August Kraus (sculptor)

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August Kraus, drawn by Heinrich Zille
August Kraus signature

August Friedrich Johann Kraus (born July 9, 1868 in Ruhrort ; † February 8, 1934 in Berlin ) was a German sculptor and medalist .

Life

Master student and addiction to Begas

August Kraus was the son of a coachman. He spent his childhood in Ruhrort before the Kraus family moved to Baden-Baden in 1877 . Here he took up an apprenticeship as a stone sculptor with a gravestone sculptor in 1882 . After the family moved to Strasbourg in 1883, he continued his training with Johann Rieger and attended the municipal arts and crafts school at the same time until 1887. From 1887 to 1891 he studied at the Berlin Academy of the Arts , where he was a student of Ernst Herter in the last semesters . Then he was a master student in Reinhold Begas ' studio until 1898 , "from whose shadow he did not step out until 1900".

Group of lions
Kraus in his Grunewald studio working on Wedigo von Plotho , Heinrich Zille is the model
The finished Wedigo by Plotho alias Zille
Siegesallee , monument group 9 , Heinrich II. "The child"
First draft of Group 32 by Begas failed at the client Wilhelm II
Siegesallee, Group 32 with Wilhelm I.

Although Kraus had designed and carried out the Iltis monument for Shanghai in 1898 and set up his own studio in the course of his work for Berlin's Siegesallee in 1899, he still made his labor available to his master Begas from time to time until 1900. The then 31-year-old sculptor had a family of four to support. For a long time he also subordinated his artistic ideas to material requirements. Skilled in his craft, he was able to work in a wide variety of styles according to the wishes of the client. Unlike Reinhold Felderhoff with his modern conception of Monument Group 6 , Kraus stayed true to the general historicizing style in his Siegesallee work . His younger brother Fritz (born June 24, 1874), also a sculptor, died in April 1918 as a soldier in the First World War on the Western Front.

Own style and president of the Academy of Arts

It was not until the great State Prize of the Prussian Academy of the Arts for a five-year Rome scholarship in 1900 that he gained material and artistic independence. In Rome , with a stay in the Villa Strohl-Fern , he developed his own style, "joined the neoclassical direction of Hildebrand and [became] next to Tuaillon and Gaul one of the pioneers of modernism." As an early member of the just now Founded German Association of Artists , Kraus was represented with the bronze sculpture Römisches Mädchen on the parade at the 2nd annual exhibition of the DKB in 1905 in the Berlin exhibition hall on Kurfürstendamm. In 1906 he finally returned to Berlin.

The break with his artistic past and with the neo-baroque sculpture school of his master Begas led August Kraus consistently to the Berlin Secession , of which he was vice-president between 1911 and 1913. Together with his friend Heinrich Zille and others, he then switched to the Free Secession spin-off . Between 1914 and 1920 he was director of the Rauch Museum. The Berlin Sculptors Association elected him 1st chairman.

After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists , in November 1933 he became presidential councilor of the Reich Chamber of Culture . In the same year he became chairman of the visual arts department in the " cleaned " Academy of the Arts, of which he had been vice-president for some time. In this capacity he signed a declaration of loyalty to Adolf Hitler on November 3, 1933 . From 1933 until his death he was acting president of the Prussian Academy of the Arts.

Honorary grave of August Kraus in the Heerstrasse cemetery in Berlin-Westend

August Kraus died on February 8, 1934 at the age of 65 in Berlin from complications from a heart attack . His grave is in the state-owned cemetery Heerstraße in Berlin-Westend . By resolution of the Berlin Senate , the last resting place of August Kraus (grave location: 8-D-3/4) has been dedicated to the State of Berlin as an honorary grave since 1978 . The dedication was extended in 1999 by the usual period of twenty years.

Selected Works

Working for Siegesallee

Despite all of his dependence on Begas, Kraus owed his master many orders. In 1897, on Bega's recommendation, he applied for work on the monumental Siegesallee . On behalf of Kaiser Wilhelm II, 27 sculptors created 32 statues in the zoo between 1895 and 1901 with rulers from the history of Brandenburg and Prussia. Each statue was flanked by two smaller busts depicting people who had played an important role in the life of the respective ruler or in the history of Brandenburg / Prussia.

The artistic direction of the entire project lay with Kraus Meister Reinhold Begas. Wilhelm II accepted the application and entrusted Kraus with group 9 around the last Askanian margrave Heinrich the child . Kraus became the youngest Siegesallee artist. After completing his work, he did not seek further commissions, unlike most other sculptors.

Group 9

To cope with the task, Kraus built his own studio in the Grunewald colony . He started work on monument group 9 at the end of 1898.

