Ernst Walsken

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Ernst Walsken, undated

Ernst Walsken (born December 27, 1909 in Solingen ; † April 22, 1993 there ) was a German painter and resistance fighter .

Life

Ernst Walsken was born the son of a knife rider . Under pressure from his father, he learned the crafts of reider and house painter. He began painting and drawing at college. At the suggestion of his friend Johann August Preusse , a master student of Paul Klee , he applied to the Düsseldorf Art Academy in 1932 and was enrolled. There he studied with Heinrich Nauen and Schnurr, among others , until his relegation, which for political reasons took place after the summer semester of 1934. He belonged to an independent resistance group in the Rhine-Ruhr area and was arrested in Solingen in November 1935 on the basis of a testimony made by a friend from the Lower Rhine, probably under torture.

In 1937 he was taken to the reopened Esterwegen prison and labor camp in one of the first groups of transports . In the same year he was transferred to the Emslandlager Aschendorfermoor . He never stopped painting in the concentration camp. He made many pictures that friends smuggled out of the camps at risk of death. He was drafted into the notorious Penal Division 999 in 1942, but was taken prisoner by the Americans in 1943 and returned to Solingen from there after the war.

After his death, many of Walsken's pictures were transferred to the Emslandlager Documentation and Information Center (DIZ) in Papenburg , including the Moorsoldaten collection .

For many years he was chairman and honorary chairman of the Solinger Künstler eV association and holder of the Solingen ring of honor . Today's Kunstmuseum Solingen dedicated a large retrospective to the artist for his 100th birthday in January 2010. Walsken was married and had two sons and a daughter. His first son is the politician and manager Ernst Martin Walsken .

His pictures are among the few surviving artistic documents from concentration camps during the Nazi era.

Afterlife

In 2013, a path was named after Ernst Walsken in the Dorperhof development area in Solingen.

Works

  • Waiting for freedom. Drawings and watercolors by a bog soldier 1935–1939 . Peter Hammer Verlag, Wuppertal 1984, ISBN 3-87294-252-2 .

literature

  • Andreas Schäfer (ed.): Ernst Walsken . SWWS-Verlag, Duisburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-9812100-0-2 :
    • Volume 1: Waiting for Freedom. Drawings and watercolors by a bog soldier 1935–1939 .
    • Volume 2: Paintings - Graphics - Drawings .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Pictures of the Moor Soldier - Culture - DW - January 27, 2010. In: Deutsche Welle. November 8, 2017. Retrieved November 10, 2017 .
  2. ↑ Honorary Ring Bearer of the City of Solingen ( Memento from May 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on March 31, 2017
  3. ^ Eva Siebenherz: Renamed streets in North Rhine-Westphalia. neobooks, 2017, ISBN 978-3-742-79784-1 , Volume 13 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
personal data
SURNAME Walsken, Ernst
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German painter and resistance fighter
DATE OF BIRTH December 27, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Solingen
DATE OF DEATH April 22, 1993
Place of death Solingen