Christian Behrens

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Christian Behrens (born May 12, 1852 in Gotha , † September 14, 1905 in Breslau ; full name Gustav Christian Friedrich Behrens ) was a German sculptor .

Life

Behrens' most prominent work: Monumental figure of the Archangel Michael with flanking reliefs at the entrance to the Monument to the Battle of the Nations

Behrens was the eldest son of the court dressmaker and fur merchant Eduard Behrens (1819–1873) and his wife Johanne Magdalene Behrens née. Reinhard (1820-1905). After attending the community school and the Ernestinum grammar school in his hometown, Behrens completed an apprenticeship as a sculptor with the Gotha court sculptor Eduard Wolfgang.

In 1870 he went to Dresden , where he studied at the art academy and from 1872 to 1877 worked in Ernst Julius Hähnel's master workshop . In 1873 the just 21-year-old received the Great Golden Medal for his statue Hagen, sinking the Nibelungenhort into the Rhine . Study trips took him from 1878 to Belgium, the Netherlands, Paris, Italy, Vienna, New York and Boston.

1880/1881 Behrens worked in the studios of Carl Kundmann and Edmund von Hellmer in Vienna , after which he lived as a freelance artist in Dresden until 1885. In 1886 he was appointed head of the master workshop for sculpture at the Silesian Museum of Fine Arts in Wroclaw. Hugo Lederer , Franz Metzner and Ernst Seger were among his students here. Behrens, who was a member of the German Art Cooperative and the Artists' Association in Breslau, was awarded the title of royal Prussian professor in 1896. In 1902 he was made an honorary member of the Dresden Art Academy .

Behrens, who remained unmarried and childless, died after a serious illness at the age of only 53. He did not live to see the completion of his last great and best-known work - the monumental relief with the Archangel Michael at the entrance to the Monument to the Battle of the Nations in Leipzig .

  • gallery

  • Allegory of Fishing (1883)

  • Statues of Luther and Melanchthon (1900)

  • Relief St. Michael (around 1904/1905)

  • The Tax Burden Devouring Citizens (around 1904)

  • Equestrian statue of George the Bearded (around 1900)

  • Tomb of the Najork family (1895)

  • Barbarossakopf, Monument to the Battle of the Nations (around 1904/1905)

  • Silesian Estates House (1892)

  • Relief Otto von Bismarck , Villa Stollwerck (1904)

Work (selection)

The drunken reveler and the nagging woman above the entrance to the Schweidnitzer cellar at the town hall in Breslau

drafts

Awards

reception

“Behrens was not the man of the great crowd, not in art, and not in life. But anyone who knew his works and was lucky enough to get closer to him discovered a personality of rare value. A comprehensive education, original thoughts and a caustic sense of humor, these were the characteristics of his being. In his works, an unusually three-dimensional feeling is paired with deeply thought-out content and an ingenious formal language, which loved to vary older styles, especially the baroque, with great enthusiasm. "

- Obituary 1905

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Archive of the Dresden University of Fine Arts
  2. ↑ German construction newspaper . 16th year 1882, No. 56 (from July 15, 1882), p. 332.
  3. ^ Obituary for Christian Behrens. In: Gothaisches Tageblatt. Issued September 1905.

literature

Web links

Commons : Christian Behrens  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Behrens, Christian
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Behrens, Gustav Christian Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor
DATE OF BIRTH May 12, 1852
PLACE OF BIRTH Gotha
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1905
Place of death Wroclaw