Bernhard Temming

Bernhard Temming (born December 1, 1902 in Bielefeld ; † February 21, 1986 in Dortmund ) was a German typesetter , printer and graphic artist .

Life

Bernhard Temming was born on December 1, 1902 in Bielefeld. The father († 1939) was a lithographer in Bielefeld, the mother († 1941) a housewife. Bernhard Temming had four siblings: Willi, Ernst, Grete and Eleonore Temming. At the age of 14 he began an apprenticeship as a typesetter, after which he went on a hike . Temming turned to the free thinkers and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) early on. While painting posters for the Agitprop work, he met the writer Charlotte Herz , whom he married in Berlin in 1929. The couple moved to Dortmund, where Bernhard Temming worked for the large printing company Crüwell for 40 years. He and his wife had a son, the writer and producer Rolf L. Temming (1930-2019).

In January 1931 the Dortmund branch of the Association of Proletarian Revolutionary Writers was founded, which Temming joined. There he met Paul Polte , with whom he had a friendship throughout his life. After the " seizure of power " by the National Socialists Temming was refused admission to the Reich Chamber of Culture, but his job as a typesetter prevented him from being drafted into military service. He was pressured to divorce his wife, but he refused. As a member of the KPD and a “ Jewish misfit ”, he was assigned to Sonderkommando J “special duty” and in October 1944 was taken to a camp of the Todt Organization in Kassel, where he stayed until the end of the war.

After the end of the war he participated in the rebuilding of the KPD. He was also involved in the Friends of Nature and the printers' union.

Bernhard Temming died on February 21, 1986 at the age of 83 in Dortmund.

Services

As a teenager, Bernhard Temming was interested in the works of Ernst Toller and the drawings by Käthe Kollwitz and George Grosz . The woodcuts and linocuts by Frans Masereel had a formative influence .

After completing his training as a typesetter, he attended the crafts and arts and crafts school in Bielefeld in the early 1920s . He became a member of the Free Association of Graphic Artists Berlin and showed his work for the first time in the mid-1920s at exhibitions in Münster, Lübeck, Lyon and Leipzig. Between 1929 and 1933 he created linocuts with motifs from Dortmund's industrial landscape. From 1931 he published single sheet prints under the title sheets of proletarian poets and draftsmen of the Ruhr area . After the Second World War, he and the vagabond painter Hans Tombrock founded the Association for Art and People in the Ruhr Area. He was also a lecturer at Tombrock's art school. In the 1960s he published the tendency prints , in which he illustrated the texts of Paul Polte with his prints. In addition, he turned to the representation of landscapes in watercolors and linocuts. In the 1970s he became a member of the working group literature in the world of work and published some of his work in its publications.

In addition to the fine arts, Bernhard Temming was also an actor in the political cabaret of the Henkelmann group , to which his wife and Paul Polte also belonged.

Others

His estate is located in the Fritz Hüser Institute for Literature and Culture in the Working World in Dortmund.

literature

• Gregor Vogt: Temming, Bernhard (Bernd) . In: Hans Bohrmann (Ed.): Biographies of important Dortmunders. People in, from and for Dortmund . tape 2 . Klartext, Essen 1998, ISBN 3-88474-677-4 , p. 113 ff .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Gregor Vogt: Temming, Bernhard (Bernd) . In: Hans Bohrmann (Ed.): Biographies of important Dortmunders. People in, from and for Dortmund . tape 2 . Klartext, Essen 1998, ISBN 3-88474-677-4 , p. 113 ff .

Web links

• Pictures by Bernhard Temming