Bruno Wittenstein

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Bruno Wittenstein (born September 17, 1876 in Hamm , Westphalia , † February 27, 1968 in Detmold ) was a landscape and portrait painter from Lippe .

Life

Bruno Wittenstein was the son of Karl-Wilhelm Wittenstein and Sophia Berning, who ran the C. Wittenstein wine shop in Hamm. Bruno Wittenstein, whose artistic talent was already noticed during his school days at the Academic Gymnasium in Hamm, probably began his art studies at the Art Academy in Düsseldorf . In 1895 he moved to Berlin to study at the University of the Arts with the history  painter Anton von Werner and the figure painters Paul Hanke and Walter Friedrich. A year later, in 1896, Wittenstein moved to Munich to continue his studies at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Through the artists Karl and Ottmar Begas , he met Franz von Lenbach , whose portraiture had a great influence on Wittenstein. At the turn of the century, Wittenstein spent a year in Rome to study the old masters.

In 1903, Bruno Wittenstein settled in Detmold as a freelance artist at the invitation of his brother Felix and worked as a landscape painter and portraitist. In order to secure his livelihood, he also gave painting and drawing lessons in his studio. One of his students was the north German painter Ingeborg Schwonke, who had been sent by her parents to the Diekmann girls' boarding school in Detmold for several months in 1935 to learn housekeeping. In 1917 Bruno Wittenstein founded the Lippischer Künstlerbund in Detmold, which he also temporarily chaired. Other members of the artist association were the painters August Eberth, Karl Henckel and Ernst Rötteken .

It has been handed down that Bruno Wittenstein got into financial difficulties, especially during the Great Depression, and partly paid off rent debts with pictures. Wittenstein was seen as a friendly, withdrawn person who loved solitude and liked to retire to nature to paint.

plant

In Wittenstein's estate there are mainly landscape paintings that he used to paint plein air . Typical of Wittenstein's painting is his naturalism, which was committed to the New Objectivity, paired with a nervous, slightly ecstatic brushstroke. Bruno Wittenstein also excelled as a portrait painter. He created numerous portraits, including a portrait of the composer and actor Albert Lortzing , who had worked at the Detmold court theater from 1826 (around 1832). The dramatist Christian Dietrich Grabbe , whom Wittenstein portrayed posthumously, was also based in Detmold at the time of Romanticism . Both pictures are now in the Lippische Landesbibliothek Detmold. Another portrait exists of Wilhelm Oesterhaus ( 1840-1927 ), a teacher and the first poet in Lippe dialect, whom Bruno Wittenstein may have known personally.

In 1909 Wittenstein took over the artistic direction of the parade for the 1900th anniversary of the Varus Battle in the Teutoburg Forest, which was celebrated with around 1000 extras and 200 horses. For this purpose he designed the parade floats and designed the cover and drawings of the festival folder.

On behalf of Prince Leopold IV. Zu Lippe, Bruno Wittenstein painted a large historical mural showing the foundation of the Lippe state parliament in Cappel in 1538 . The painting was finished in 1912 and is now in the Detmold District Court. This scene from 1538 is still often re-enacted by actors in historical costumes.

Also on behalf of the conservative prince, Wittenstein designed colored representations of uniforms of the Princely Lippian Gendarmerie Corps, which appeared in Hauptmann, later Major and Lieutenant Colonel Richard Quentin's book Das Fürstlich-Lippische Gendarmerie-Korps in Herford in 1912.

Throughout his life, Bruno Wittenstein remained - perhaps due to his academic training - stuck to a naturalistic style of painting. Nevertheless, the modern trends in art did not remain hidden from him and are reflected, for example, in his impressionistic brushwork. Wittenstein's striving for his very own artistic expression experienced a climax in his late work when he gave his naturalistic conception of form an expressionistic color.

literature

  • Bruno Wittenstein, data sheet in the portal rkd.nl ( Rijksbureau voor Kunsthistorische Documentatie )
  • Lippische painter and visual artist, Bruno Wittenstein, by Hermann Ludwig Schäfer, Lippische Landes-Zeitung. - 190 (1956), 186 of 11.8., P. 6
  • 200 years of the Wittenstein family in Lippe, 1775 - 1968, Elisabeth Wittenstein, Detmold, 1983 (Lippische Landesbibliothek)
  • Home leaves of the Red Earth. At Horn. About Bruno Wittenstein. Munster 1926
  • Germanic pageant to mark the nineteen-centenary of the battle in the Teutoburg Forest on August 15-22, 1909, illustrated with drawings by Bruno Wittenstein
  • Lippischer Heimatbund: Heimatland Lippe, born in 1965 and 1977, both contributions to Bruno Wittenstein
  • Colonel Richard Quentin; The Fürstlich-Lippische Gendarmerie-Korps, Herford 1912. The drawings by the portrait painter Bruno Wittenstein

Web links

Remarks

  • 1 Lippische Landes-Zeitung 1961 for the 85th birthday of Bruno Wittenstein

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Since Ingeborg was supposed to learn housekeeping after school, her parents sent her to the Diekmann boarding school in Detmold for several months in 1935. In her free time she took lessons there again, with the painter and graphic artist Bruno Wittenstein.
  2. ↑ In the Willers family history, it is said that Wittenstein fell into arrears with rent and paid his debts with pictures. He also painted a portrait of August Willer.
  3. ↑ Then a historical picture of the Landtag zu Cappel is to be reproduced by 17 actors under the moderation of the historian Frank Huismann from Holzhausen-Externsteine. The painting by Bruno Wittenstein can be seen today in the building complex of the Detmold district and district court.
personal data
SURNAME Wittenstein, Bruno
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Lippe landscape and portrait painter
DATE OF BIRTH 17th September 1876
PLACE OF BIRTH Hamm , Westphalia
DATE OF DEATH February 27, 1968
Place of death Detmold