Elisabeth Coester
Elisabeth Coester (born February 20, 1900 in Rödinghausen , † May 18, 1941 in Detmold ) was a German expressionist glass painter and paramentist of the Protestant denomination.
Elisabeth Coester, who later worked temporarily with her brother, the sculptor and graphic artist Otto Coester , came from a family of doctors in Barmen and completed her school education with secondary school leaving certificate. She then studied at the arts and crafts school and the textile school in Wuppertal. She devoted her life's work mainly to religious topics.
After completing her studies, she first worked in textile design. She only began to occupy herself with stained glass when she was only twenty-two years old when she received the order for a war window in the Soest Wiesenkirche . In 1924 she designed the choir windows of the Deutschhauskirche in Würzburg, from 1926 to 1929 the paraments of the University Church of Marburg , as well as an altar wall carpet in the size of 8.00 square meters for the cross chapel in the university church. The vestments were all woven and embroidered in the Eisenach deaconess house. 1928 the window walls of the steel church of the PRESSA (international press exhibition) in Cologne (architect Otto Bartning ) and those of the Protestant Nicolaikirche in Dortmund 1930 (architects Karl Pinno and Peter Grund ). These two works, many of which were 100 square meters in size, laid the foundation for their fame at the time. Both buildings represented pioneering architecture for their time. The windows of both churches were destroyed in the war, so that the originals of their main work no longer exist.
She developed the sequence of individual windows to form a closed glass wall, so that she came close to the goal of Gothic glass art. The steel church in Essen and the reinforced concrete church of St. Nicolai in Dortmund received multicolored, brightly shining glass walls of eight hundred and five hundred square meters, respectively.
Further work for churches in Merzig, Kaltennordheim, Elbingerode, Kellinghusen and Hamm as well as for two Hamburg churches and the cemetery chapel in Hagen - Hohenlimburg followed. The window created in 1939 for the St. Nikolai Church in Hamburg was not installed because of the war and therefore survived the destruction of the church. In 1962 it was integrated into the new building in Harvestehude .
Elisabeth Coester also created free paintings and graphics. Textile art remained another important area of work: she headed the parament institute in Eisenach until her death, where she played a decisive role in the creation and revival of Christian symbolism.
Part of her estate was donated to the Museum Schloss Moyland Foundation in 1994 .
Her last major work was the altar wall of the reformed cemetery chapel in Hohenlimburg / Westphalia. She was buried there after she died at the age of 41.
literature
- Martina L. Reetz: Elisabeth Coester - A Protestant glass painter of Expressionism. phil. Diss., Trier 1994.
- Elisabeth Coester - An Artist of Religious Expressionism 1900-1941. Bedburg-Hau 1996, ISBN 3-929042-08-8 .
- Gerhard Senn: Elisabeth Coester in Westphalia (1900-1941) - memory of a forgotten glass painter and parament artist. In: Soester magazine. Issue 114, 2002, ISSN 0176-3946 , pp. 175-209.
- Gerhard Senn artist between times - Elisabeth Coester. Wissenschaftsverlag for glass painting, Eitorf 2005, ISBN 3-932623-11-8 .
- Gerhard Senn: The artistic working group of the siblings Elisabeth and Otto Coester with the Soester Wiesepfarrer Dr. Paul Girkon. In: Westphalia, booklets for history, art and folklore. 84th Volume 2006, Aschendorff, Münster 2009, ISSN 0043-4337 , pp. 211-244.
Web links
- Literature by and about Elisabeth Coester in the catalog of the German National Library
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Coester, Elisabeth |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German expressionist glass painter and paramentist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | February 20, 1900 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Rödinghausen |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 18, 1941 |
| Place of death | Detmold |