Engelbert caps

Engelbert Kaps (born February 19, 1888 in Freiwaldau (Jeseník) , † December 20, 1975 in Regensburg ) was a German sculptor .

Life

Marble bench in Jeseník (CZE)

Josef Engelbert Kaps, son of a weaver, was less than a year old when his father died, and when he was nine he lost his mother. Relatives took care of him and he attended elementary school in Freiwaldau.

Kaps began his professional career in 1899 as an apprentice at the W. Thust marble and granite factory in Gnadenfrei near Reichenbach ( Owl Mountains ). Then he attended the so-called marble technical school in Saubsdorf (with eleven marble quarries at that time) (later: state technical school for stone processing ). Director Eduard Zelenka became aware of the young talent, helped him to get a state scholarship and promoted him with the aim of getting Kaps' admission to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts . After a kind of preparatory year in Vienna (1906), he was selected along with nine others from a total of 36 applicants. He received his artistic training with Hans Bitterlich and Josef Müllner (since 1910) and in the master class of Edmund von Hellmer . Even as a student, Kaps worked, thanks to a good order situation, during the semester break in his own studio in Niklasdorf and Freiwaldau, but also in Vienna on Rotenturmstrasse not far from the well-known " Greeks " bar . In 1914 he created one of his most important works, the monumental marble bench, which is still preserved today and restored in 2012, with the relief "Return of the Teutons from the hunt" in the Priessnitzpark in Freiwaldau.

The First World War , which Kaps participated in the infantry regiment “Kaiser” No. 1 on the Galician front and in the Gorizia area, most recently as a first lieutenant, interrupted the expected career. But even during this time Kaps received orders from his comrades, including from the ranks of the highest-ranking officers. Kaps worked in his studio in Freiwaldau since the end of the war, but soon relocated it to Saubsdorf. His wife, the sculptor Maria geb. Melzer, daughter of the Saubsdorf doctor, whom he had met in 1918.

As a freelance artist, Kaps was overwhelmed with orders, so that at times he employed 30 assistants. In 1923, together with the painter Raimund Mosler, he founded the “Association of Fine Artists Silesia”, which was especially supported by EW Braun , the director of the State Museum in Opava .

Tošovice War Memorial (CZE)

In the artistic work of Kaps, who made use of different materials (granite, sandstone, marble, coral limestone, alabaster, wood, metal), some focal points emerged. He created busts: EW Braun (1918), Viktor Heeger, Paul Heider , Kudlich , Th. G. Masaryk , Goethe , Nietzsche (before 1928), Richard Wagner ; Sculptures: homecoming, war widow, Pietà ( Odrau , 1931), slave, Madonna m. Child ( Znaim ); War memorials: Botenwald , Freiwaldau, Freudenthal , Goldenstein , Jägerndorf , Landskron , Müglitz , Niklasdorf, Reihwiesen , Römerstadt , Sandhübel , Saubsdorf, Taschendorf , Weißbach and Troppau; Tombs or sculptures for graves: family crypt with caryatids for the Albert Förster family , Josef Förster tomb, (both Zuckmantel , 1922/24); Weißhuhn tomb (Troppau around 1924); F. Schmidt tomb, bronze ( Jägerndorf , 1924); Willibald Müller tomb, sandstone (Troppau, 1925); Januschke sarcophagus, marble ( Lichten , 1927); Grave of Field Marshal Eduard von Böhm-Ermolli (Troppau, 1942).

The quality of his art is documented in a number of exhibitions, including in Brno , Košice , Prague , Berlin , Stuttgart , Regensburg, Kirchheim unter Teck . It is largely known what works of art Kaps designed in the years up to the end of World War II, but there is still no definitive list of what has survived from that time or where it is kept.

