Düsseldorf : Office building of the Gerling Group ( picture ), 1957/58, Jägerhofstrasse 21

Writings, illustrated books

  • Albert Buesche : Arno Breker: Introduction and guidance through the exhibition in the Orangery des Tuileries . Desfossés, Paris 1942. Photos Charlotte Rohrbach , Marc Vaux.
  • In the radiation field of the events 1925–1965: the life and work of an artist. Portraits, encounters, fates. Waldemar Schütz , Preußisch Oldendorf, 1965, 1972
  • Paris, Hitler et Moi. Presses de la Cité, Paris 1970
  • Portraits of our era. Arno Breker . Podzun-Verlag, Dorheim 1972
  • André Müller : Exposures. Interviews. Wilhelm Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 978-3-442-03887-9 (Müller's various interview partners, including Breker; full text see below under the web links, at Perlentaucher.de).
  • Volker Probst (Ed.): Breker, writings. Marco, Bonn 1983, ISBN 978-3-921754-19-1 .
  • Encounters and contemplations. Marco, Bonn 1987, ISBN 3-921754-27-5 .
  • Above all, beauty. Sculptures, reliefs, medals, prints. Gallery for representational art, Kirchheim unter Teck 2000. ISBN 3-935172-02-8 .
  • Arno Breker - drawings, designs, drawings. Edited by Uwe Möller, Marco, Bonn 2000 ISBN 3-921754-37-2 .
  • Arno Breker - sculptor, designer, architect . Ronald Hirlé, Paris 2006, again 2010, ISBN 978-2-914729-83-3 .
  • "It was not allowed to build monuments to this regime ... The correspondence between Arno Breker and Albert Buesche." Carola Breker, Rainer Hackel (ed.). Traugott Bautz, Nordhausen 2018. ISBN 978-3-95948-349-0 .

Exhibitions: Solo and group exhibitions after 1945

Breker Museum Nörvenich. A lion figure and Prometheus von Breker in the courtyard .

At Nörvenich Castle (Düren district) - owned by the Bodenstein family since 1980 - is the Museum of European Art , which is mainly dedicated to the work of Arno Breker and the work of his artist friends Salvador Dalí and Ernst Fuchs.

In England, the Henry Moore Institute in Leeds designed an exhibition in 2001 . The originals were then shown in Berlin and Bremen, after mainly photographs had previously been shown. The exhibitions ran under the name: Talking Positions .

The first exhibition of Breker's works after 1945 took place in Schwerin from July 22nd to October 22nd, 2006 in a German municipal exhibition center, the Schleswig-Holstein-Haus . The exhibition showed the expressive early sculptures as well as the designs from the 1930s and 1940s and works between 1945 and 1991. The controversial exhibition was a great success with 35,500 visitors.

Breker's works can be found in The Tokyo Museum , Japan, in the Center Pompidou , Paris, and in some German museums.

Bogside 69 - sculpture by Hans-Jürgen Breuste in Hanover, using a "Breker fist"

Hans-Jürgen Breuste took the fist of his work of art Bogside 69 , which was caught in iron bands, from a quarry , in which the sculptor Arno Breker, who was active under National Socialism , and his students had previously worked on large ideological sculptures. With his sculpture, the artist linked the human rights organization Amnesty International , the violence under National Socialism and the violations of civil rights in the Northern Ireland conflict in the Bogside 1969 - to which the sculpture's title refers - to create a global space of association. Breuste combined his historical find with his artistic work in such a way that the viewer - even without knowing the origin of Faust - associatively feel the connection to the goals and ideals of Amnesty International.