Since no image templates or personal descriptions existed for the last Ascanian from Brandenburg, the historical commission of the Siegesallee under Reinhold Koser made few design specifications. Heinrich the child had died in 1320 at the age of eleven, so that Kraus created a boyish, graceful figure with a wide cloak and a dreamy, slightly melancholy facial expression, which he placed on an octagonal base. Only a crown circlet marks the figure in the courtly costume of a noble boy as a regent, Kraus refrained from adding weapons. The sculptor's model was the French cellist Paul Bazelaire , who was just visiting Berlin - as a memento, "the head of the Secret Civil Cabinet sent the musician two photos of the monument."

The historical management of Siegesallee chose Heinrich's guardian Wartislaw IV and the Prignitz knight Wedigo von Plotho, called The Peasant Butcher, as secondary characters . Wedigo is said to have saved Waldemar "the great" in the battle of Woltersdorf in 1317. Wedigo's bust wrote a very special story because Kraus' friend, the “Milljöh” draftsman Zille, who was not yet known as a socially critical painter at the time, had acted as a model. The Kreuzzeitung was amused by the sculptor's joke in its report on the inauguration of the monument (March 22, 1900): E.g. the grumpy robber baron face of the honest Count Plotho with the characteristic old-Germanic potato nose, which so much aroused the cheerfulness of the royal client, not a fantasy of the artist, but the well-done portrait of an honorable Charlottenburg bourgeois and technical director of a well-known large art establishment [...]. "

The Wedigo / Zille bust has been replicated several times, including for the Charlottenburg restaurant Zille-Eck . The whereabouts of the figure is unclear. The Georg Kolbe Museum in Berlin is keeping a plaster model of the bust from August Kraus' estate under loan number 32, which "could be a relic of the original plaster."

The originals themselves were severely damaged and were in the Lapidarium in Berlin-Kreuzberg from 1978 to 2009 and have been in the Spandau Citadel since May 2009 . The head, which disappeared in 1945, is missing from the Wedigo / Zille bust. The head and also the right arm and left leg are missing from the Heinrich statue. The Wartislaw bust is complete with contour damage. Overall, according to Ute Lehnert, the work of August Kraus was one of the few balanced monument compositions on the imperial monumental boulevard.

Group 32

The client, Kaiser Wilhelm , attached particular importance to the design of the final monument group 32 with his imperial grandfather and therefore entrusted the work to Reinhold Begas. However, Begas had to take heavy criticism for his pompous national monument from 1897, in a certain sense also from Wilhelm II. Perhaps that is why he used "an extremely simple formal language" for this work. But his first model for Siegesallee from 1899 also failed the Kaiser. "In connection with the pickle helmet, the model [...] made an impression that was too soldier, that is, it did not adequately express the dignity of the ruler." (Lehnert).

As a result, it is very likely that August Kraus designed and modeled the statue for the first German Emperor Wilhelm I in Bega's workshop , while the secondary characters ( Humboldt and Rauch ) actually come from Kraus' master Begas. A contemporary reported:

“On the right-hand side rises the statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I, a simple figure copied from life […]. The artist who models this work is one of the most talented students and collaborators of the master, sculptor August Kraus. "

Kraus himself later announced:

"In Siegesallee I created the statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I for Begas after Begas was shipwrecked with his first draft."

Although Kraus retained the spiked helmet and the military conception of the figure from Bega's design, he succeeded in depicting it so cautiously that he was able to give Wilhelm I "a nobility" in conjunction with a casual step position and a serene but firm facial expression, " in which the dignity of the ruler is expressed. ”The minor characters of the group, which was unveiled on March 30, 1901, have been lost, while the imperial statue with severe damage to the face has been resting in the Spandau Citadel since May 2009 .

Polecat Memorial and Manneken Pis

Kraus received one of the first major orders from the Imperial Navy with the design of the Iltis monument for Shanghai . The German gunboat Iltis sank in a typhoon near Cape Shandong (Cape Shantung). Of the 85 crew members, only 14 survived the drama. Based on a sketch by Captain Müller, Kraus modeled a splintered, 6-meter-high bronze mast with a German flag and a laurel wreath on its base. The memorial was unveiled on November 21, 1898 in the presence of Prince Heinrich , who a year later became chief of the East Asian Squadron of the Imperial Navy, and destroyed during the First World War.

