Edwin Scharff

Edwin Scharff

Edwin Paul Scharff (born March 21, 1887 in Neu-Ulm , † May 18, 1955 in Hamburg ) was a German sculptor , medalist and graphic artist in the first half of the 20th century.

Life

With 15 years left Edwin Scharff his home town of Neu-Ulm to in Munich at the School of Applied Arts from 1903 to 1907 in the painter class of Ludwig von Herterich and later at the Royal Academy of Arts , the professional painting to study. In 1906 he made his first sculptures and in 1908 he made his first etching portfolios on the subject of dreams and sketches .

After a year-long stay in Paris in 1912/13, he met Jules Pascin . Scharff became a founding member of the Munich New Secession in 1913 . Then he switched to sculpture , which was the beginning of his most productive creative phase. In 1919 he married the actress Helene Ritscher (1888–1964); the marriage resulted in two children. Paintings, sculptures and graphics were created on the theme of lovers and, after the birth of the first child, on the subject of mother and child.

Scharff graves cemetery Ohlsdorf

In 1923 Scharff was appointed professor at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin , where he received numerous public commissions for monuments, busts and medals. In 1927 the members of the German Association of Artists elected Edwin Scharff as Vice President. In 1931 Edwin Scharff was appointed to the Prussian Academy of the Arts and remained there as a member until 1945.

After the seizure of power of the Nazis , he was first at the Dusseldorf Art Academy added. In May 1933 Edwin Scharffin joined the NSDAP , but was expelled from this party again in 1938. At the Reichsausstellung Schaffendes Volk 1937 in Düsseldorf , he erected two figures for the entrance, the horse tamers, for over 100,000 Reichsmarks . Despite this political adjustment, Scharff was defamed as a degenerate artist , three of his works were mocked in the Nazi exhibition Degenerate Art in July 1937 and 46 of his works were finally destroyed as Degenerate Art . In 1938 he was given leave of absence from his teaching post in Düsseldorf and expelled from the Reich Chamber of Fine Arts .

After the Second World War, Edwin Scharff belonged again to the German Association of Artists and was a member of the jury on the extended board from 1951 to 1955. In 1955 he was appointed as a member of the Academy of Arts (Berlin) . From 1946 Scharff taught at the State Art School in Hamburg, in 1955 he died in this city.
The plates for the two opposite graves of Edwin Scharff and his wife in the Hamburg-Ohlsdorf cemetery were made by his pupil Ursula Querner , presumably from the material Trani Perlato .

His works were shown to the international public at the art exhibitions documenta 1 (1955) and documenta 2 (1959) in Kassel . The Edwin Scharff Prize awarded annually by the City of Hamburg in the year he died is a reminder of him.

In 1999, the Edwin Scharff Museum was opened in Neu-Ulm, the town of his birth. Its permanent exhibition provides a comprehensive overview of Scharff's work. Owned by the Edwin Scharff Museum are among other things two bronze sculptures of the parents of the lawyer and art collector Franz Moufang , a bust of William Moufang senior and a high relief - Tondo by his wife Julie Stutzmann from around the 1920s.

The sculpture Portrait of the actress Anni Mewes , created in 1917, was rediscovered in Berlin together with other sculptures by other artists that had been confiscated as degenerate in 1937 at the Berlin Sculpture Find in 2010, when rescue excavations were carried out on Rathausstrasse opposite the Red Town Hall in advance of underground construction work .

Work (selection)

Horse tamer , Düsseldorf

Three men in the boat , Hamburg

Edwin Scharff Museum Neu-Ulm

In addition to depictions of horses, humanistic traditions determine Scharff's work. His formal language lies between stylizing, expressive and cubic representation.

Horses

• Terracotta box with a horse (1914)
• Monument of the Horses (1924)
• Horse tamer (from 1937) in the Nordpark in Düsseldorf

human

• 1912: standing
• 1924-1926; Completed 1932: War memorial for those who fell in the First World War in Neu-Ulm
• 1926: Kore
• 1927/1928: Three Muses - Terpsichore, Polyhymnia, Thalia , terracotta statues for the facade of the Phoebus Palace in Nuremberg, which opened in 1927 (since 1974 GNM, Heuss-Hof)
• 1921-1939: Pastorale
• 1947: Spring nymph
• 1947: Emil Nolde
  was together with Quellnymphe at the first DKB exhibition in 1951 at the HdBK Berlin
• Without year: Colossal bust of the Reich President von Hindenburg in the Berlin Reichstag building
• without year: mother with child mourners
• 1952/1953: Three men in the boat , first casting in Hamburg, Outer Alster; Second casting in Neu-Ulm, Rathausplatz