Exhibitions after 1945 - selection

  • 1972: Galerie MARCO, Bonn (and following years)
  • 1974: France: Paris Galerie Le petit Pommery
  • 1978: Austria: Salzburg Cultural Association, Salzburg
  • 1976: France: Paris Galerie Art 206.
  • 1981: Berlin, Studio de L'Art
  • 1982: France: Galerie de Beaux Art, Paris
  • 1985: USA US Museum of European Art, NY
  • 1990: Museum Europäische Kunst 52388 Nörvenich / Schloss: “Arno Breker 90 Years”, retrospective
  • 2000: Berlin: exhibition of the century Altes Museum
  • 2000: Bonn: Artemis Artemisia, Women's Museum, Bonn
  • 2000: Gallery for representational art, Kirchheim / Teck
  • 2000/2001: Martin-Gropius-Bau Berlin: Chambers of Wonder of Knowledge.
  • 2001: England: Leeds, Henry Moore Institute “Taking Positions”.
  • 2001/2002: Berlin Georg Kolbe Museum, “Taking Positions”.
  • 2002: Bremen Gerhard Marcks-Haus, “Taking Positions”.
  • 2002: Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss: Moissey Kogan
  • 2002: State Chancellery Munich: "Konrad Adenauer - German and European".
  • 2002/2003: House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany: Leni Riefenstahl.
  • 2003: Munich City Museum: Richard Wagner.
  • 2004/2005: Musee Cité de la Musique Paris.
  • 2006: Schwerin, Schleswig-Holstein House.
  • 2007: Berlin: German Historical Museum (Pei-Bau). Art and Propaganda in the Controversy of Nations 1930–1945. (Germany, Soviet Union, Italy, USA) from January 26th to April 29th 2007.
  • 2007: Spain: Fundació La Caixa Barcelona (February 26 to May 27, 2007)
  • 2007: Germany: Museum Europäische Kunst, 52388 Nörvenich: Three friends: Arno Breker, Salvador Dalí, Ernst Fuchs. (May 1st to September 30th)
  • 2007/2008: Kunsthalle Bielefeld: “1937. Perfection and Destruction “With works by Arno Breker, Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Man Ray, Max Ernst and others. a. (September 30, 2007 to January 13, 2008)
  • 2009: Breker Museum Schloss Nörvenich: Photo documents from the Classical Period.
  • 2010: Arno Breker, Elfriede Vogel a. a. contemporary art, Nörvenich Castle (North Rhine-Westphalia), all year round.
  • 2013: Jean Cocteau and Arno Breker: An artist friendship. On the 50th anniversary of Cocteau's death, Museum Europäische Kunst, 52388 Nörvenich

Master student

Arno Breker Society

The Arno Breker Society 1979 (ABG) aims to preserve life and work from an art-historical and historical perspective. In the USA there is the Arno Breker Society International . Your areas of responsibility are America, especially the USA, and Australia. The ABG has a circle of friends that anyone can join. The members living all over the world who cannot meet regularly because of the distance do not exercise any voting rights. They see themselves as patrons of the fine arts. The German Sigurd K. Kuepper has been elected President of the ABG since 2010.

Documentaries

  • Time of the gods. The sculptor Arno Breker , directed by Lutz Dammbeck , SWF, 1993.
  • Arno Breker - Sculptures and Music , Marco J. Bodenstein, 20 minutes, Marco-Edition Bonn.
  • Arno Breker - German CVs , color film 60 minutes, director: Dagmar Wittmers SR, 2002
  • Paris-Rome-Berlin and Arno Breker , with an interview by Albert Speer. Color film, 60 minutes, EKS Museum European Art , Nörvenich Castle (North Rhine-Westphalia)

