Claus Bergen

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Claus Bergen

Claus Friedrich Bergen (born April 18, 1885 in Stuttgart , † October 4, 1964 in Lenggries , Upper Bavaria ) was a German landscape and marine painter and Karl May - illustrator .

Life

Childhood and adolescence with art

Bergen was born in Stuttgart in 1885 as the first son of Fritz Bergen , a painter and illustrator who was popular during the imperial era and originally from Dessau. The mother, Magdalena b. Raab, was a daughter of the postman Alois Raab from Inning am Ammersee . His brother was the later Wehrmacht general Hans Bergen . Claus Bergen grew up in Munich, attended Maximiliangymnasium and began his artistic training in Munich, initially as a private student of the animal and landscape painters Moritz Weinhold , Otto Strützel (1904), Peter Paul Müller (1905) and Hans von Bartels . In April 1904 he also enrolled in the painting class of Professor Carl von Marr at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Little known are his around 450 illustrations for “ Karl May's illustrated travel stories” , which were published from December 1907 and until 1912 by the Freiburg publishing house Fehsenfeld published. Since 1908 he has mainly exhibited landscape paintings in Munich, the motif and title of which refer to trips and stays in Germany and abroad, for example depictions from South Tyrol or views of the English fishing port Polperro on the Cornish coast . Several study stays in Polperro in the next few years until the outbreak of the World War resulted in a large number of paintings with motifs of the fishing port, the people and the fishing boats. At exhibitions with gold medals, Bergen's English fishermen sold quite well despite the high prices. After the outbreak of the World War, Bergen worked as an artistic assistant for the Illustrirte Zeitung , for which he went to Wilhelmshaven . In the period that followed, the paper repeatedly published works by him, mainly capturing combat missions by the submarine fleet.

Painter of the Battle of the Skagerrak

When the fleet returned from the sea battle off the Skagerrak, Bergen was in Wilhelmshaven. He was the first marine painter to speak to crew members. His contact with Admiral Hipper , the commander of the reconnaissance forces, gave him the opportunity to take part in exercises with the fleet in order to obtain the appropriate optics for his studies. Claus Bergen has since been considered the painter of the Skagerrak Battle . Furthermore, he was the only marine painter of the time to participate in a patrol with SM U 53 under Lieutenant Hans Rose . His pictures of submarine warfare are documents of an epoch of naval warfare.

Even after the First World War , Bergen continued to receive orders. In addition to the maiden voyage of the steamer Columbus , in which he took part in 1919 at the invitation of Norddeutscher Lloyd , this included furnishing the expanded Deutsches Museum in Munich with twelve monumental paintings (two destroyed in World War II) and the transfer of the motor yacht Amida from Kiel to New York . They brought him financial independence.

Aviation motifs

Because they lived in the same house in Munich, the brothers Claus and Otto Bergen and Ernst Udet founded the "Aero Club Munich 1909" with other boys. Otto Bergen fell as a pilot in World War I, while Ernst Udet made a career as a pilot. Claus Bergen was always in contact with his friend "Erni", who paved his way to the top of the German aviation industry in the early and mid-1930s. Bergen's paintings soon adorned the representation areas of the aircraft factories. The only colored representations of the interior of the flying ship Dornier Do X come from him .

Bergen was an early member of the NSDAP , which he joined in 1922. The acquaintance of the commanders-in-chief of the Kriegsmarine Erich Raeder and Karl Dönitz secured Bergen the attention of the navy until 1945. His working style of large formats in oil on canvas made the amount of his works clear. 13 contemporary paintings from his studio in Lenggries were exhibited in the Great German Art Exhibitions in Munich, including 1938 U 53 in the Atlantic , 1940 bombardment of the Westerplatte , the Polish fortress in front of Danzig, and against Engelland and 1941 Ran an den Feind .

In autumn 1943, the sergeant Hans Willy Bernartz , later co-founder of the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven , asked Claus Bergen to repaint a picture that had been burned in a bomb attack . Bergen doubted his authorship of this "little picture", but the first contact resulted in a friendship between the patron and the artist. The correspondence they left behind documents Bergen's chaos of life in the post-war years and Bernartz's influence on Bergen's artistic development in the 1950s. In the final phase of the Second World War , Adolf Hitler included him in the God-gifted list of the most important painters in August 1944 , which saved him from being deployed in the war, including on the home front .

