Erich Mönch

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Erich Mönch (born July 10, 1905 in Rötenbach near Calw ; † May 26, 1977 in Unterjesingen near Tübingen )

Mönch taught at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart for over 20 years , was an important figure in the Tübingen art scene after the Second World War and, after his retirement, became an honorary member of the Stuttgart Academy. In 1970, on the occasion of his retirement, he received the Federal Cross of Merit for his services to the further development of lithography . He also gave the German scout movement significant impetus.

Life

Erich Mönch was born on July 10, 1905 in Rötenbach near Calw in the Black Forest, where his father was a teacher. From him, who was also the representative of the monument protection, he took over the love and interest in finds and old equipment. In 1917 the family moved to Unterjesingen near Tübingen because their father was transferred . Erich Mönch attended the Oberrealschule (today's Kepler Gymnasium ) in Tübingen. Later, as a talented draftsman, he was drawn to lithography , for which he acquired the necessary basic knowledge through an apprenticeship with Staehle and Friedel in Stuttgart from 1920 to 1923. He then worked for the painter Lambrecht before continuing his training at the then arts and crafts school in 1924. Later, he continued to be close friends with his teacher, Professor Friedrich Hermann Ernst Schneidler . In his class he made friends with HAP Grieshaber , Eberhard Koebel (tusk) and Fritz Stelzer (pauli), the latter two of whom came from the youth movement like him . After passing his exams, he first ran the graphic studio "Igel" with HAP Grieshaber, drew and illustrated for various publishers and then got a permanent job in Berlin.

From 1920 he published a young workers 'publication for the metal workers' association, which he also illustrated. At the end of 1931 he became editor of the trade journal “ Metallarbeiterjugend ” within the IG Metall trade union in Berlin, which was transferred to the German Labor Front (DAF) in 1933 . Until August 1939, he carried out this activity, sometimes under very difficult circumstances. Erich Mönch was accused of not writing in the spirit of the newspaper “ Völkischer Beobachter ”. In autumn 1938 he was taken to a retraining camp in Wünsdorf . Only after several of his boy scout friends had vigorously advocated him and made representations in Wünsdorf, he was released after two months. In the further development of his editorial team, the printing paper for his newspaper was slowly but steadily withdrawn; the paper was getting thinner and thinner and so it was inevitable that the magazine would be discontinued. He was then transferred to the technical department of the German Labor Front.

On May 10, 1939, he married Beate Kalinich in Berlin, the marriage remained childless. At the beginning of the war, Erich Mönch was first transferred to the Westwall in Holland as an anti-aircraft soldier and later to the Air Force Military Command in Berlin as a cartographer. The couple lived on Wilmersdorfer Strasse on Mommseneck, Berlin-Charlottenburg , on the fourth floor. When the house was damaged by bombs, he moved to Unterjesingen at the end of December 1944.

After a brief captivity, he returned to Unterjesingen in August 1945.

Teaching

At first Erich Mönch worked as a freelance artist, but in 1950 he got a job as a teacher for lithography at the State Academy of Fine Arts in Stuttgart . He led seminars at the Summer Academy of Oskar Kokoschka . He has taught students from all over the world and has earned an international reputation. From November 1963 to February 1964, as well as November and December 1964, he was visiting professor at the famous Pratt Institute in New York , in November and December 1965 he taught at Oregon State University in Corvallis . During these three stays in the USA he undertook extensive trips to the country, of which many watercolors , drawings and lithographs bear testimony and which he described in detail in the magazine "Der Graue Reiter". With Erich Krämer he founded the summer academy in Luxembourg, which moved to Trier in 1976. But for health reasons he could no longer teach there.

In the course of his teaching activities, he kept developing new techniques to bring the drawings onto the stone, and time and again he surprised his students, who belonged to both the free and applied arts as well as the subject of art education, with new methods. Because of his extensive specialist knowledge, he was considered an expert in lithography. The very cramped workshop he directed was the busiest at the academy. There were long waiting lists, and anyone who got a job in one of the courses held during the semester break could consider themselves lucky.