Kaps' first marriage lasted nine years. In 1930 he met the teacher Elisabeth Müller from Opava, married her, and this marriage had three children. From 1938 to 1941 Kaps was mayor of Saubsdorf, and in 1943 he was called up as an officer in the German Wehrmacht (head of a military hospital). These two facts could be the reason why Kaps had to endure abuse by former partisans after the end of the war in the Czech internment camp in Adelsdorf and in the so-called death camp in Vietseifen near Thomasdorf . His family had already been evacuated; he himself came to Seyboldsdorf Castle in Lower Bavaria as a displaced person in autumn 1946 , after a laborious search he found his relatives and brought them to his home.

The next station was from 1952 Hohenlimburg ad Lenne , where his wife got a job in the cath. Found Weinhofschule as a teacher. After Kaps was able to attract attention at numerous exhibitions outside Hohenlimburg, including in Hagen , Esslingen and Munich , in 1959 he was commissioned again for a monumental sculpture, the three-meter-tall “hot waltz” cast in bronze at the Lennebrücke in Hohenlimburg. He then began to work with Hohenlimburg coral limestone, including "Frauenkopf" (1961), "Jünglingskopf" (1962) and "Kopf einer Negerin" (1963). In 1967 he went to Regensburg, where he set up a studio for the last time in the cloister of the " Old Chapel " (until 1970). It still followed Bremen because his son lived there, who wanted to take up the 1969 widowed father, and finally back Regensburg (1973), because of a him congenial retirement home, where he remained until his death.

The work of Kaps, although not as extensive, is valued by experts as highly as the work of his friend, the most important Silesian sculptor Josef Obeth (1874–1961). The power of Kap's work lies above all in the perfect thinking of the composition and its subsequent spatial arrangement. Engelbert Kaps would have been one hundred years old on February 19, 1988. The Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie in Regensburg took this as an opportunity to dedicate its own exhibition to him for the first time after the Second World War.

Works (selection)

Hot waltz in Hohenlimburg

secured after 1946

• Christmas altar , linden wood, 1948, private property
• City arms, 1955, Hohenlimburg town hall tower
• Bust of Adalbert Stifter, oak, 1956, Federal Ministry of Expulsion, Bonn
• Viktor Heeger bust, 1958, Memmingen
• East German home window (draft), 1958, Hohenlimburg town hall
• Hot Waltz , bronze figure, 1959, Hohenlimburg Stennert Bridge
• Frauenkopf , Hohenlimburg Coral Limestone, 1961, Bay. State Painting Collection - State Gallery of Modern Art
• Jünglingskopf , Hohenlimburg Korallenkalk, 1962, private collection
• Memorial plaque for director F. Eigl, 1963, Kirchheim unter Teck grammar school
• Head of a Negress , Hohenlimburg Limestone, 1963, loan from the Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg
• Troppau monument, Muschelkalk, 1964, Bamberg
• Johann Schroth bust, 1966, Oberstaufen
• Prießnitz-Brunnen, 1969, Kirchheim unter Teck

Web links

Commons : Engelbert Kaps  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

• Bergland-Verlag Fritz Burschofsky (ed.): Freiwaldau. Hohenstadt 1938.
• Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg and P. u. H. Rißler (ed.): The sculptor Engelbert Kaps. Catalog for the exhibition from April 21st until June 27th, 1988 in the Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg.
• Rudolf Kretschmer: Saubsdorf through the ages. Noerdlingen 1992.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marian Čep: Akademický sochař Engelbert Kaps: Mesto Zlate Hory. In: zlatehory.cz. Retrieved January 9, 2019 (Czech). 
2. ↑ Felka, Widbert: "Kaltwalzer" and "Warmwalzer" - Hohenlimburg's landmarks , pdf [1] In: HOHENLIMBURGER HEIMATBLÄTTER, 52nd year, no. 12/1991, pages 409–433
3. ^ Josef Walter König: Kulturportal West Ost | Kaps, Engelbert. In: kulturportal-west-ost.eu. Retrieved January 9, 2019 . 
4. ^ Museum Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg, P. u. H. Rißler (Ed.): Catalog for the exhibition from April 21st. Until June 27, 1988 in the Ostdeutsche Galerie Regensburg: The sculptor Engelbert Kaps 1888–1975 . No. 4 , 1988.