Ernst August von Mandelsloh

Ernst August Freiherr von Mandelsloh (born July 18, 1886 in Wels , Upper Austria; † June 14, 1962 in Neumarkt-Sankt Veit , Bavaria) was an Austrian painter and graphic artist.

Ernst von Mandelsloh came from a noble family in Lower Saxony that had produced officers and diplomats for a long time. His father, Freiherr Hans von Mandelsloh, served as an imperial and royal major general and took part in the battle of Königgrätz . His mother Elisabeth was born Negrelli of Moldelbe . His family had earmarked him for a career in the military. That is why he attended the military lower secondary school in Güns in 1896 and the military upper secondary school in Mährisch-Weissenkirchen from 1900 until he entered the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt in 1903 . As an officer, he had been before and then in World War I.holds significant positions. In August 1919 he left the army as a captain in the general staff and moved to Frankfurt am Main .

The former pilot's officer did not train himself as a painter until after the end of the First World War - though supported by Kurt von Unruh and Max Beckmann . In 1921 he was a trainee in the winter semester at the Städelschule with the sculptor Emil Hub .

Mandelsloh remained true to painting and graphics. In 1926 he took part in an exhibition in Darmstadt for the first time. One focus of his work were pictures of industrial buildings. He also devoted himself to landscape painting.

On March 1, 1927, he married Sophie, née Countess Goess . In 1930 he returned to Austria and settled in Gmunden am Traunsee . The decisive meeting with Rudolf G. Binding also took place in this year . In Gmunden he takes over the artistic direction of the Schleiss ceramics factory .

From 1931 to 1939 Mandelsloh became a member of the Vienna Secession through Sergius Pauser and received the State Prize of the Republic of Austria in 1932 and 1934. He was part of the Zinkenbacher painter colony . He was also a member and last chairman of the Innviertel Artists Guild in the period before the Second World War .

Mandelsloh exhibited at the exhibition "Mountains and People of the Ostmark" in the Vienna Künstlerhaus in 1939 and was allowed to open the first art exhibition of the Upper Danube Artists' Association on June 10, 1939. On October 23, 1940, he was appointed head of the master school for art education at secondary schools, and since October 1, 1941, he became head of the master school for art education at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna. As "State Director for Fine Arts in the Upper Danube Gau" and "Reporter" of the Heydrich SS Security Service, Mandelsloh played an ambiguous role in terms of art politics, for example he stood up for Sergius Pauser or Alfred Kubin and also made his sympathy for the officially called "degenerate." "branded expressionism no secret. Thanks to his proximity to the Nazi regime, he was also professor for watercolor painting and art education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna from 1941 to 1942 . Because of his wife's illness, he gave up his position at the academy in 1943 and moved to Gmunden.

In 1945 Mandelsloh was arrested as a National Socialist and interned in the Glasenbach camp. In 1946 he was transferred to the Kornwestheim camp near Ludwigsburg . His wife Sophie died on June 25, 1947 without seeing her husband again.

After his release on December 2, 1947, Mandelsloh moved to his siblings Reta, Kurt and Franz in Neumarkt-St. Veit in the monastery there. In 1948 he set up his own studio in the monastery. In the fall of 1950 he began to work on illustrations for Heliopolis by Ernst Jünger ; there were also personal relationships with Ernst Jünger, whose works gave him cause for further works that were shown at several exhibitions (1952: Städtische Galerie in Munich , exhibition in Saulgau / Upper Swabia, 1953: Darmstadt City Library, Reutlingen City Library , 1955: Goslar ). His friendship with Alfred Kubin also remains.

Ernst August Freiherr von Mandelsloh dies on June 14, 1962 in St. Veit Abbey in Neumarkt-St. Vitus.

literature

• Board member of the Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie Museum Association (publisher): Ernst August Mandelsloh (1886 - 1962). Summer exhibition 2009. St. Gilgen 2009. ISBN 3-902301-09-0 .
• Hans Wallner: Ernst August Freiherr von Mandelsloh . In: Art for All . Issue 7, April 1937 (pp. 153-157). ( PDF , accessed on July 21, 2019)

Web links

• The Zinkenbacher Malerkolonie Website of the museum with short biographies

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Camp Glasenbach [1]