Ernst Bahn

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Ernst Bahn (born August 9, 1901 in Bonn , † December 14, 1978 in Münster ) was a German painter , draftsman and graphic artist .

Life

Ernst Bahn was born in Bonn in 1901 as the oldest of three siblings. The father died when Ernst Bahn was ten years old. The mother returned with the children to their father's house in Koblenz . Ernst Bahn grew up in the house of his grandfather, the shoemaker Ernst Pollesche. From 1916 he attended the arts and crafts school in Koblenz. An uncle took Ernst Bahn with him to Cologne in 1918 and thus enabled him to continue his education at the local factory school. There, Bahn developed a particularly good relationship with his teacher Wilhelm Schuler (* 1875 in Karlsruhe), who urged him to do an apprenticeship in the trade alongside his studies. Ernst Bahn completed a one year traineeship to learn the technique of mural painting . After Wilhelm Schuler's death, Bahn left the factory school in 1921.

Ernst Bahn in Munster

Ernst Bahn in the Alps, 1971

In 1922 Ernst Bahn came to Münster (Westphalia). He had met the son of the Münster art dealer Elisabeth Kraus, Hermann Kraus, in Cologne. In the same year Elisabeth Kraus organized an exhibition of the young train in Münster. Ernst Bahn immediately became a member of the Free Artist Community Schanze in Münster, found friends and like-minded people, and his artistic work was soon recognized in the city and beyond. Bahn participated regularly in the exhibitions at the ski jump . In 1928 he married Ottilie Schmidt. Travels took him to Holland, the East Frisian Islands and in 1929 to Paris. In 1932 his son was born. In the 1930s, the painter was very busy with commissions and regularly went public with his own artistic work. From 1939 onwards, only a few works were produced, Ernst Bahn became a soldier, wounded in Belgium in 1944 and taken prisoner of war. He stayed at the Camp Indiantown POW camp in Pennsylvania (USA) until March 1946 .

The Bahn family was bombed four times and many pictures were lost. Ottilie Bahn lived temporarily in Würzburg. She succeeded in bringing the graphics archive, and above all the plates for the etchings, to a safe place. Soon after the war, Ernst Bahn worked again on paintings for churches. From 1953 to 1973 he was an art teacher at the Clemens-Brentano-Gymnasium in Dülmen. In 1967 his wife Ottilie died. A year later, Bahn married again. With his interest in the forms of nature, he turned to alpine glacier landscapes in the 1960s and 1970s, which he studied while traveling. Ernst Bahn died on December 14, 1978 in Münster.

plant

At first Ernst Bahn was interested in sculpture , but soon he turned to painting and graphics . However, many of his later sketches show that he often approached his motifs using simple plastic forms. Bahn's early works are experimental and influenced by the art of the period before the First World War, expressionism . Up until the mid-1920s, the artist's style fluctuated between expressive design and a more sober, more objective style of painting. In the second half of the 1920s he developed his own style in painting and graphics, which tended towards the New Objectivity . Paintings and graphics by Bahn always attracted a lot of attention in the ski jump exhibitions.

Ice skaters on the Aawiesen in Münster, watercolor by Ernst Bahn, 1922, Münster City Museum

The earlier training in wall painting made Bahn a sought-after fresco painter and restorer. Between 1927 and 1934 he received large orders for altarpieces and wall paintings for newly built churches and chapels in Westphalia. The artist dealt with the question of contemporary, modern religious painting for the new sacred architecture in Westphalia. The paintings have a monumental objectivity with figures that are reduced to the typical and essential.

In 1937 Ernst Bahn received the order to paint the reception hall of the newly built on- site hospital (today the University Dermatology Clinic ) in Münster. The theme of the wall paintings are the “healing powers of nature”, which the artist created in large figurative scenes with heroically idealized men and women. These frescoes are good examples of the use of art for National Socialist propaganda purposes. The British occupation had it painted over in 1945. However, they are well documented by the draft drawings and photos of the wall paintings that have been made. Remnants of the paintings were uncovered and restored during construction work in 2010.

In addition to the large commissions, many drawings, etchings and lithographs were created in the 1930s that show essential elements of Ernst Bahn's art: intensive observation of nature's wealth of forms and a sensitive, sometimes humorous look at people. Bahn's graphics from the years after 1933, almost like those of the old masters, make it clear that he only fully adapted himself to the National Socialist ideals of art when commissioned, but otherwise - like many artists of that time - created landscapes that were neither thematically nor stylistically offensive to the National Socialist rulers.

“To America, Sketch I”, draft for a self-portrait by Ernst Bahn, 1944

After the war, Ernst Bahn took on many orders for restoration, especially of wall paintings, in addition to teaching. There was little time left for free artistic work. His late work focused on alpine glacier landscapes , which he studied and painted again and again while traveling. The pictures that were created now offered a kind of analytical look at the play of shapes and colors in nature, abstract shapes predominate.

Exhibitions

The Münster City Museum preserves Ernst Bahn's graphic and drawing estate.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Rita Kauder-Steiniger: On the building of the University Dermatology Clinic Münster, The location hospital from 1938 , In: Sonja Ständer, Hartmut Ständer, Thomas A. Luger: The University Dermatology Clinic Münster, History and Moulagensammlung , Springer, Heidelberg, 2006, p. 17–22, ISBN 3-540-28018-9 , Google Books: Digitalisat [1]
  2. ^ Westfälische Nachrichten, September 7, 2013.

literature

  • Berghaus, Peter: Ernst Bahn. Paintings, drawings, printmaking . Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History, Münster 1978
  • Bietendüvel, Bernd: New murals in an old bakery . In: Heimat und Reich . Monthly booklets for Westphalian folklore. 1935, No. 8, pp. 305-308
  • Ernst Bahn (1901–1978). Paintings, graphics, drawings . Barbara Rommé (ed.), Rita Kauder-Steiniger (text), Stadtmuseum Münster, 2001
  • Kauder-Steiniger, Rita: Ernst Bahn (1901–1978) . In: Adaptation - Survival - Resistance. Artist under National Socialism . Klaus Kösters (ed.), Westfälisches Museumsamt, Aschendorff, Münster 2012, pp. 35–42, ISBN 978-3-402-12924-1
  • Kauder-Steiniger, Rita: Avant-garde in Münster? In: Avant-garde in Westphalia? Modernism in the Province 1902–1933 . Westfälisches Museumsamt (Ed.), Ardey, Münster 1999, pp. 49–58, pp. 210–211, pp. 170–173, ISBN 3-87023-144-0
  • Maxsein, Anton: On the art of Ernst Bahns . In: The Christian Art . Monthly for all areas of Christian art and art history. 33rd vol., Issue 1, October 1936, pp. 1-11
  • Vernekohl, Wilhelm: About the Westphalian in art. For the annual show of the free artist community "Schanze" in Haus Rothenburg . In: Das Schöne Münster , Volume 10, Issue 12, December 1938, pp. 197–212

Web links

  • Free artist community Schanze : Directory of members
  • "Winter romance:" The skaters on the Aawiesen ", painting by Ernst Bahn", In: Flensburg online, January 9, 2013, January 9, 2013, accessed on December 4, 2013 [2]
personal data
SURNAME Bahn, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and graphic artist
DATE OF BIRTH August 9, 1901
PLACE OF BIRTH Bonn
DATE OF DEATH December 14, 1978
Place of death Muenster