See also

literature

  • Joe F. Bodenstein : Arno Breker - une biography. Èditions SÉGUIER Paris, French first edition 2016, ISBN 978-2-84049-690-8 .
  • Birgit Bressa: Afterlife of antiquity. Classic images of the body in the Nazi sculpture Arno Brekers. Dissertation, University of Tübingen 2001, urn : nbn: de: bsz: 21-opus-2348 . [PDF]
  • Rudolf Conrades (Ed.): Put up for discussion. The sculptor Arno Breker. CW publishing group, Schwerin 2006, ISBN 3-933781-50-7 (on the exhibition in Schwerin).
    • dsb. (Ed.): The Arno Breker Project in Schwerin. Documentation. CW publishing group, Schwerin 2007, ISBN 3-933781-56-6
  • Charles Despiau : Arno Breker. Flammarion, Paris 1942. Illustrated book for the exhibition, Musée de l'Orangerie
  • Dominique Egret (Ed.): Arno Breker. A life for the beautiful. Grabert , Tübingen 1996 ISBN 3-87847-157-2 .
  • Ernst Fuchs : Classics of the Modern Age - Arno Breker-The Prophet of the Beautiful. Sculptures from the years 1920–1982. (Ed.) Richard P. Hartmann, Munich 1982, Hartmann-Verlag / Marco-Edition (Bonn), ISBN 3-923450-01-X
  • Rainer Hackel (Ed.): Im Irrlicht. Arno Breker and his sculptures. Pandora's box, Wetzlar 2013, ISBN 978-3-88178-250-0
  • Ronald Hirlé , Joe F. Bodenstein, Sandrine Woelffel: Arno Breker - Sculpteur - dessinateur - architecte , German-French, Editions Hirlé, 2010, ISBN 2-914729-83-9 .
  • Hans Klier: Arno Breker. Shape and beauty. Marco Edition, Bonn 1978 (Ed. Salzburg Cultural Association)
  • Fides Krause-Brewer : "When Hitler came ...: memories of Arno Breker, Manfred von Ardenne " and a. Herder Verlag Freiburg 1982, ISBN 3-451-07978-X
  • Hermann Leber: Rodin, Breker, Hrdlicka. Georg Olms, Hildesheim 1998, ISBN 3-487-10722-8 .
  • Uwe Möller: Arno Breker. Drawings. Drawings. Designs 1927–1990. Edition Museum European Art .
  • Paul Morand , Salvador Dalí , Ernst Fuchs: Homage to Arno Breker. For the artist's 75th birthday. Mourlot / Marco, Paris 1975.
  • Patrick Neuhaus: The Arno Breker exhibition in the Orangery Paris 1942. Foreign cultural policy, art and collaboration in occupied France. Neuhaus Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-937294-08-7
  • Jonathan Petropoulos : The Faustian Bargain. The Art World in Nazi Germany. London 2000, ISBN 0-7139-9438-X (viewable online)
  • Joachim Petsch: Cultural and Art Policy of the “Third Reich” in occupied France from 1940–1944 using the example of Arno Brekers . Pp. 134–142 in Wolfgang Drost (eds.), Géraldi Leroy, Jacqueline Magnou, Peter Seibert: Paris sous l'occupation. Paris under German occupation . Universitätsverlag C. Winter, Heidelberg 1995 ISBN 3-8253-0246-6 (Series: Universität Siegen , Romance Department, 124)
  • Roger Peyrefitte : Homage to Arno Breker. Marco, Paris 1980
  • Volker G. Probst: The Pietà motif in Arno Breker. Marco, Bonn 1985, ISBN 3-921754-25-9 .
  • Uta Ranke-Heinemann : Arno Breker 90 years. Edition Tolbiac (Ed.), Verlag NRW-Kunstkreis Düren 1990. ISBN 3-923399-17-0
  • Hans Sarkowicz : Hitler's artist: The culture in the service of National Socialism . Insel, Frankfurt 2004
  • Hans Dieter Schäfer : The split consciousness. About German culture and everyday life 1933–1945 . Munich 1981
  • Klaus Staeck (Ed.): Nazi Art in the Museum? Steidl, Göttingen 1988, ISBN 3-88243-090-7 .
  • Jürgen Trimborn : Arno Breker. The artist and the power. Aufbau-Verlag , Berlin 2011 ISBN 978-3-351-02728-5
    • Review, summary: Bernhard M. Hoppe, August 30, 2012. In: socialnet ISSN  2190-9245 online , date of access October 19, 2016
  • Walter Vitt, Christoph surcharge (ed.): The case of Arno Breker. A critic's dispute about the Schwerin exhibition in 2006 . Steinmeier, Nördlingen 2007
  • B. John Zavrel: Arno Breker. His Art and Life. West Art, New York 1985, ISBN 0-914301-01-2
    • dsb .: Interview with Arno Breker. The divine Beauty in Art. West Art, New York 1982, ISBN 0-914301-04-7

