Atelier community at Klosterstrasse

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The Klosterstrasse studio community was an amalgamation of around 40 freelance Berlin painters and sculptors (mostly former master students of the United State Schools for Free and Applied Arts ), for whom the Ministry of Culture had arranged cheap studio spaces in house no.75 in Berlin's Klosterstrasse from autumn 1933. Towards the end of the Second World War, the building was completely destroyed by high-explosive bombs above the basement.

The history of the house

The Berlin Royal Art School , Klosterstrasse 75 (1880, after the renovation)

Immediately after the National Socialists seized power in 1933, the original studio house in what was then Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse No. 8 (on the ground floor and top floor of the former arts and crafts school), which had been owned by the Richard Kahn Group since 1924, was expropriated . From then on it became the headquarters of the Gestapo (Office IV of the RSHA ).

As a replacement for the artists, the vacant house at Klosterstrasse 75 was rented and renovated for 17,000 Reichsmarks . The Berlin architect and long-time director of the teaching institute of Decorative Arts Berlin , Martin Gropius had the building along with his partner Heino forging rebuilt from 1878 to 1880 and extended the then until 1920, the Royal School of Art and since then as a warehouse by the Wertheim land mbH used has been. A total of 42 rooms offered around half of the artists expelled from Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse on three floors of studio space of different sizes (on average around 5 × 6 m², for the sculptors a little larger). Wertheim was officially forced as landlord to pay a fixed price of RM 1 per m². Although it was not contractually approved, there were some artists who also lived in these rooms at the same time - especially among the married.

For chairman of the sculptor Günther Martin was elected (1896-1944) unanimously that an unofficial spokesman for the artistic community in the Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse held the position since 1924th He had been a member of the SA and the NSDAP before 1933 and created portrait busts of Hitler and Speer, among other things.

The position of the studio community during the Nazi dictatorship

The community in Klosterstrasse was not a programmatic artist group - they only shared the studio space offered. Artistically, they were only partially at odds with the National Socialist art authorities. Expressionist to abstract-symbolist sculptors and painters (such as Käthe Kollwitz, Hermann Blumenthal, Werner Gilles, or Werner Heldt) were also faced with a number of artists who fully conformed to the prevailing view of art. While some artists such as B. Käthe Kollwitz were only allowed to exhibit to a limited extent, let alone sell, were Adolf Abel , Haase-Jastrow, Kaspar, Kupsch, Röhricht and Scheibe even at the highly official Nazi art fair, the first major German art exhibition in Munich from July 18 to October 31 Present in 1937. In addition to Adolf Abel and Maria Brück, the Martin couple were also among those who did not have to fear any repression, while some others had their scholarships from the Academy of the Arts canceled from the mid-1930s .

On the other hand, it was the chairman Martin who showed a strong sense of responsibility for the endangered studio community and who took advantage of his good relations with the Reich Chamber of Culture in this sense. Herbert Tucholski wrote about this in his memoir:

"With the instruction to keep 'anti-state' colleagues away, Martin was appointed chairman of the house. With this, the ministry had turned the goat into a gardener, because Günther Martin, who had long been disappointed by National Socialism, was a good man who only put on his Nazi uniform when it was a matter of protecting politically ostracized colleagues. "

The duties of the chairman, it belonged among other things, to monitor the political behavior of individual members of the studio community and any anti-fascist activity directly to the Country Manager Berlin the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts , Heinz Lederer forward. Martin limited himself, however, to merely describing the respective artistic working methods without ever burdening any of the members.

Members of the studio community (selection)

(in brackets their numbered studio rooms - including the moves)

literature

  • Atelier community Klosterstrasse - Berlin 1933–1945. Artists in the time of National Socialism , Academy of the Arts (Edition Hentrich), Berlin 1994. ISBN 3-89468-134-9
  • Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstraße - On the silent struggle of artists , Galerie Mitte, Berlin 1988. (Catalog for the exhibition of the same name)
  • Christine Fischer-Defoy (HdK Berlin): Art makes politics. The Nazification of the art and music colleges in Berlin , Elefanten Press, Berlin (West) 1988. ISBN 3-88520-271-9 (p. 184ff: Artistic resistance using the example of the studio community in Klosterstrasse )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Federal Archives: Richard Kahn Group (accessed on September 16, 2017)
  2. ↑ s. Hans Jürgen Meinik: The Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstraße within the National Socialist art and cultural policy , in: Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstraße Berlin 1933–1945 , p. 12
  3. ↑ s. also digital-sammlungen.de: Berlin und seine Bauten, Der Hochbau (1896) (PDF file, p. 331/332; accessed on September 20, 2017)
  4. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Meinik: Martin, Günther. The sculptor Günther Martin and the 'Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstraße'. Association for the History of Berlin eV, 1974, accessed on November 14, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Hans Jürgen Meinik: The Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstraße within the National Socialist art and cultural policy . In: Akademie der Künste (Ed.): Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstrasse Berlin 1933-1945. Artist in the time of National Socialism . Exhibition catalog. Edition Hentrich, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-89468-134-9 , pp. 12–39 , illustration on p. 17 (Photo: Helga Paris) .
  6. ^ Catalog of the 1st Great German Art Exhibition in Munich from July 18 to October 31, 1937 . In: Peter-Klaus Schuster (Ed.): The 'Art City' Munich 1937. National Socialism and 'Degenerate Art'. Documentation 1987 . 5th completely revised edition. Prestel, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7913-1888-8 , pp. 222-241 .
  7. ^ Herbert Tucholski: Pictures and People , Philipp Reclam jun., Leipzig 1985. p. 22
  8. ↑ s. Christine Fischer Defoy: Art makes politics. The Nazification of the art and music colleges in Berlin (p. 185)
  9. ↑ s. Berlin Document Center -Akte RKK 2401-0007-15 , in: Ateliergemeinschaft Klosterstrasse Berlin 1933–1945 , chap. III.I. Documents, (pp. 190–193)
  10. ↑ cf. Estate database in the Federal Archives
  11. ↑ (born April 20, 1893 in Berlin). s. Düttmann, Hermann in: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General Lexicon of Fine Artists of the XX. Century. First volume (AD) , EA Seemann, Leipzig 1999 (study edition). ISBN 3-363-00730-2 (p. 602)
  12. ↑ Senate Building Director Werner Düttmann - architect and urban planner (* 1921 † 1983). In: archINFORM . Retrieved September 23, 2017 (father of the architect and painter Werner Düttmann : Hermann Düttmann; see section Relationships ).

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