Ernst Riegel

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Lid bowl in the shape of a duck, Darmstadt, 1911 ( Museum Angewandte Kunst , Frankfurt am Main)
Goblet in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, 1905 approx.

Ernst Riegel (born September 12, 1871 in Münnerstadt , Franconia ; † February 14, 1939 in Cologne ) was a German goldsmith , sculptor and university teacher .

Live and act

Riegel grew up in his hometown in Lower Franconia and was impressed early on by the works of Tilman Riemenschneider and, in particular, by the famous winged altar in the parish church. In 1890 he attended the Royal School of Applied Arts in Munich and studied sculpture and goldsmithing for five years, among others with Fritz von Miller . At the turn of the century Riegel was one of the successful Art Nouveau artists , was appointed to the Darmstadt artists' colony and was represented in the Third Hessian State Exhibition in 1908 .

Riegel became a member of the Deutscher Werkbund , produced, for example, the chain of office for the Lord Mayor of Darmstadt and in 1912 was commissioned to design the Luther Church in Worms . Due to his reputation, Emil Thormählen brought him to Cologne in 1913 and entrusted him with the management of the gold and silversmith class. In 1926 he was appointed professor at the Cologne factory schools headed by Richard Riemerschmid .

During the First World War (“ I gave gold for iron ”) and the subsequent inflationary period, it was almost impossible to work with precious metals. In order to enable the students to work on the material in a real-time and realistic manner, he initiated the establishment of an economic office at the Werkschulen (managed by a commercial director). The aim was to gain work orders through contacts with the economy, authorities and private individuals and to turn the studios and workshops of the Cologne factory schools into high-performance "development and test laboratories".

His plan worked: the precious metals department and the department for sacred art financed almost half of the college's budget. The city of Cologne (sponsor of the Kölner Werkschulen) under Lord Mayor Konrad Adenauer awarded well-endowed contracts, for example, when the foundation stone was laid for the University of Cologne in Lindenthal in 1929, the Great Rectors' Chain in gold and goblets in silver (made by Ernst Riegel with his students) presented. Wealthy Cologne citizens - in the association of friends and sponsors of the Cologne factory schools - placed orders and thus enabled a qualified education of the students. With the rise of the National Socialists, the works of the Cologne factory schools were defamed and in 1933 a dozen artist teachers were dismissed. Among them was Ernst Riegel, "fired without notice" by his successor Karl Berthold .

Riegel's works are now in various museums and privately owned.

At the end of the 1990s he was rediscovered as an important artist through several exhibitions:

Web links

Commons : Ernst Riegel  - Collection of images, videos and audio files