Clara Westhoff

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Clara Rilke-Westhoff, painting by Paula Modersohn-Becker, 1905 ( Hamburger Kunsthalle )
Clara Rilke-Westhoff, painting by Oskar Zwintscher , 1902
Rainer Maria Rilke and Clara Rilke-Westhoff (1901)
Bust of Paula Modersohn-Becker , created by Westhoff in 1899, erected as a bronze sculpture in 2007 on the 100th anniversary of Paula Modersohn-Becker's death in the Bremer Wallanlagen
Clara Rilke-Westhoff (around 1930)

Clara Rilke , b. Clara Henriette Sophie Westhoff (born November 21, 1878 in Bremen ; † March 9, 1954 in Fischerhude ) was a German sculptor and painter .

Life

Clara Westhoff grew up as the daughter of the businessman Friedrich Westhoff (1840–1905) and Johanna Westhoff, nee. Hartung (1856–1941) from Weischlitz in Bremen- Oberneuland with two brothers, including Helmuth Westhoff (1891–1977).

At the age of seventeen Westhoff moved to Munich , where he attended the private painting school of Friedrich Fehr and Ludwig Schmid-Reutte and was taught head , nude and landscape painting . In 1898 she took drawing and modeling lessons from Fritz Mackensen in Worpswede . In Worpswede she made friends with Otto Modersohn and Paula Modersohn-Becker , among others, and was a frequent guest at the Barkenhoff of the artist Heinrich Vogeler and his wife Martha . There she met her future husband, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke , in 1900 .

In 1899 Westhoff continued her training as a sculptor with Carl Seffner and Max Klinger in Leipzig and in 1900 at the Académie Julian in Paris ; there she met Auguste Rodin . On April 28, 1901, she married Rainer Maria Rilke, and they moved to a neighboring village of Worpswede, to Westerwede . Rilke had bought a house there, the interior of which his friend Heinrich Vogeler had arranged. Their daughter Ruth was born in December 1901.

In the summer of 1902 Rilke gave up their apartment and moved to Paris to write a monograph on Auguste Rodin. Westhoff followed him a short time later and brought the daughter to the grandparents. They spent the winter of 1903 in Rome in the Villa Strohl-Fern . Rilke lived in the “Studio al Ponte”, which the painter Otto Sohn-Rethel , a friend of the painters of the Worpswede artists' colony , had given him. Clara Westhoff lived in her own studio on the premises within sight. She broke off her stay there to travel back to her daughter. The marriage broke up, however, because Rilke was apparently not made for a middle-class family life. A friendly relationship between Rilke and Clara Westhoff remained.

Family grave site Clara Rilke-Westhoff Fischerhuder Friedhof

Westhoff created, among other things, a portrait bust of her husband Rainer Maria Rilke (1901, plaster of paris on a plaster base), a bust of Heinrich Vogeler in 1902 and, eleven years later, a portrait of the writer Ricarda Huch (1912, bronze), which Clara Westhoff asked for at the time To exhibit the bust without mentioning her name because she saw herself portrayed too old.

"Café in the Rilke House" ( Fischerhude )

In 1919 Westhoff moved with her daughter to Fischerhude, where she lived until her death. The “Café Rilke”, which still exists today, later became her home and studio . It got the motto from Rainer Maria Rilke: "Since a lot came up, I began to feel confident, the future will give me, that I may, I can!"

Around 1925 Westhoff turned to painting , so that in addition to her sculptural work, an equally comprehensive painterly work was created. Soon after her death, like many women in art , she was forgotten. Her work was in private hands or was barely accessible to the public in various depots. With her comprehensive biography published in 1986, Marina Sauer initiated a rehabilitation of the artist by freeing Clara Rilke-Westhoff from the shadowy existence of being seen only as Rilke's wife and Paula Modersohn-Becker's friend. Clara Rilke-Westhoff can be seen today as a pioneer in sculpting women in Germany.