He found like-minded partners in Willi Baumeister and Luitpold Domberger . At the end of his twenty years at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart in 1970, on the occasion of his retirement, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for his services to lithography , and on the occasion of his 70th birthday the Academy made him an honorary member in 1975. On October 20, 1975, on the occasion of the opening of the first master builder exhibition at the academy, curated by the then rector Wolfgang Kermer , “Willi Baumeister: Lithographs and etchings, printed by Erich Mönch”, Erich Mönch had his last appearance at the university and auditioned numerous audiences about his collaboration with Baumeister. "For Willi Baumeister", so Karl Diemer in the "Stuttgarter Nachrichten" (October 23, 1975), "Erich Mönch [...] was the 'best helper', which he also gave him in 1953 on a magnificent test print of the monumental lithograph 'Crucifixion' certified. For Mönch on the other hand, Baumeister was the most prominent among his many students, endowed with all the virtues of a serious student. [...] "

Artist

The ellipse

The Ellipse was an artist community from Tübingen and Reutlingen sculptors, painters and graphic artists, which was founded in 1951 and existed until 1965. It emerged from the Notgemeinschaft Tübinger-Reutlinger Künstler . The ellipse was an action group, discussion forum and social union in one. The group's artists include Ugge Bärtle , Heiner Bauschert , Gerth and Valeska Biese , Günther and Elisabet Hildebrand , Karl Kürner , Karl Langenbacher , Erich Mönch, Hadwig Münzinger, Kurt Hafner , Barbara Lipps-Kant, Rosemarie Sack-Dyckerhoff and Fritz Jumper.

Artists Association of Tübingen

Erich Mönch was a founding member of the Tübingen Artists 'Union , which was founded in November 1971 on the initiative of the young, art-loving AOK director Kurt Hafner , together with ten artists and the journalist Wilfried Schäfer , and which is one of the most consistent artists' associations in Germany. His commitment and Kurt Hafner's successful graphic editions are at the beginning of the special focus on printmaking and the print center. After a temporary arrangement in the rooms of the Kunsthalle Tübingen, the Künstlerbund moved to the old town in 1972 and founded the “Druckzentrum im Stiefelhof”.

Student of Erich Mönch

scout

Until 1945

His career in the German youth movement : Erich Mönchs ( boy scout name : Schnauz ) came into contact with the youth movement in the Bund der Wehrempler at an early age, around 1921 . His brother Otto, who died as a lieutenant in World War II , led a group there that Schnauz also belonged to. In 1926 this group joined the newly founded Association of Storm Troop Scouts, the German Knighthood of the Forest . The intellectual inspirer and federal field master was the graphic artist Dr. Helmut Hövetborn . There were no written federal regulations, but the members had to know the core sentences of the federal government. The form of coexistence was a kind of grassroots democracy , in the federal thing all tribal leaders were entitled to vote; the tribes held their own things. In 1927, the federal government acquired a large heather area on a mountain near Döffingen (Böblingen district). Here, on the “Jugendland”, the federal home was built in the log house style. Schnauz was chief field master of the federal government.

In 1929 Schnauz founded the boy tribe "Braune Bären Berlin" (short: BBB tribe) at Teufelssee in Grunewald. On his initiative, a mounted tribe "Grauer Reiter" was created in Soldin . Before that, Schnauz was tribal field master in the “ Jukasjärvi ” tribe in Stuttgart. The tribal name comes from a big trip in August 1928 that Schnauz took with some comrades to Swedish and Norwegian Lapland .

In August 1934, the last federal meeting, already illegally, took place in the youth country, in which almost all federal members took part. Shortly afterwards the last federal order came out, which ordered the self-dissolution; the entire inventory was destroyed, the homes burned. Two tribes defied the order and did not break up. The "Gray Rider" in Soldin continued to ride through the town in full storm troop clothing in broad daylight. After being drafted into the military, all members died on the Eastern Front. The "Brown Bear Tribe" decided to camouflage themselves and joined the youth ban 155 of the young people in Berlin-Kreuzberg under the name "Technical Readiness" as a staff youth train . The badge was the halved arrow lily of the storm troop, which was issued as a Viking grappling hook. Until 1939 the boy scout promise was taken from the most reliable boys . When Schnauz was warned about his imminent arrest by a former member of the Reich Youth Leadership , he got ahead of him by volunteering for military service. Thereupon this cell of secret alliance work also disbanded on a prepared cue.