Web links

Commons : Arno Breker  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Breker and Demetra married in 1937. A photo of the bust of Demetra, the details used here and further information about Demetra can be found here ethniko.net ( Memento from February 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) (English) accessed on January 13, 2012; see also: arnshaugk.de ; Retrieved January 13, 2012
  2. ↑ Andreas Holleczek, Andrea Meyer: French Art - German Perspectives, 1870-1945: Sources and comments , page 35
  3. ^ Letters between Breker and Bayrle ( memento from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), auctioned in 2014; Retrieved June 20, 2014.
  4. ^ Jobst C. Knigge: The Villa Massimo in Rome 1933–1943. Struggle for artistic independence. Humboldt University Berlin 2013 open access, pp. 16–22.
  5. ^ Patrick Neuhaus: The Arno Breker exhibition in the Paris Orangery in 1942. Foreign cultural policy, art and collaboration in occupied France. Neuhaus Verlag, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-937294-08-7 , pp. 54-75; Carltheo Zeitschel wrote to Rudolf Rahn : The ambassador (sc. Otto Abetz ) considers the presence of Professor Breker in Paris to be ... important. After Richard A. Etlin: Art, culture, and media under the Third Reich. University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0-226-22086-9 , p. 227, note 47
  6. ↑ Jonathan Petropoulos: The Faustian Bargain. The art world in Nazi Germany . Oxford University Press US, 2000, ISBN 0-19-512964-4 , p. 233
  7. ^ Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945 (= The time of National Socialism. Vol. 17153). Completely revised edition. Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2009, ISBN 978-3-596-17153-8 , p. 70.
  8. ↑ Gerd R. Ueberschär , Winfried Vogel : Serving and earning. Hitler's gifts to his elites . Frankfurt 1999, ISBN 3-10-086002-0 .
  9. ^ Arno Breker Biography . In: Prometheus Internet Bulletin for Art, Politics and Science , 85/2002; Retrieved December 26, 2011
  10. ↑ Salvador Dalí receives new make-up . In: Prometheus Internet Bulletin for Art, Politics and Science , 104/2006; Retrieved December 26, 2011
  11. ↑ Artist Archive Museum European Art
  12. ↑ Guest book Nörvenich Castle 1990
  13. ↑ Overview in Wikimedia Commons
  14. ↑ Claus P. Woitschützke: prophet of beauty and political profiteer , in: Rheinische Art. KulturMagazin online, 02/2017
  15. ↑ Peter Weidisch: Würzburg in the "Third Reich". In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 196-289 and 1271-1290; here: p. 260.
  16. ↑ 300 years of immigration to the USA . Lithographs by Breker
  17. ^ Marc Albano-Müller: Family Müller and the Schwelmer Eisenwerk , in: Contributions to the local history of the city of Schwelm and its surroundings, 64th volume, 2015. pp. 58–59
  18. ↑ Actual place of exhibition: Musée de l'Orangerie . A small booklet, catalog for the exhibition August 2-31 in Paris. 63 pages. Cover story: The German Labor Front NSG “ Kraft durch Freude ” organizes the Arno Breker exhibition on behalf of the Wehrmacht High Command . In May 1942, the Vichy government opened the Arno Breker solo exhibition in occupied Paris with a state ceremony in the presence of Abel Bonnard , Fernand de Brinon , Jacques Benoist-Méchin and Georges Scapini . - The Paris exhibition was later repeated in Cologne , cf. Werner Rittich (introduction and guide through the exhibition): Arno Breker exhibition Cologne. Published by the Gau Propaganda Office of the NSDAP, Gau Köln-Aachen, Gau Propaganda Leader Richard Ohlig, MdR , and the Nazi community “Strength through Joy”, Gauwart Ewald König, undated (1943). With 64 pages
  19. ^ A right-wing radical publisher
  20. ↑ Thomas Kaestle (text), Anneke Schepke, Mona wind man (editorial): Art in the city 6. Between Andreae place and Nordmannpassage . ( Memento from August 31, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) Cultural Office of the City of Hanover, part 6 of a leaflet series, 2010
  21. ^ Alfred Sachs catalog 1907–1990, published by Stadt Waldshut, 1991
  22. ↑ http://www.arno-breker-gesellschaft.de/ , accessed on July 26, 2018
  23. ↑ Bonn District Court VR 4465, 2009.
personal data
SURNAME Breker, Arno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and architect
DATE OF BIRTH July 19, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Elberfeld
DATE OF DEATH February 13, 1991
Place of death Dusseldorf