Late work after World War II

The last battle of the battleship Bismarck is one of the most famous paintings of Bergen. The foundation of the coal and steel industry from 1963 to the Naval School Mürwik was one of the Bergen paintings given away; it is part of a series to which the picture of the Atlantic on John F. Kennedy belongs. A few days before the assassination attempt on Kennedy , the picture reached Washington. Months later, the White House confirmed that Kennedy had seen the picture before he died. Bergen died on October 4, 1964 in Lenggries, where he and his wife Elisabeth, nee. Boser had settled down from paint poisoning.

Working in public collections

60 paintings by Bergen from the Bernartz Collection, Cologne, are now in the German Maritime Museum in Bremerhaven ; the Wetterstein Mountains panorama is kept by the municipality of Lenggries; here is also the estate of Bergen. The painting sailing ship (Viking boat ) came to the Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen in Munich (BStGS, Inv.Nr. 11806). The naval school of the Bundeswehr in Flensburg-Mürwik acquired a submarine on patrol in 1961 , and in 1963 battleship “Bismarck” in the final battle on May 27, 1941 . Further works can be found in the municipal museums in Nuremberg and Wuppertal. Six pictures for the planned submarine memorial in Berlin, formerly in the Munich House of Art, were spoiled by the US armed forces in 1945; In 1979 some of them were returned.

Archival material

  • Registration documents (PMB; Claus Bergen ): Munich, City Archives

literature

  • Dressler's art manual 1930.
  • Bergen, Claus . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 9, Saur, Munich a. a. 1994, ISBN 3-598-22749-3 .
  • Wolfgang Hermesmeier, Stefan Schmatz: dream worlds, pictures of the work of Karl May . Karl-May-Verlag, Bamberg 2004, ISBN 3-78020-166-6 .
  • Bodo Herzog: Claus Bergen . Art monograph, Urbes Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-92489-607-0 .
  • Bodo Herzog: Claus Bergen - the life and work of the great marine painter . Hermann Rühl publishing house, Krefeld 1963.
  • Hans Ries: Illustrations and Illustrators 1871-1914. The range of images from the Wilhelmine era. History and aesthetics of the original and printing techniques. International lexicon of illustrators Bibliography of their work in German-language books and magazines, on picture sheets and blackboards . H. Th. Wenner, Osnabrück 1992. ISBN 3-87898-329-8 .
  • Jörg-M. Hormann, Eberhard Kliem: Claus Bergen. Marine painter from four eras . Art monograph, Koehler Verlag, Hamburg 2002, ISBN 3-78220-850-1 .
  • Jörg-Michael Hormann : A ship flies into the world . Airship Dornier Do X , anniversary edition, Deutsche Post AG, Bonn 2004, ISBN 3-00-014367-X .
  • Siegfried Weiß : Art career aspiration. Painter, graphic artist, sculptor. Former students of the Munich Maximiliansgymnasium from 1849 to 1918. Allitera Verlag, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-86906-475-8 , pp. 341–347 (Fig.).
  • Jörg-M. Hormann, Eberhard Kliem: Claus Bergen. Marine painter of both world wars . Art monograph, GeraMond Verlag, Munich 2014, ISBN 978-3-7658-2055-7 .

Web links

Commons : Claus Bergen  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Maximiliansgymnasium Munich, archive, matriculation 1895/96.
  2. ↑ Illustrirte Zeitung, No. 3783 of December 30, 1915, p. 902.
  3. ↑ Thus in the Illustrirten Zeitung No. 3760 of July 22, 1915, p. 107; No. 3764 of August 19, 1915, pp. 250f. or No. 3770 of September 30, 1915, pp. 434f.
  4. ↑ a b c Ernst Klee : The culture lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 44.
  5. ↑ Nelson's flagship as a present for Kennedy . In: From the Bavarian Oberland , Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 5, 1964
  6. ^ Spiegel.de / Christoph Gunkel: Marine painter Claus Bergen
  7. ↑ Carl Hupfer: Sea battles from the Isarwinkel. Visit to the marine painter Claus Bergen
personal data
SURNAME Bergen, Claus
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Bergen, Claus Friedrich (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German marine painter and Karl May illustrator
DATE OF BIRTH April 18, 1885
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart , Kingdom of Württemberg
DATE OF DEATH 4th October 1964
Place of death Lenggries , Upper Bavaria