During his studies at the Kunstgewerbeschule in Stuttgart, Schnauz and Eberhard Koebel (tusk) sat in the same class, as noted above. Even if they were very different in nature, they had a lot in common due to their mutual membership in the youth movement; The friendship grew stronger, especially when Schnauz had the opportunity to go on a trip to Lapland with tusk in 1927. This had a very fruitful effect on both of them and they made use of their mutual experiences in their groups - even when they both went to Berlin in 1928 and 1929 respectively. They met again and again and only when the course taken by tusk swung too much to the left did the connection loosen up.

After Tusk was arrested for “decomposing the young people and the Hitler Youth” on January 18, 1934, Schnauz's mother approached Schnauz to lobby for his release in Berlin, which he finally succeeded in doing. On the way to emigrate to Sweden, tusk visited Schnauz as a thank you at an illegal boy scout camp of the “brown bears” and “gray riders” on the Havel . The connection never broke. Shortly before tusk's death in 1955, they met in Stuttgart.

After 1945

After his return from captivity , Erich Mönch immediately tried to set up boy groups again. From this, in collaboration with his student Gernot Huber ( boy scout name “Otter”), the “Tübinger Bund” was created, which soon became part of the Association of German Scouts (BDP). This began a phase of life that made him known under his old boy scout name "Schnauz" in the entire youth movement in Germany and beyond. He was regional field supervisor for nine years, played a key role in the federal regulations of the BDP and on the federal magazine Jungsleben . He wrote countless articles for this, and the graphic design was largely in his hands.

In 1952 the Gau "Grauer Reiter" was founded, which Schnauz shaped through his strong musical disposition. After profound differences, the gray rider scouts were formed in 1956 , with Schnauz becoming the first federal leader. The cross-union meetings that he initiated and organized had an effect far beyond his covenant . Due to his friendship and good connections to most of the leaders of the great leagues, the meetings on the Hohenkrähen and, a year later, at Waldeck Castle , were a great success. At the Meißner meeting in 1963, Schnauz was again significantly involved in the design of the factory guilds . In 1961 he resigned as a federal leader and now fully devoted himself to the federal publication “Der Graue Reiter”.

He was only able to help prepare the sixth cross-union meeting at Whitsun 1977 at the Allenspacher Hof from his sick bed; his wish to take part was no longer fulfilled. Two days before the meeting began, he died unexpectedly in his home in Unterjesingen. On Whit Monday 1977, six Gray Riders carried him to his grave, delegations of the Bünde from the camp gave him the last escort . The Graue Reiter said goodbye to a person whose name has become an integral part of the youth movement after the Second World War. His ideas, which were first put into practice in the Gray Rider, found imitation in many groups and were later also filled with life of their own. For the Gray Rider in particular, he was a promoter and mentor from the very beginning, and without Schnauz he would not have come about. From the 1950s onwards, his life story is so closely interwoven with that of the Grauer Reiter scouts that the void he left with her could never be closed.

literature

  • Wolfgang Kermer : Willi Baumeister: lithographs and etchings. Printed by Erich Mönch . State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, Stuttgart 1975 (leaflet for the exhibition from October 20 to November 8, 1975)
  • Ders .: exhibitions by former teachers . In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 7 / Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart / For the period from April 1, 1975 to May 31, 1976. Stuttgart: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, August 1976, pp. 54–58, 1. Fig.
  • Ders .: exhibitions by former teachers . In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 7 / Staatliche Akademie der bildenden Künste Stuttgart / For the period from April 1, 1975 to May 31, 1976. Stuttgart: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, August 1976, p. 99
  • Ders .: [ obituary ]. In: Akademie-Mitteilungen 8 / State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart / For the period from June 1, 1976 to October 31, 1977. Stuttgart: State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, March 1978, p. 91
  • Barbara Lipps-Kant ao: The artists of the ellipse . Tübingen 2001
  • Kurt Hafner (editor): Erich Mönch . Tübingen 2003, the catalog is in pictures, documents and essays, a homage to one of the most important personalities of the Tübingen art scene after the Second World War, ISBN 3-910090-55-9
  • Erich Mönch: Workshop book of lithography for artist lithographers and students. Edited and expanded by Walter Schautz, Argenbühl-Ratzenried 1978

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Baden-Württemberg Library Service Center , accessed on January 21, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Monk, Erich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schnauz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German artist, founder of the Gray Rider Scouting Association
DATE OF BIRTH July 10, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Rötenbach
DATE OF DEATH May 26, 1977
Place of death Unterjesingen