In 1908 his hometown Ruhrort spurned a gift that Kraus had given her with the figure of Manneken Pis . For moral reasons , the later Duisburg residents refused to list the work, which is why it was only given a place in the Tonhallenpark in front of the Mercatorhalle in 1952 . After an odyssey over the east exit of the main train station , the 90 centimeter high bronze sculpture now stands in the middle of a fountain bowl on Sonnenwall / Leidenfroststraße. As his daughter announced, Kraus did not copy the Brussels original, but left his son as a model.

Awards and exhibitions

Bismarck National Monument at its current location on the Großer Stern
Miner statue for the Poensgen family grave in the south-west cemetery Stahnsdorf
Relief on the gravestone of his friend Zille

Some works by August Kraus are exhibited today in the Georg-Kolbe-Museum , Berlin

  • 1896: Imperial Prize to complement the antiques, first prize
  • 1899: Represented at the first (and subsequent) exhibition (s) of the Berlin Secession
  • 1900: Grand State Prize, five-year Rome scholarship; (partly due to Siegesallee group 9)
  • 1900: Represented at the Paris World Exhibition with a plaster cast of Heinrich from Siegesallee Group 9

List of works

Paul von Breitenbach - bronze bust

Medal work

  • 1916 cast bronze medal, 79.5 mm, on: Alfons Mumm von Schwarzenstein (1859–1924), diplomat and member of the champagne dynasty in Reims and Frankfurt
  • 1917 cast iron medal: I) Count Ernst zu Reventlow. Head facing right. / II 1914 - HE OR - I - 1917, naked fighter with hammer on him threatening snake. 84 mm & 189 grams

literature

Web links

Commons : August Kraus  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ August Kraus. Artist. German Society for Medal Art V., accessed on November 24, 2015 .
  2. ↑ Uta Lehnert: The Kaiser and the ... , p. 374.
  3. ↑ Uta Lehnert: The Kaiser and the ... , p. 375.
  4. ↑ Roman girl on the parade . bildindex.de; Retrieved September 25, 2015
  5. ↑ Kraus, August . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 21 : Knip – Kruger . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1927, p. 444 . ; the following account, according to which Kraus succeeded Max Liebermann as President of the Berlin Secession, is very likely wrong: Kraus, August FJ In: District Lexicon of the Luisenstadt Educational Association .
  6. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural 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. 334.
  7. ↑ Membership database of the Academy of the Arts.
  8. ↑ The sculptor August Kraus † . In: Vossische Zeitung . Friday, February 9, 1934. p. 9.
  9. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 . P. 489.
  10. ↑ Honorary graves of the State of Berlin (as of November 2018) . (PDF, 413 kB) Senate Department for the Environment, Transport and Climate Protection, p. 46; accessed on November 13, 2019. Submission - for information - about the recognition and further preservation of graves of well-known and deserving personalities as honorary graves in Berlin . (PDF) Berlin House of Representatives, printed matter 13/4050 of 23 August 1999, p. 3; accessed on November 13, 2019.
  11. ↑ Uta Lehnert: The Kaiser and the ... , p. 126.
  12. ↑ Quoted from Otto Nagel, ..., p. 80 f.
  13. ↑ Uta Lehnert: The Kaiser and the ... , pp. 127, 266.
  14. ↑ Uta Lehnert: The Kaiser and the ... , p. 218.
  15. ↑ Über Land und Meer , Vol. 84/1900, 437. Peter Bloch : August Kraus: Schreitende Römerin (with curriculum vitae and preliminary catalog raisonné) . In: Anzeiger des Germanisches Nationalmuseums , Nürnberg 1975, p. 129. Quoted and sources according to Uta Lehnert: Der Kaiser und die… , p. 218, 242 (note 177), 396.
  16. ^ National Museums Berlin / Central Archive, I / National Gallery Specialia Kraus. Quoted and source from Uta Lehnert: Der Kaiser und die… , p. 242, notes 176, 406.
  17. ↑ Uta Lehnert: The Kaiser and the ... , p. 219.
  18. ↑ Inauguration of the monument for the sunken gunboat Iltis , Shanghai, on November 21, 1898 German Historical Museum .
  19. ↑ Progesundheit , No. 58, June 2003 ( Memento from September 30, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF) Duisburg, p. 9.
  20. ↑ a b c entries under Lanz, Heinrich and Lanz, Julia Friedhöfe Mannheim.
  21. ↑ Anklamer Monument to Fallen ( Memento from September 4, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  22. ↑ a b Kraus, August . In: Hans Vollmer (Hrsg.): General lexicon of fine artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 21 : Knip – Kruger . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1927, p. 444 .
personal data
SURNAME Kraus, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Kraus, August Friedrich Johann (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH July 9, 1868
PLACE OF BIRTH Ruhrort
DATE OF DEATH February 8, 1934
Place of death Berlin