Honors

• Edwin Scharff Prize of the City of Hamburg (since 1955)
• Opening of the Edwin Scharff Museum on Petruskirchplatz in Neu-Ulm
• In the Hamburg district of Steilshoop , the street Edwin-Scharff-Ring is named after the artist.
• In his hometown of Neu-Ulm, the congress and event center on the Danube was given the honorary name of Edwin-Scharff-Haus .

literature

• Edwin Scharff , introduction by Gottfried Sello, Hamburg, Claassen 1956.
• Exhibition catalog Edwin Scharff for the exhibition in the Kestner Society Hanover from September 27 to November 4, 1962, Städtische Kunsthalle Mannheim 1962/63, Städtisches Karl-Ernst-Osthaus-Museum Hagen 1963, Kunsthalle zu Kiel 1963, Städtisches Kunstmuseum Duisburg 1963.
• Ludger Alscher et al .: Lexicon of Art. Architecture, fine arts, applied arts, industrial design, art theory. Volume IV, The European Book, West Berlin 1984, ISBN 978-3-88436-112-2 , pp. 334 f.
• Helga Jörgens, Siegfried Salzmann (Ed.): Edwin Scharff. Retrospective: sculptures - paintings - watercolors - drawings - graphics. For the 100th birthday of the artist. Edwin Scharff Museum, Neu-Ulm; Glaskasten Sculpture Museum, Marl; City Museums Heilbronn; Art gallery Bremen; Schleswig-Holstein State Museum, Schleswig; Bremen 1987 (exhibition catalog).
• Helga Jörgens-Lendrum: The sculptor Edwin Scharff (1887–1955). Investigations into life and work , with a catalog of figurative sculptures, Georg August University, Göttingen 1994.
• Frank Raberg : Biographical Lexicon for Ulm and Neu-Ulm 1802-2009 . Süddeutsche Verlagsgesellschaft im Jan Thorbecke Verlag, Ostfildern 2010, ISBN 978-3-7995-8040-3 , p. 354 f .
• Helga Gutbrod, Edwin Scharff Museum Neu-Ulm (ed.): Edwin Scharff 1887–1955. 'Form must become everything' , Wienand, Cologne 2013, ISBN 978-3-86832-137-1 .

Web links

Commons : Edwin Scharff  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Edwin Scharff Homepage
• Edwin Scharff Museum
• At the Schaffendes Volk exhibition in 1937
• Literature by and about Edwin Scharff in the catalog of the German National Library
• Materials by and about Edwin Scharff in the documenta archive

Individual evidence

1. ^ Ritscher, Helene in the German biography
2. ↑ Biography Edwin Scharff ( Memento of the original from January 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. edwinscharffmuseum.de; accessed on January 13, 2016. 
3. ↑ cf. Archive of the Academy of the Arts: holdings of the Prussian Academy of the Arts; PrAdK 1315
4. ^ ^{A b} Ernst Klee : The cultural 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. 515.
5. ↑ cf. Personal declaration by Edwin Scharff in: Archive of the Academy of the Arts: Holdings of the Prussian Academy of the Arts; PrAdK I / 208
6. ↑ Project Die Rossehalter ( Memento of the original from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed June 24, 2015. 
7. ↑ cf. Personal declaration by Edwin Scharff in: Archive of the Academy of the Arts: Holdings of the Prussian Academy of the Arts; PrAdK I / 208.
8. ↑ kuenstlerbund.de: Board members of the German Association of Artists since 1951 ( Memento of the original from December 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on January 13, 2016) 
9. ↑ cf. Archive of the Academy of the Arts: Academy of the Arts (West), staff news; Pers-AdK-W 229
10. ↑ edwin-scharff.de : The grave of the Scharff couple. Retrieved November 9, 2011.
11. ↑ edwinscharffmuseum.de
12. ^ Precious works of art discovered at the Rotes Rathaus . In: Berliner Morgenpost , November 8, 2010.
13. ^ Deutscher Künstlerbund 1950. First exhibition in Berlin 1951 , Brothers Hartmann, Berlin 1951. Exhibition catalog (without page numbers).