Edmond Goergen

Edmond Goergen (born December 12, 1914 in Müllendorf bei Steinsel in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg; died April 28, 2000 in Eich , Luxembourg ) was a Luxembourg painter and draftsman,

Restorer and resistance fighter.

Life

Education

Edmond Goergen had a dual education. After primary school, he went to the Emile Metz Institute in Luxembourg and at the same time did a technical degree at the State School of Arts and Crafts in Luxembourg. His art studies at the Ecole Universelle de Paris (via correspondence courses from Paris), which he began at the end of the thirties, only completed after the end of the Second World War with the title of professor of art painting. In addition, he studied from 1945 in Paris at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and at the École du Louvre .

Wartime

From 1934 to 1943 he worked as a high-frequency technician at Radio Luxembourg at the transmitter in Junglinster. He was in the LVL and used his profession to establish regular radio communications between Luxembourg and the Allies during World War II. Among other things, he passed on the first news about the preparations for the German A4 missiles in Peenemünde .

On 14 December 1943 he was arrested by the German SS, shortly came to the concentration camp Hinzert then to 1944 in that the Sachsenhausen concentration camp , and afterwards until the liberation on 17 May 1945 in the Mauthausen concentration camp , marked "return undesirable" . Here he made drawings about life in the concentration camp, which were published after the war under the title "Geoles Sanglantes" Imprimerie H.Neyscher Luxemburg and later under the name "Dessins de Mauthausen" Edition Cercle d'Art Paris.

The artist

The horrific time in the concentration camp changed his whole life. If he was an excellent athlete in the sport as a young guy - he had the Luxembourg record for javelin throwing - his health was badly damaged after the war. He decided to continue his art studies in Paris. His passion for painting helped him recover from his heart problems. From 1945 he studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris with N. Narbonne and was in the same class as the French painter Bernard Buffet , who later became very famous .

In the Louvre in Paris he perfected himself in restoration with Jean Gabriel Goulinat and René Huyghe. From 1946 to 1948 Edmond Goergen was an assistant in the restoration studio of the Louvre and was involved in the restoration of Paul Véronèses painting "Les Noces de Cana".

In 1948 Edmond Goergen returned to Luxembourg . From then on he was responsible for a lot of restoration work, for example in the church of Bad Mondorf, the wall paintings by Jean-Georges Weiser, the frescoes in the church of Rindschleiden and Junglinster and in other churches in Ösling . He was the designer of the 20 Francs 1953 gold coin - Charlotte and Jean wedding .

He became head of the state restoration service and in 1968 conservator at the "Service des Sites et Monuments Nationaux" (SSMN).

Edmond Goergen was also a portrait and landscape painter, as well as a draftsman. He used oil paint for his pictures and stayed true to the figurative style. At first he drew with pencil and charcoal, later mainly with felt-tip pens.

Numerous exhibitions in salons and galleries at home and abroad took place. He was married and had two daughters.

Commitment to European understanding

Despite his concentration camp experience or precisely because of it, Edmond Goergen campaigned for the cross-border European idea early on after the war. "In doing so, however, we must not ignore our individuality or our outlook on the international community." Edmond Goergen was the initiator, co-founder and active supporter of several associations that campaigned for European understanding.

• From 1957 he supported the European Association of Visual Artists from the Ardennes and Eifel (Belgium, Germany, France and Luxembourg) as President for Luxembourg, exhibiting painter and member of the jury until 1990.
• He was the initiator of the 1969 cultural agreement between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and Czechoslovakia and a co-founder and executive board member of the International Committee for the Scientific Study of the Causes and Consequences of the Second World War based in Luxembourg. Honorary presidents of the committee were Willy Brand for Germany, Pierre Grégoire for Luxembourg and André Malraux for France. Other members of the board of the committee included Prof. Dr. Eugen Kogon, Dipl.-Ing. Simon Wiesenthal and Prof. Dr. Golo man.
  
• As a manager of the Luxembourg Service des Sites et Monuments Historiques nationaux (SSMN), he was involved in the preparation of the treaty on cultural cooperation signed on October 28, 1980 between the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the Federal Republic of Germany.
• In 1983 he was one of the founders of the German-Luxembourgish Encounters based in Trier, together with Pierre Grégoire, Minister of Culture of Luxembourg, and Klaus Wichmann, Director of the Catholic Academy in Trier.

Awards

• Grand Duke Adolphe Prize in Luxembourg 1951
• Silver medal of the Société des Artistes Francais (1951) Exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris
• Gold medal of the Société des Artistes Français in Paris (1956)
• Two bronze medals in the Interministerial Salon (Musée des Beaux Arts of the City of Paris; Salons 1962, 1964)
  
• 1st prize in Monaco in the painting competition: Symphony en rouge (1966)
• Artist award of the European group of Ardennes and Eifel (1971)
• Plaquette d'Or “Statue de la Liberté” in the “Portrait” category of the 1971 Grand Prix de New York
• Officier de l'Ordre de Mérite of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg for his artistic and cultural activities (1974)
• Kaiser Lothar Prize, Prüm (1978)
• Officier de l'ordre de Mérite of France (1978)
• Rheinlandtaler, Düsseldorf (1981)
• Chevalier dans l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres de la République Francaise (1986)

literature

• "Geoles Sanglantes", drawings from the last world war, Imprimerie H.Neyscher Luxemburg, Edmond Goergen
• "Dessins de Mauthausen" Edition Cercle d'Art Paris, Edmond Goergen
• Art history in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg: "The wall paintings from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance" 1966. Edmond Goergen
• Various artistic and archeological studies.
• Pierre Grégoire 1985 The Luxembourg painter Edmond Goergen, landscaper , protratist and restorer . Dréckerei Saint-Paul, Letzebuerg, 154 S.Cote BNL LB 447.
• Jean Luc Koltz on the painters of the State Museum.
• Numerous doctoral theses on the drawings by Edmond Goergen from the concentration camps
• “Luxembourg artists from 1939-1943”, doctoral thesis by Catherine Lorent
  
• Kayser, Lucien, 2009 face à face: la fonction publique et l'art luxembourgeois .
• Confédération générale de la fonction publique. Letzebuerg. ISBN 978-2-87954-212-6 . (P. 22.23)
• Linda Eischen, 2009. Edmond Goergen. In: La collection luxembourgeoise du Musée national d'histoire et d'art
• ons stad No. 91: 76-79 .
• Andreas Pesch on the 100th birthday of Edmond Goergen “Fighters for a free Luxembourg, fighters for an art of the beautiful” Article (published on September 5, 2015) in the features section of Frankfurt
• Roger Bour Portraits: Who's Who in Luxembourg? P. 84
• Edmond Goergen (1914-2000) , ed. Viviane Goergen, Imhof, Petersberg 2018

See also

• List of Luxembourgish artists

Web links

• Luxembourg Lexicon , 1st Oplo, 2006, p. 147
• Luxembourg Lexicon , 1st Oplo. 2006, p. 455

Footnotes

1. ↑ Linda Eischen: Edmond Goergen. (PDF) La Collection Luxembourgeoise du Musée National d'Histoire et d'Art. Retrieved June 13, 2015 (French). 
2. ↑ Luxemburger Wort , July 31, 1978.