Exhibitions (selection)

  • 1899: together with Paula Modersohn-Becker in the Kunsthalle Bremen
  • 1937: Great German Art Exhibition , Munich
  • 1986: Clara Rilke-Westhoff , Georg-Kolbe-Museum , Berlin
  • 2002: Clara Rilke-Westhoff , Buthmanns Hof, Fischerhude
  • 2003: Carelessly painting straight ahead . Marie Bock, Clara Rilke-Westhoff, Paula Modersohn-Becker; Ludwig Roselius Museum , Bremen
  • 2007: Worpswede artists' colony. A piece of heaven? , Municipal Gallery Bietigheim-Bissingen
  • 2009: Noble guests , masterpieces of the Kunsthalle Bremen, Great Art Show Worpswede, Worpswede
  • 2011: Women on the move , Lower Town Hall Hall, Bremen
  • 2015: The painters of Paris - German artists on the move , Edwin Scharff Museum , Neu-Ulm

Honors

In the Bremen district of Oberneuland , the Rilke-Westhoff-Weg was named after her.

literature

  • Isolde Braune: "... as a person at work". The sculptor Clara Rilke-Westhoff (1878–1954) . In: Angela Dinghaus (Ed.): Frauenwelten. Biographical-historical sketches from Lower Saxony. Hildesheim / Zurich / New York 1993, pp. 304-312.
  • Helga Fuhrmann: Rilke-Westhoff, Clara Henriette Sophie, b. Westhoff. In: Women's story (s). Bremer Frauenmuseum (ed.). Edition Falkenberg, Bremen 2016, ISBN 978-3-95494-095-0 .
  • Eberhard Lutze: Rilke called Rilke-Westhoff, Clara Henriette Sophie born. Westhoff. In: The Historical Society Bremen and the State Archive Bremen (ed.): Bremische Biographie 1912–1962. Bremen 1969, p. 409 col. 1 to 410 col. 1.
  • Gunna Wendt: Clara and Paula. The life of Clara Rilke-Westhoff and Paula Modersohn-Becker. Europa Verlag, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-203-84031-6 .
  • Eduard Hindelang (Ed.) The sculptor Clara Rilke-Westhoff (1878–1954). Langenargen / Sigmaringen 1988. Published for the exhibition “Die Bildhauerin Clara Rilke-Westhoff (1878–1954).” Published with the support of the Tübingen regional council, the Bodenseekreis u. a.
  • Marina Sauer: The sculptor Clara Rilke-Westhoff: 1878–1954. Life and work. With oeuvre catalog. Hauschild, Bremen 1986, ISBN 978-3-920699-72-1 .
  • Marina Sauer:  Rilke-Westhoff, Clara Henriette Sophie. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 623 f. ( Digitized version ).
  • Karl-Robert Schütze: Refuge after an unsteady life. Research on the house of Clara Rilke-Westhoff in Fischerhude. In: Between Elbe and Weser, 23 (2004), No. 1, pp. 4–8.
  • Marina Bohlmann-Modersohn: Clara Rilke-Westhoff: a biography. btb, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-442-75432-8 .
  • Rolf Vollmann: When Rilke fell in love with Paula and Clara . In: Die Zeit , No. 34/2003

Web links

Commons : Clara Westhoff  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Remarks

  1. ↑ Marina Sauer:  Rilke-Westhoff, Clara Henriette Sophie. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 21, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 2003, ISBN 3-428-11202-4 , p. 623 f. ( Digitized version ).
  2. ^ Photo by Rainer Maria Rilke in the "Studio al Ponte", 1904 , digital collection of Heinrich Heine University
  3. ^ Marina Bohlmann-Modersohn: Clara Rilke-Westhoff. btb Verlag, 2015, ISBN 978-3-641-12310-9 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  4. ↑ Quoted from the web link Frauenmuseum.de
  5. ^ Robert Thoms: Great German Art Exhibition Munich 1937-1944 . Directory of artists in two volumes, Volume II: Sculptors. Berlin 2011, ISBN 978-3-937294-02-5 . Clara Rilke-Westhoff in Volume II No. 485, p. 59.
personal data
SURNAME Westhoff, Clara
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rilke, Clara; Westhoff, Clara Henriette Sophie (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German sculptor and painter
DATE OF BIRTH November 21, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Bremen
DATE OF DEATH March 9, 1954
Place of death Fischerhude