Blue House (Hofheim am Taunus)

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The Blue House, Kapellenstr. 11 in Hofheim am Taunus

The Blue House in Hofheim am Taunus was the work domicile of many well-known artists; In the times of National Socialism, artists ostracized by the regime used the “only known to the initiated” house of the painter and art collector Hanna Bekker vom Rath as a retreat. In the post-war period up to 1983 the house was “a center of German Expressionism ”, to which the landlady invited “culturally interested public”.

history

In 1920, Hanna Bekker vom Rath and her husband, the music writer and critic Paul Bekker , acquired the country estate on Kapellenberg from Albert Blank and his sister Laura Brüning, who had built the house in 1881. Hanna Bekker lived here for 60 years.

Description of the house

The house “with the blue” half-timbered building in a “park plot” is a building from the “ Wilhelminian era ” with a spacious terrace on the garden side . The name given to the Blue House was the “striking paintwork with the blue framework and the yellow cushions”. Else Meidner , the wife of the artist Ludwig Meidner , remembered from her exile in London in a letter dated April 20, 1949 to the garden at the Blue House and mentions a fountain, a red beech and the "shining red poppy". The so-called “Red Room”, which got its name from the deep red wall paint, in front of which the expressionist works of the guests of Hanna Bekker vom Rath were particularly appreciated, made a strong impression on many visitors. The reactions ranged from “fright” to soothing “warmth”. On the top floor “was Hanna Bekker's studio ” with a small apartment and a “tiny kitchen”, where the house owner prepared meals for herself and her guests. “In the Bel Etage there were some rooms for hospitality and representation, the red room as the large salon, a library and a kind of garden room from which one could step onto the wooden terrace”.

Name of the Blue House

The artist Ida Kerkovius closed a letter dated May 29, 1925 to Hanna Bekker with the words “Greetings to your whole dear blue house and your friends. all its inhabitants ”and through this passage of letters most likely became the founder of the name Blue House .

Interior decoration

In the “blue and red rooms, in the library and dining room, in the studio and even in the bedroom” the landlady lived among “more than 500 classically modern works and further 300 art objects” and built one of the “most important collections of the German Expressionism ”, in which Ernst Ludwig Kirchner , Erich Heckel and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff were exemplarily represented with woodcuts .

address

The Blue House is located at Kapellenstrasse 11 in Hofheim am Taunus.

meaning

The Blue House in Hofheim can not be overrated as a place of German art and art history ; For the region and the German art landscape, it was a “cornerstone for artistic life” and it definitely stands alongside other artist locations such as the “Ostseebad Ahrenshoop ”. The art historian Lucius Grisebach wrote in 1984 that in art circles the name Hofheim had become “a synonym for (their) world and their house there” through the work of Hanna Bekker .

Place of art

The building, later known as the Blue House , developed from 1920 onwards into a temporary working place for many well-known artists and "a meeting place for writers , musicians , actors , politicians and many others."

Guest artists

At different times the hospitable house offered artists such as Emy Roeder , Willi Baumeister , Ludwig Meidner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Erich Heckel and Ernst Wilhelm Nay shelter and a shelter for carefree life and work. Hanna Bekker vom Rath knew how to prepare "relaxing days in good air and help in difficult times" for the guests. Here, "her commitment to the threatened artist friends [...] took precedence over her own artistic career," by "courageously and committedly supporting many artists persecuted as degenerate " and "organizing secret exhibitions." The artist and long-time friend Hanna Bekkers Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, for example, "came to Hofheim for the first time in 1932 and returned every year until 1972."

post war period

With the founding of her Frankfurt art cabinet from 1947 onwards, other artists joined the circle of Hanna Bekker vom Rath. Examples include Ev Grüger and Ludwig Meidner, who was returning from exile, for whom vom Rath found a workshop as a studio in the Marxheim district of Hofheim . After the house became known to a wider audience in the post-war period, Hanna Bekker also used it for concerts and room theater performances, among others. a. the play Juana by Georg Kaiser and Der Kammersänger by Frank Wedekind were performed. After her stays abroad, which also had the aim of making German art known, Hanna Bekker often invited people to her house for evenings and captivated the visitors with the description of her travel experiences.

Exhibitions

From November 1993 to February 1994 an exhibition of works by Hanna Bekker (as she signed her works) took place in the newly built Hofheim City Museum , in which the history of the Blue House was presented. Another important exhibition was organized by the Hofheim City Museum between October 2010 and February 2011 under the title Bridge and Blue House . A tour through the rooms of the Blue House was also reconstructed for this exhibition.

Current condition

Today the house is privately owned and cannot be visited. The interior of the house has undergone major changes since the death of Hanna Bekker vom Rath and the garden has been redesigned. Since 1983, the year Hanna Bekker vom Rath died, criticism of private use and changes to the house and garden has not stopped: “The city of Hofheim and the state of Hesse are still missing out on the chance to get the property into their own , ”Which is particularly surprising, since it was already discussed in 1983 whether to buy the house“ as a domicile for the city museum ”.

Web links

literature

  • Marian Stein-Steinfeld : The painter Hanna Bekker vom Rath (1893–1983) , catalog, Stadtmuseum Hofheim am Taunus, 1993
  • Marian Stein-Steinfeld: Bridge and Blue House - Heckel, Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff and the collector Hanna Bekker vom Rath , Frankfurt am Main 2010, ISBN 9783921606728

Individual evidence

  1. a b c d e f g h i Marian Stein-Steinfeld: Bridge and Blue House - Heckel, Kirchner, Schmidt-Rottluff and the collector Hanna Bekker vom Rath, Frankfurt am Main, 2010
  2. a b c d e Reinhold Gries, Offenbach-Post, November 3, 2010
  3. a b c d e Hofheimer Zeitung, Neuer Stadtspaziergang, September 2, 2014  ( page no longer available , search in web archivesInfo: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.hofheimer-zeitung.de  
  4. a b c d e Tourism website of the city of Hofheim am Taunus
  5. a b Bruno Russ Testimonies to a Lifelong Love , Wiesbadener Kurier, November 12, 1993
  6. a b c d e City Museum Hofheim am Taunus
  7. a b Hofheim am Taunus City Museum: Bridge and Blue House, catalog, October 2010 - February 2011

Coordinates: 50 ° 5 '26 "  N , 8 ° 26' 14.9"  E